“I Am Jazira”
I am not border,
not checkpoint,
not someone else's map.
I am Jazira —
not the island of exile,
but the land between waters
where the sky kneels to wheat
and the wind speaks Kurdish,
Assyrian, Arabic,
in whispers that remember
what empires tried to forget.
My roots drink from Tigris,
my breath was formed by Euphrates,
my soul echoes with the footfall
of shepherds, poets, rebels —
women who buried loss
in songs that still bloom.
You say:
Where are you from?
I say:
From the earth that bled
but didn’t vanish.
From the dust that raised its voice
in a mother tongue.
I am not Adana, not Nevşehir,
not what my father insisted.
I am the place he feared to return to —
the land he forgot,
but my bones remembered.
I am Jazira.
I walk with the silence of forgotten tribes
and the fire of those
who never forgot themselves.