To Jody;
My five years old friend and nephew
I put down the telephone,
entering a nap of elation,
till the echo of your sweet utterance
On the back of expatriation's wind
Swims away, dims.
By then, medusas of melancholy with their thick sorrow
fill up my throat
and my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…
With good and bad big wolves
tracing lost children or stuffing shaking goat kids into their paunch.
With ravenous bears, malignant hyenas
and crude giants,
garrulous gracious squirrels, laborious ants
and active voracious hares.
With them, the two of us
had upholstered the land and sky of the wonderland,
and with their voices and whoops all,
we had irritated the dreamland's walls.
No matter how many times
we were building the villages for stories of straw, furze sticks and bricks,
I would only visit your house of mattresses and pillows.
Only for you,
I did revived the dead wolf
in order to revenge the "predatory" lumberjack.
With no regret I kept sending "wolfy" to the roasted chicken's shop
to defeat the hunger,
So that he won't eat the trapped little girl.
And before your smile,
the wolf in walrus moustache would play with the girl till daddy comes and takes her home.
And you are …
popping out, never closing the wide eyes of yours,
waiting for grandpa to take us to the village.
Up from the houses' roofs,
with Qarmeetlak's1 rabbits,
beyond the barbwires and in secret,
we stick the tongues out to the Turkish barracks.
Along with goat kids,
in tracking smugglers' traces,
we fool the landmines,
sneak to the other side of the border.
With smiley faces and hidden bleats,
We ****** the poppies and the grass that grow out from the edges of spring and the craters.
We hide from smuggler's ghosts who
in the labyrinths of landmines
because of the unclaimed hands and legs are grabbing the collars.
We taunt the jackals' yowling and the patrolmen.
And in front of the rumbling sky, we do our best to look prettier;
Isn't it "God taking photos of us"?
And like coward puppies we flee and go back to the safe village,
just before the dusk's winds could carry our smell to the angry spirit of Salan2
who is scouring the Kurmanj's Mountain3,
pursuing his endless vengeances.
Till the break of day,
with your slim clever squirreliness,
out of the branches of the most interlocked sorrowful stories,
you were shaking the attached laughs and guffaws
on the hair of the deceiver Ashrafieh and the grumpy Sheikh Maksood's4 night.
Eventually, in taking its revenge,
the night would stuff you in a small basket and throw you away into the waves of sleep and dream
accompanied with all that eager to see the giants' kingdom and the mice's storehouses,
squirrels' village, their dances and bridals,
the departure will lead you to the waterfalls' cliffs of a dreamy sparrow's new day.
With the beaming love out from our eyes,
you dry up your tousled feathers and
take into the open.
Nevertheless, how simple-hearted the lies were when I kept telling you:
"Dog is a dog, a wolf is a wolf and the kitty is a kitty, and what are we, my Jody?
We are humans!"
I didn't want you to know
how in the world, could a dozen of
rabid armed dogs
smash down the door
and out from your eleven months old eyes,
with a persistent thronged barking,
they did take your dad away to the deepest liars of the ranch of malevolence,
introducing him to all kinds of animality.
How might I explained to you
why in the world, they reduced 'dad' for you
to that thing which every month
from behind a doubled bars
keep sending you a tearful laugh?
Why did they minimized the ancient capital for you into
both of the Political Security Branch and Siednaya's Jail5?
Your fingers had just started taking to writing and drawing.
You had just started
cantering your own stories
along with unsaddled breezes' foals
when herds of jackals with dark mouths
deported 'your Azad' into a fool refuge.
Again,
they
made
you
an orphan.
Inside the brushwood of the story and the wilderness of the epic,
since neither your fingers have become able to rise the sign of victory correctly,
nor could your throat match the letters of 'Kurdistan' properly,
whatever cave you step in,
no matter how shiny is the globe in the witch's hands,
she would never be able to tell you,
these lacrimatory mist and clouds,
with the emerging of every spring,
from which valleys of the ranch of malevolence
did they come to overflow the Kurdish neighborhoods.
How did they vilely with no permission go up to the third floor
in order to join you in a poisoned feverish soiree.
And since when
the creatures of darkness
that they had brought
have been grazing their hyenas
among our fresh hopes.
Hence…
when I tell you that
I'll come back with the snowfall,
it is nothing but a lie!
When you ask me to come back in summer
in order to hang on my back
and swim together
along with the little fishes,
such an imagination!
When you are not sleeping in my empty bed anymore
Intending to let my pillow and blanket await for
my return,
only a childish dream!!
Yet, when you
in the sweet and soft Afrini accent of yours
say to me
'Ozod, I mithed you thoo thoo thoo much',
my heart
would blindfolded fall on the knees and
die down…
Azad Ekkaş
Roni_alend@outlook.com
Erbil: 3-1-2011
1-The village that Jody's family decsends from. It is located on the very Syrian Turkish borders.
2- A traditional hero of the region.
3- Kurds in Afrin district in the remote north western corner of Syria call their region the Kurmanj's Mountain
4- The two largest Kurdish neighborhoods in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
5- The largest political and militaty prison in Syria where Jody's father was imprisoned. It is located in namesake town near to the Damascus.