Stateless
Stateless Patriotism
It is easy to mock flags
when your name already fits the map.
Easy to preach “post-national” virtue
from a body never questioned.
They tell us:
Be human first.
As if we were not human
while our language was beaten out of us.
As if humanity was ever offered
without conditions.
They say:
Forget identity.
But identity was never a hobby for us—
it was the only thing
they tried to erase.
When your mountains are renamed,
when your children learn silence early,
when your existence is debated
in foreign parliaments—
love becomes resistance.
Call it nationalism if you want.
For us it is memory refusing erasure.
It is carrying a homeland
in the mouth,
in the spine,
in the way the heart reacts
to forbidden songs.
We are not obsessed with flags.
We are obsessed with survival.
We do not worship borders—
we mourn the ones we were denied.
Those who already have a country
lecture us about universality.
Those who were never scattered
call us excessive.
They ask us to be human first,
but never ask why
we were treated as less than human
to begin with.
So yes—
to love Kurdistan fiercely,
to exist without apology,
to refuse dilution, silence, or correction—
that is not extremism.
That is breath.
And if others feel uncomfortable,
it is only because
they have never had to fight
just to name themselves.