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The Fleeing Garden: Kurdish exiled voices
15.3.2006
By Bianca Brigitte Bonomi
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UK,
March 15. 2006, -- The organisation Exiled Writers
Ink has published a collection of poems and stories
by Kurdish writers living in England. The anthology,
entitled The Fleeing Garden: Kurdish Exiled Voices
brings together writers from a variety of Kurdish
backgrounds, and platforms the work of both
established and aspiring poets.
The variety of subjects explored in the anthology,
which derives its title from Kareem Omar's opening
poem, reflects both the range of regions and
countries drawn from and the individual concerns of
the poets. The process and reality of exile is
succinctly, yet powerfully conveyed in Huriye Gunes'
'Arrival': 'Our journey took 24 hours./ When we
arrived/ we had left behind/ our childhood and a
wonderland.' Within just four lines, the poet
captures the transient nature of a life in exile.
The duration of a day marks the dawn of adulthood
and an irretrievable loss so that the break with the
past becomes a break with the self. This is also
evident in the prose piece 'Leaving', by Sevar
Mohammed Najat, in which the speaker flees his
village to escape the war and the reminders of death
and battle embedded in the environment. Yet he
admits paradoxically that 'I am leaving my beloved
home to bid the perpetual reminder of death
farewell, but either way, I will die as I leave'.
In the beautifully poignant 'Promenade', by Hiwa
Reza, the mountains bear the scars of brutality,
with war wounds manifesting themselves in the form
of 'holes made by freshly exploded mines', whilst
the loss associated with exile is similarly
reflected in the destruction and decomposition of
the man-made environment, lined with 'Burned
houses'. T
his visual mark of domestic degeneration finds an
even greater symbolism within the human. The
barrenness extends to the body, with natural
processes becoming disabled, so that the self
becomes a reflection of the environment and the
speaker is left, 'Crying without tears/ The dried
oceans'. The exiled man, like the charred and
blistered houses, is reduced to a dry husk, an empty
shell, becoming little more than 'An ex-man, a
zombie'.
Poems are interwoven with reminiscences of the
homeland, but are also laced with the bitter
realisation that for many exiles, the land of birth
will only ever be a distant memory. Sevar Mohammed
Najat explores the tension created by exile in 'Good
morning Kurdistan', in which the speaker repeatedly
salutes his homeland and its inhabitants, whilst
admitting that it is a 'land I'll never know'. The
final line, 'I say good morning to you/ like a
passer-by I don't quite know' elucidates the
alienation felt by the exile community, both a part
of, and a severed tie with, their native country.
The idea that Kurdistan is both anterior to the
speaker's present life and central to it is
suggested by the fact that the speaker salutes his
country like a 'passer-by', a mere acquaintance as
opposed to a true friend.
Uncertainty is a prevalent theme in many of the
poems, highlighted through the rhetorically titled
'Can We?', in which Huriya Gunes asks the collective
audience 'Can we leave the war behind?/ Can we?/
But/ How and why?' Similarly, in 'Walking', another
poem whose title refers to motion and instability,
Yasin Aziz explores 'the huge gap of boredom'
experienced by exiles in a foreign land and the
nameless speaker 'wonders, when, how, what is the
end.' The subject occupies a monotonous, dreary
world in which time is a seemingly endless expanse
which needs to be filled, but his torrent of
questions finds no resolution.
In 'Promenade', the audience is confronted by the
weight of the speaker's sadness and unsurety and the
poem is characterised by the exile's recognition
that his future is unknown and indefinite. The
desire to return to his homeland pervades his heart
as 'He flees his country/ Hoping to return/ One day
certainly', but this firm conviction is swiftly and
deftly replaced by mere possibility, 'One day,
maybe'. The undercutting of the former statement
with the harsh reality of the latter recalls
Voltaire's recognition that whilst 'doubt is not a
pleasant mental state, certainty is a ridiculous
one', a truth which is demonstrated by many of the
poets.
Reza similarly exposes the exile's lack of certainty
when he abandons his homeland through the use of the
unanswered question '(For how long?)', placed in
parenthesis to emphasise its status as an aside; a
question that torments the mind but one that cannot
be resolved, a question which will one day become a
sheer memory itself. The landscape, those
'magnificent mountains of Kurdistan', drifts into
the realms of memory, becoming a 'Mountain of
souvenirs', before transforming into a metaphorical
'mountain of questions/ Of unknowns', a peak of
uncertainty which cannot be crossed. The final line
of the poem highlights the exile's need to cling to
hope in an increasingly uncertain world, hoping that
the future will bring 'maybe at last/ A free land'.
The possibility of one day achieving peace and
freedom through violent resistance is explored in
'Last night the rain' by Sevar Mohammed Najat, a
poem which highlights the exile's continuing
preoccupation with his homeland. In the poem, the
speaker addresses the rain, who tells him of the
death and sadness that he has witnessed.
He reveals that if the 'peshmergas' could see the
land that they had struggled for, 'they would think
their death and pain were all in vain.' The poem
ends with the statement that 'hypocrites live the
longest lives/ and true men lay waiting in their
cold graves' in which the simplicity of the rhyming
couplets used throughout the poem is briefly broken,
serving as an uncomfortable reminder of lost
potential and of the difficulty in achieving peace.
In 'Instructions', Huriye Gunes promotes forgiveness
by issuing the reader with a series of orders that
contravene the notion of the honour killing. The
speaker anticipates his own death by begging for his
killer not to be harmed because 'he is the one who
has been cheated/ told what to do, say and think',
requiring the audience to treat the murderer not
with hate, but with pity.
From the deceptive simplicity of Huriye Gunes' 'My
Sister', to the political embroil of Awat Namiq
Agha's 'Prepare for darkness', the anthology
captures a sense of exile in all its manifestations.
Throughout, the creative expression of refugees and
of exiled writers is used to encourage
cross-cultural dialogue and the result is an
anthology which combines social and historical
relevance with literary merit.
www.irr.org.uk
'The Fleeing Garden: Kurdish Exiled Voices'
Edited by Choman Hardi
A booklet of literature containing prose and poetry
by established and new Kurdish writers.
Available from Exiled Writers Ink: £3-90 to include
p&p
Published 2006 by Exiled Writers Ink
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