The Monk Who Spoke in Kurdish
for Hieromonk Madai
He walked out of shadows
not to escape,
but to carry them.
His name, once written in Yazidi dust,
now echoed in incense smoke
on the walls of Orthodoxy.
They said a Kurd
could not hold a cross.
He lifted it anyway—
not as conquest,
but as memory.
In Moscow, he kneeled.
In Greece, he chanted.
And in Georgia,
he found a silence
ready to become song.
He did not burn his roots.
He translated them.
He clothed the Word
in Kurmanji and Sorani—
gave Christ the sound
of a mother tongue.
Not to betray his people,
but to remind them:
even the forgotten
can be sacred.
Even a Kurd
can hold the Body and Blood
without apology.
Even a land without priests
can raise a monk
who prays in two alphabets
and loves in one.