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Me and the Exile:
The Languages’ Exile:
Being born Kurdish,
from Kurdish parents, who only know
Kurdish from God’s numerous languages, I
wanted—just like all children—to play,
study, learn, and spell my first letters
in my mother tongue. Instead, I found
myself in another languages’ maze, a
language in which I do not know one
letter from another; and that language
is Arabic. A few years later, the child
who grew inside of me day after day
asked himself, “Why are you studying and
learning this strange language instead
of your mothers’, fathers’, and
grandfathers’ language?” Time and
awareness would give the frank answer to
that question: the Kurdish language was
and still is forbidden in Syria. That is
except for a narrow extent, at home with
the family. The Kurdish culture is
forbidden and persecuted. Writing in
Kurdish is forbidden since there are no
schools, institutions, or universities
that teach it or include it in their
curriculum. Therefore the only option
that I was given was to master Arabic
and educate myself step-by-step by
studying, reading, and writing. This is
precisely what happened.
And now I am here,
writing my poems
in this foreign language with a high
imagination and an infatuation, which is
incomparable except for the infatuation
of poetry itself and at a depth that
emulates so many fellow poets and
writers of this language. I would like
to add in this context that I learned to
read and write my mother tongue in this
exile, in Europe, where I am allowed to
write in Kurdish my poems, texts, and
obsessions.
The Homeland’s Exile:
An Arabic journalist
wants to ask me about my reasons for
living in Germany. He will publish the
whole conversation in Arabic Press; and
yet, the answer to that controversial
question will end up being deleted and I
do not know why. I will answer, “I was
forced to run away from a homeland
called Syria. At that time I told
myself, ‘Run away before you commit
suicide, go crazy, go to jail, starve,
or the fire of life and hope that burns
in side of you goes out. Leave this
homeland, which has turned into nothing
more than a disintegrated corpse, a
corpse that has no value of love,
freedom, beauty, or human dignity; leave
it before despair gnaws on your heart
and soul; leave it before all of your
dreams pass away.’ For these reasons, I
found myself in a new place of exile, an
exile through which I long for my
homeland. Whenever I hear its’ sad news,
I appreciate my exile and stay devoted
to it. The exile is hard, but living in
my homeland is harder. Poetry moistens
the hardness of it all.”
Poetry is Fever and
Hotness:
Poetry is a smooth
speech, which is not completed without
the use of misery; pain, misery, and
suffering are poetry’s fundamental
springs, its’ source of existence.
Poetry is therefore a creation and a
birth that cannot exist without real
suffering. Even in poetry about joy and
love there are hints of suffering,
anxiety, pain, sadness, and misery;
these mentions are inevitable.
In literature, and
specifically in poetry, I am tempted to
stay in a heated room all of the time, a
room which is heated by fantasy and
insanity, a room which allows me to
venture into extremism—as the famous
German philosopher, Nietzsche, once
stated. Poetry cannot coexist with
coldness. It cannot live in a cold room,
with the coldness of mind. It is the son
of fantasy and insanity—it asks us all
to stay
for
its sake, in a
constant state of fever and hotness. I
write poetry to steal myself away from
myself and to make the dream more
passionate than anything I have ever
seen, to bring my insanity to the level
of a grand wonder. Poetry, this creature
that is unequalled to anything else in
existence, can make me sacrifice
everything for it’s’ sake, the sacred
and the profane. From time to time, I
ask the person within me, “You, poet who
is inside of me, were you loyal to
poetry’s lesson? Did you sacrifice
enough for its’ sake?” And then I answer
myself, “I am trying with all of my
power, cells, and blood that flows
through my veins.”
Poetry and the World:
Poetry cannot heal
humanity’s pains or liberate nations
from injustice or despotism; it is not
one of poetry’s duties to lead
revolutions or carry out justice and
equality to the world. Poetry cannot
stop humiliation and pain, which people
are exposed to everywhere. Yet, poetry
is like a scream in the face of this
epidemic that spreads here and there; a
scream in the face of wars, jails,
killing, exile, and destruction, all of
which covers the universe; a scream that
can embrace the world from all of its
sides and spread moments of warmth,
love, and liberty through its veins. At
first, this poetic scream should be
written well, in a powerful imagination,
in a charm, miracle, love, and insanity;
otherwise, it will fall in the well of
antipathy. The world of poetry has a
different shape from the world without
it. If the world wears poetry, it will
be resurrected from the ashes into the
light, from dullness into delicacy.
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