“I Give Up Being Kurdish”
I lay down the name
like a flag in the mud.
It never sheltered me.
It never called me back.
I searched for it
in eyes that looked away,
in mouths that judged my vowels,
in hearts that had walls for strangers
even when we shared the same dust.
Kurdish —
a word too proud to hold me.
A people too broken
to make space for another piece.
Some — just a few —
called me Kurdish.
Those who listened closely,
who saw the fire behind my doubt.
But the rest —
the ones with power,
the ones who stamped my papers,
the ones who built this cold land —
they called me Turk.
To the Germans in the South of Germany,
I was never Kurdish.
Only a Turk.
Only the noise, the smell, the guest
they wished had stayed away.
I called to my kin.
They asked where I was born.
They asked how pure I am.
They asked the questions
the colonizers taught them.
So take it.
Take the name,
take the history,
take the struggle,
and leave me outside of it.
You didn’t lose me.
You never wanted me.
I am not Dersim.
I am not Botan.
I am not part of the thousand tribes
who forgot each other long ago.
I give it up.
The songs.
The sorrow.
The stubborn silence.
Let others bleed for it.
Let others carry the fire
that never warmed me.
I give up being Kurdish.
And maybe
I never was.