I am Kurdistan

by

The first few summers of my life I spent in our garden with my cheek against the rough, grey wooden fence, carefully tilting my head so I could admire our neighbours’ garden.

It was Paradise. The grass was lush and trimmed; the flowers had all the colours in the world; white statues shone in the beds; the winding paths with shimmering stones ended by a gleaming white bench where you could sit surrounded by the alluring nature.

When I was done watching the picturesque scenery I always returned with a deep sigh to my racked garden. I was disappointed and I found it odd: Why did my Kurdish garden look like it had been subjected to God’s wrath rather than being the Paradise that Kurdistan is?

The Kurdish Graveyards

What is Tigris and Euphrates made of?
Water, naturally,
but even though water is without colour they are always crimson.
Water has no taste but their lingering taste
is that of the fires of history.
Water has no smell, yet there is this scent
from the hair of our murdered daughters and sons.

The rivers of Euphrates and Tigris are as beloved friends of the Kurdish people as the mountains. They stretch all through the Kurdish land, surrounding and protecting the heart of Kurdistan: living and giving life to nature with its foaming waters.

But if you look closely, if you bend your head and look closely you will see that Euphrates and Tigris have suffered defeat.

Şêrko Bêkes who wrote this poem sees the red waves of Euphrates and Tigris, red with the blood of thousands of Kurds.

This is what I see and what you will see: The rivers are the graveyards of Kurdistan. When you kneel down by Euphrates or Tigris, you will see the faces of dead Kurdish children, women and men just beneath the surface.

Though, one must remember: Şehîd namirin (martyrs never die) and neither will Euphrates and Tigris. They live on in the children who carry their Kurdish names, Firat and Diçle.

According to myths Euphrates and Tigris are the rivers of Paradise and the same myths tell of the Kurdish Mount Ararat as being the place where Noah’s Arc landed after the Great Flood.
The tales passed down through generations have led to a romantic conception of the Kurdish land being a part of Paradise.
Ask any Kurd for his or her description of Kurdistan and I promise you, it will be a description of Paradise.

But there is one crucial difference: Paradise has boundaries, Kurdistan has not.

To be

Kurdistan is more than the sweet soil of Amed, Mehabad, Hewler and Qamishlo that our elders treat like gold. Neither the lands of the Kurds nor the Kurds are defined by boundaries; where there is a Kurd, there is Kurdistan.

To be a Kurd is not a question about ethnicity. Kurdistan is freedom for it is borderless and those who fight for freedom are Kurds.

To be a freedom fighter is to be alive because being constant aware of death makes you kiss the earth softly, rest your cheek on the scabrous bark of a tree and lay your head on sweet smelling moss.

To be alive is what the rest of world fails to be because being safe and comfortable is to be dead. You are dead if your life tastes like sushi, beer and turkey. You are alive if it tastes like the salty sweat that evaporates from your body when you are fighting in what seems to be Hell.

Once upon a time when the heart of Kurdistan lay between the rivers of Euphrates and Tigris. But not long ago a freedom fighter dug up the heart from the ground, put it in his pocket and brought it with him to the mountains. There he hid the heart in an echoing valley so he and all the other freedom fighters of the world would always hear and feel it beating.

If you are alive, you will hear it. Put your ear down to the ground and listen. If you are alive, you will feel it: the beating of the Kurdish heart.

The Kurd is a flame.
The Kurdish family is a fire.
The Kurdish people are a conflagration.
Scattered all over the world are countless fires, but when they near each other, they will burn like the sun itself, like the sun on the Kurdish flag.

I am alive, I am a freedom fighter and I am Kurdistan.