Only the Men
They said:
only the men are Kurdish,
their blood runs in lines of stone,
their names carved on mountains.
And the women?
They whispered:
not Kurdish,
as if the womb were foreign,
as if the songs she sings in the cradle
were borrowed from another tongue.
But the women carry the soil
in the hem of their skirts,
they braid rivers into their hair,
they are the memory before the battle,
the silence after the scream.
If only the men are Kurdish,
then who gave them their first word?
Who taught them the taste of bread,
the rhythm of the daf,
the sorrow of exile?
Tell me—
how can a people exist
if half of it is denied?
The mountains know the truth:
the women are Kurdish too.