Ahmed Arif

International Journal of Kurdish Studies, Jan, 2004

He was born in 1927 in Diyarbekir, the capital of North Kurdistan, one year after the Sheikh Saeed rebellion. By the time Arif began his studies at the Language and History Faculty of the University of Ankara, some 20 Kurdish revolts had been suppressed and thousands of Kurdish homes destroyed. Several million Kurds had been forcibly resettled in western Anatolia. Kurdish language and literature, even the words 'Kurd' and 'Kurdistan' were legally banned. Shorn of identity, Kurds were denigrated as 'Mountain Turks.' While in university, Arif was arrested for violating Turkish Penal Code, Article 141. Tortured, he suffered a nervous breakdown. After serving two years in prison, he settled in Ankara where he worked as a journalist for a number of newspapers. He died in 1991 leaving a far-reaching legacy.

In 1968, his book, I've worn out fetters for want of you, established him as an acclaimed poet and thinker. By then the description 'Mountain Turks' was giving way to a new epithet in some Turkish circles: 'the Turks who have not yet seen the sea.' Hence Arif dedicated his poetry to "the children who have not yet seen the sea."

His poem "33 bullets" is an elegy to 33 innocent Kurds picked up from their village, taken to Kupur creek on the border with Iran, and machine gunned on the orders of General Mustafa Muglali in July 1943 for having "connections" with people on the other side. The 33 belonged to the Milan tribe, which had been split by the political border between Turkey and Iran.

One Kurd survived and managed to reach relatives on the Iranian side of the border. In 1956 General Muglali was tried and found guilty of murdering 32 citizens. He was initially sentenced to death, but the sentence was reduced to 20 years. He died before it could be carried out. All others involved in the incident were acquitted. Turkish sociologist Dr Ismail Besikci noted that subsequently when Kurdish boys and girls were being tortured, or threatened with torture, they would recite "33 bullets".

A twist of irony: Arif's poetry was published in 1978 in The Penguin Book of "Turkish Verse."

NOTES FROM THE DIYARBAKIR FORTRESS

I.

I can't bring myself;
When I can't resist her quinces or pomegranates
I bend my head
And Walk away.
Nothing that wolves or birds can know.
Do not ask anything,
At all ...
Let the dark decrees be sent to the roads,
Neighbors' gardens are all in ruins.
The fetlock draws blood.
After all what I have is a pinch of life,
All I can offer to this terror
By dying ...
My hand is empty
My foot in a noose.
Only I know
What bitch of a beauty I loved.
And she has a mouth but no tongue--
The Fortress of Diyarbakir ...

II.

The fertile plants bloom,
Blood red.
It snows on the other side.
The Black Mountain rocks
The Zozan rocks ...
Look, my whiskers are frozen,
And I am cold
And the ice has grown longer and longer
And I'm thinking of you, as though you were spring,
Of you, as though you were Diyarbakir,
To what, to what isn't it superior
The taste of thinking of you ...

III.

The water of Hamravat has frozen
The ice is four fingers thick on the Tigris
We draw water from the well as best we can
We make our tea from the snow
My mother hides her sciatica like a secret.
"Think of the wind," she sings, "and spring is over."
My sister is bearing a child,
She's very pretty,
You know her-
Her first. On the one hand,
She hides herself,
Ashamed.
While she's afraid of my dying.
Baby, where shall we hide you?
He is welcome
Right welcome
Ahmet Arif's nephew ...

IV.

You were born
We kept you hungry
For three days
We didn't give you your mother's nipples
Baby Adilosh
So you won't be sick
Because this is our custom.
Now attack the nipples, Attack and grow ...

These are
The rattlesnakes and scorpions
These have
Their eyes on our bread and food
Know them
Know them and grow
This is honor
Etched in our names
And this is patience
Seeped from oleanders
Grasp them
Grasp them and grow ...

33 BULLETS

I.

This is the Mengene mountain
When dawn creeps up at the lake Van
This is the child of Nimrod
When dawn creeps up against the Nimrod
One side of you is avalanches, the Caucasian sky
The other side a rug, Persia
At mountain tops glaciers, in bunches
Fugitive pigeons at water-pools
And herds of deer
And partridge flocks ...
Their courage cannot be denied
In one-to-one fights they are unbeaten
These thousand years, the servants of this area
Come, how shall we give the news?
This is not a flock of cranes
Nor a constellation in the sky
But a heart with thirty-three bullets
Thirty-three rivers of blood
Not flowing
All calmed to a lake on this mountain

II.

A rabbit came up from the foot of the hill
Its back is motley
Its belly milk-white
A mountain rabbit, pregnant, lost up here
Its heart heaved to its mouth, poor thing
It can draw repentance from man.
The hour was solitary, a solitary time
It was faultless, naked dawn

One of the thirty-three looked
In his body the heavy void of hunger
Hair and beard all tangled
Lice on his collar
He looked, and his arms were wounded
This lad with hellion heart
Looked once at the rabbit
Then looked behind
His delicate carbine came to his mind
Sulking under his pillow
Then came the young mare he brought from the plain of Harran
Her mane blue-beaded
A blaze on her forehead
Three fetlocks white
Her cantering easy and generous
His chestnut mare
How they had flown in front of Hozat!

If he were not now
Helpless and tied like this
The cold barrel of a gun behind him
He could have hidden on these heights
These mountains, the friendly mountains, know your worth
Thank God, my hands will not put me to shame
These hands that can flick off with the first shot
The burning tobacco ash
Or the tongue of the viper
Sparkling in the sun
These eyes were not duped even once
By the ravines waiting for avalanches
By the soft, snowy betrayal of cliffs
These knowing eyes
No use
He was going to be shot
The order was final
Now the blind reptiles will devour his eyes
The vultures his heart.

III.

In a solitary corner of the mountains
At the hour of morning prayer
I lie stretched
Long, bloody ...

I have been shot
My dreams are darker than night
No one can find a good omen in them
My life gone before its time
I cannot put it into words
A pasha sends a coded message
And I am shot, without inquest, without judgment

Kinsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth ...

IV.

They applied the decree of death
They stained
The half-awakened wind of dawn
And the blue mist of the Nimrod
In blood

They stacked their guns there
Searched us
Feeling our corpses
They took away
My red sash of Kermanshah weave
My prayer beads and tobacco pouch
And left
Those were all gifts to me from friends
All from the Persian lands

We are guardians, relatives, tied by blood
We exchange with families
Across the river
Our daughters, these many centuries
We are neighbors
Shoulder to shoulder
Our chickens mingle together
Not out of ignorance
But poverty
We never got used to passports

This is the guilt that kills us
We end up
Being called
Bandits
Killers
Traitors ...

Kinsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth

V.

Shoot, bastards
Shoot me
I do not die easily
I am live under the ashes
I have words buried in my belly
For those who understand
My father gave his eyes on the Urfa front
And gave his three brothers

Three young cypresses
Three chunks of mountain without their share of life
And when friends, guardians, kin
Met the French bullets
Out of towers, hills, minarets

My young uncle Nazif
His moustache still new
Handsome
Light
Good horseman
Shoot, brothers, he said
Shoot
This is the day of honour
And reared his horse ...

Kinsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth ...