They Don’t Want Me to Speak About the Fulani
They don’t want me
—a Kurd—
to speak of the Fulani.
They squirm when I say their name,
as if I’ve opened a window
to a world they’ve boarded shut.
They want me to speak only of my pain—
and keep it local.
Stay in my tragedy.
Be a good minority
with neatly drawn borders of grief.
But I see the Fulani,
and I won’t look away.
I see how they are hunted,
how their herds are pushed off the earth
that once knew only their footsteps.
I see how they’re branded
with the word “terrorist”
by those who don’t know their songs
or the shape of their silence.
I see how West Africa
erases them with a soft hand,
while Europe watches
and says nothing—
because it’s not trending.
And I know who’s watching me too.
The Sub-Saharans
who say: “This is not your place.”
But I say it clearly:
you will not silence me.
You will not tell me
who deserves my voice
and who doesn’t.
I am not your invention.
I am not the Ust’-Ishim man
with Sub-Saharan ancestry
and ancient ancestral South Indian roots.
Do not use ancient ghosts
to stitch together false sameness.
My people were born in mountains,
not jungles, not river deltas.
We bled into rocks —
not empire narratives.
I am Kurdish.
And I know
what it means to be spoken over,
to be claimed and rejected
in the same breath.
Maybe they fear
a Kurd speaking for the Fulani
because it breaks their lie:
that each of us must suffer alone.
That we have no common thread.
But we do.
We are the unclaimed.
The uninvited.
The unbroken.
And when we speak for each other—
they shake.
So yes, I will speak of the Fulani.
And no,
you will not silence me.