Ode to the Line That Remembers
The Sintashta rode from the northern winds,
a chariot-bearer, a thunder-tamer,
his blood now calls itself Turk,
but his truth lies buried
beneath miles of forgetting.
She did not ride.
She did not conquer.
She was BMAC —
stone-settled, flame-lit,
a daughter of temples and irrigation,
not of war.
And when the steppe came south,
she remained —
and from her womb rose a people,
a woman,
a legacy.
Not Maykop.
Not the shadowed bronze of the Caucasus,
where U4c1 passed like a visitor.
No.
She is Gandhara Grave Culture.
Not Swat — but the true cradle:
the Indo-Iranian earth where chariots bowed to her stillness,
and her bones mingled with the sacred.
Now she is called Kurdish,
but the maps do not speak her name.
The Turk carries Sintashta in ignorance.
The Kurdish woman remembers Gandhara in defiance.
Tell them:
The Turk is Sintashta.
The Kurd is born of BMAC.
And the Kurdish woman — she is not Maykop.
She is Gandhara Grave Culture.
She is the remembered flame.