He used to think: why don’t I read the poem as ‘I am a Kurd. My religion and my race are great’? Why don’t we say, ‘I am a Kurd, I am just and I am hard-working.’ Cannot a Kurd’s religion and race be great? Cannot a Kurd be just and hard-working? In history lessons, in civics, in Turkish lessons, they used to learn about important Turks, Turkish customs and Turkish victories. But are there no important Kurds? Have the Kurds never won victories? Why does Ataturk entrust the country to the Turkish youth? Does he not trust the Kurdish youth? They used to debate such matters among themselves. Their childish minds and childish hearts could not comprehend what was at stake.
At school their teacher used to say, ‘We are all Turks. There is no such thing as a Kurd. It’s a fabrication of the separatist traitors.’ Then one day they shot him as he was returning from holiday to the village. Actually he was a good man; he had never so much as lited a inger to a pupil in punishment. He tried desperately to teach the children Turkish, about Ataturk and how to read and write. The pupils had been sorry when he was killed. But if we are all Turks, what is this language we speak among ourselves? Why do they scream, ‘Dishonourable, separatist Kurds! Armenian spawn!’ when they come to raid our villages? If everyone is a Turk, what is it you want?
These questions arose in their minds but were not expressed in words. At school Mahmut had happened to pose a question one day. ‘In our village people spoke Kurdish. No one spoke Turkish until they moved to the town. Wouldn’t you call someone who spoke Kurdish a Kurd, sir?’ He received an answer from the sharp edge of a ruler landing on his head. They had investigated whether there were members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK in his family. In those days his brother had not yet taken to the mountains. He learnt that Kurdishness was shameful, was a lie, that some traitors convinced the mountain Turks that they were Kurds, that everyone living in this country was Turkish and that to claim otherwise was a betrayal of the homeland and the flag. The main thing he learnt was that he should not ask questions on the subject. It would be better for him to forget Kurdishness, a sorry fate, a punishment that God had given to his wayward servants.
In his childhood and adolescence, especially after their village was burnt and they had moved to the town, his mother’s threat ‘I’m going to come to school and speak to your teacher!’ was what Mahmut feared most. This was because his mother did not know Turkish. She used to go around in clothes typical of Kurdish women. He knew he would be humiliated if she came to school dressed like that. He would be ashamed of his mother, then ashamed of himself for being ashamed of her. What was all that about being reconciled with your identity and self-confidence, Comrade Doctor? How can we be reconciled to this identity that we carry as a curse and shame? When our identity is so battered and derided, how can we have self-confidence? If, for example, the owner of this house arrives and asks where I’m from, what answer do I give, especially if he were to ask directly if I’m a Kurd? It never used to occur to people very often to enquire, but now they ask quite openly: Are you Kurdish? Are you Alevi? What would I do if someone came and asked me outright? He makes a decision: if anyone enquires he will stand and answer, ‘I’m Kurdish.’
I ran away, but all those people are not fighting in vain; all those people have not died for nothing. It would not be manly to betray them. Again he feels a pang of sadness: I ran away from the front. Was it because I was afraid? No, that wasn’t it. Fear is not unconquerable. You steel yourself, and you overcome it. And sometimes you are so tired of life that death is preferable.
No, it was not from fear. Nor death, pain or the arduous conditions in the resistance … If you have faith in the leadership, trust in the comrades and belief in the cause then all this is of no importance! It was neither the hard life in the camps, nor the fighting, nor fear that led to all those people, young and old, being branded ‘traitors’, ‘cas’, ‘turncoats’. You see it was that question; that treacherous question that gnawed at the enthusiasm of the first days and first months: the question, ‘Why am I here? I’m here, and what has changed?’ Woe betide that it should start to trouble the heart and mind! Then it grows inwards and turns into a malignant growth; and, whether one is on the mountain or is a prisoner, it eats a person up.
In the small town we call our village, our hamlet or ‘bajar’, which consists of a main street (either Republic Street or Homeland Street), a square (either Ataturk Square or Republic Square), two rows of squalid shops and an imposing oice block, we have people as rich as Croesus, grand state buildings and, a little further away, the military garrison. We, who live there without hope, without a future, downtrodden, poor and beret, go up the mountain to ight to be regarded as human beings — as somebodies — and to have hope and dignity in our identity. The fires burning on the mountains (not shepherds’ fires but the fires of rebellion), the songs echoing in the valleys (not songs of love but calls to war), the cries rising from the villages (not laments of mourning but the yells of daily life) are all sacred signs promising a paradise on earth. We run like moths lying towards the light, to take a stand in this ight and escape from being nobodies and ‘spineless bastards’. We listen to the sounds of the mountains; we obey their call. It’s a little like when you walk along a road and hold out a match to someone who asks for a light; well, that is how we offer ourselves up — simply and without ceremony. We do this to reconcile ourselves with our identity, to gain self-confidence, to enter the ranks of men and, primarily, to be heroes in our own eyes. Then one day we see that every step we take to strengthen our identity, to gain self-confidence, all the values that until then have been exalted in theory — to ask, to question, to think freely — have suddenly become a crime. Then the Devil whispers the question that would make a saint swear, ‘Why am I here? What am I fighting for?’ Some people ask no questions. They just carry on like that until the end … The end? What is there at the end?
It was not death he was running from. Even though he could not bring himself to think it or to say it, a voice inside him whispered, ‘You did not betray. You are not a traitor, you are a human being.’ The real escape — perhaps betrayal — began not when he was rolling himself down the slope; it began in Zelal’s arms. They had dreamt of far-away seas together. Embracing each other, they had imagined the unknown blueness, the balmy air, the little two-roomed house and Hevi playing in the sand, swimming in the waves and growing up like the children there, as one of them. Like Adam and Eve, the world consisted of just Mahmut and Zelal. They had no need of temptation by the snake or the forbidden fruit to be cast out of that paradise of a refuge in which they had shut themselves and nurtured hope in their hearts and bodies. It itted the whole universe into the hollow of a cave and the lee of a grove impervious to light and was as eternal. What they had experienced was the forbidden fruit itself, the original sin. It was the first step towards betraying the mountains.
Now, having been cast out of the mountains, having betrayed the cause, exiled from love and passion and feeling all alone — and without hope of making the happiness that life had offered with the unborn child and of recreating themselves together with the child — Mahmut is sitting forlornly in a strange house in the unfamiliar distant district of a city that he has never been to before. In one hand, half a loaf stuffed with doner, in the other a bottle of water, a lead weight in his heart and fog in his mind. We are not used to comfort. These negative thoughts, this pessimism, is because comfort grates. Everything will come right when Zelal is better and we are together once more. The fog will lift. We have lost the child — but not to worry! We are still young. We have a whole life in front of us; our Hevi, our shared hope, Zelal’s and my son will be born.