They told me straight:
You are not German.
An Arab-Turk voice,
cutting, dismissing,
as if my life was a misprint.
Then my passport —
the German passport —
was thrown away,
pages torn like silence,
so I would not belong here,
so I would not speak.
They said:
You are not German,
you will never be German.
Your place is Africa now,
not Kurdistan,
not here.
But we did not marry Kurds
a thousand years ago —
we have always been Kurdish.
No empire signed us into being.
No border stamped us into life.
As if I could be remade
by their cruelty,
as if fire changes its nature
when you try to smother it.
But I am not their word,
I am not their exile.
Even without a passport,
I carry a homeland in my blood,
I carry mountains in my veins.
You cannot silence Kurdistan.
You cannot redraw me
into Africa, Germany, or nothing.
I am what I have always been:
Kurdish, unbroken, alive.