They say Sorani was planted,
a foreign seed in Kurdish earth,
but the roots were always here,
deep in Sulaimani,
woven through Kirkuk’s stones,
sung in Halabja’s winds.
It was not Sorani that arrived late,
it was others who were brought,
pushed into Kurdish fields
by rulers who feared our tongue,
by states that sought to erase
what could never be erased.
The dialect is not an implant,
it is the soil itself.
The implants were the strangers,
moved like pawns into our homes,
yet the language endured,
breathing still in the mountains,
unmoved, unbroken.