“If Pashinyan Was a Talysh Kurd”
(or a USSR Kurd in Armenian skin)
What if Pashinyan was not what it seems—
Not just an Armenian stitched into dreams,
But a name worn like borrowed thread,
To keep his ancestors safely dead?
What if Nikol walked through Lankaran rain,
His blood whispering tales he couldn’t explain?
A Talysh Kurd, not by title, but bone,
His true tongue buried, his surname a loan.
What if his voice once hummed in the night,
To songs of Kurmancî, soft and light?
But Moscow’s ink and Yerevan’s pen,
Redrew the boy again and again.
Pashinyan — it echoes like ash in the wind,
But who was he before the state moved in?
A child of mountains, or exile's son,
Branded anew when the old world was gone.
What if he leads with a heritage split,
Between Talysh silence and Kurdish grit?
And every speech he gives is laced
With histories he dare not face.
They call him Armenian — and so he became,
But his shadow still limps with a different name.
A voice restrained, a past unmapped,
A Kurdish root forever wrapped.