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Roboski waits
5.1.2012
By The Zagrosian - Kurdistan |
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Women mourn for victims of a Turkish air raid, at
the cemetery of Gulyazi Village, Sirnak province,
near the Iraqi border, on December 30, 2011 Photo:
Getty.
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January
5, 2012
Last year concluded just a few days ago and probably
with a lot of joyous smiles on shining faces,
champagne-bottles waiting to be emptied, fireworks
in multitudes and some traditional new year promises
each and one of us silently utter in the cold, maybe
together with the loved ones, or even the one!
We are often frightened by the uncanny velocity with
which time flies. I mean, it has already been a
year. Can you imagine? This one long ride into a new
decade, now to an end! And yet, we often seem to
manage to do the things we all planned to do, at
their assigned times. The birthdays, the homework,
the dates, the job interviews, the Christmas
presents – as if life turned into a one high-speed
train we all have to jump on, before it vanishes
together with our dreams in the horizon. As they did
in Roboski.
No, we’d be giving the Turkish authorities way too
much credit if there’d be any high-speed trains in a
Kurdish village such as Roboski, in the poor Kurdish
region of Turkey. The only glimpse of advanced
technology Turkey gave to the villagers was the fast
F-16 planes that dropped death upon defenseless
villagers, who saw their own children’s corpses
burned beyond recognition.
38 young men
died in Roboski
a mere day ago, in the ages between 16 and 20. The
Turks claimed that a mistake must have been
committed in their otherwise so calculative
war-machine that currently violates their own
population in the south-east. The military has vowed
to investigate the matter and eventually find out
what and who was the cause of the supposed mistake.
As for the 38 burned bodies and the mothers who are
about to bury their own children, the investigation
means yet more time. More time to wait, more years
to see pass, more visits from the military, more
violations and more oppression. They are quite used
to waiting – the wars, rebellions and oppression are
soon going to have their 100-year anniversary as the
Turkish republic will celebrate the founding of the
state a century ago. When it comes to patience the
Kurds are not only suggested to wait,www.ekurd.net
but patience has become a defining element of what
makes you a Kurd. You have to wait. You need to
wait. You cannot do much else besides waiting.
Because you are not in power of your own destiny,
nor can you even dream of the power to make your son
stop burning or blow life into the napalm-covered
body of his. Time is therefore your sole companion
when you wait for justice that never comes, when you
wait for others to act, to see, to protest, to do a
little more than squeeze in a sigh of frustration in
their schedule before continuing to watch Scrubs on
the TV.
Time is everything for the villagers. For Roboski.
As life left the bodies of the 38 youngsters, as
Turkish warplanes dropped the bombs, big bundles of
time fell upon the heads of the mothers – who had no
choice but to pick them up and accept them into
their frail, tiresome lives. It was wrong, it should
have been the other way around! the mother might
yell. Why give the parents all the time, the time
that was denied our own children? What of those
60-70 years every young man had left? What about
those few days before New Year’s Eve? Couldn’t you
have waited for just a few more days?!
But the war-machine never waits – that is what the
victims do.
Your year may have been quite a short one. So has
mine. And yeah, it truly is amazing how fast time
flies for some of us. The lucky few of us. Those of
us who weren’t in Roboski who aren’t in Kurdistan,
who can set the sky aflame when we enter 2012 while
others sink down their kids into early graves
beneath snow-covered, bloodied earth.
Let 2012 be a year where we, the lucky few, take
time off the shoulders of the many, so that their
years can fly as fast as our own, so that they won’t
have to wait. Let us become their sons and
daughters, helpers in need, providers in distress,
supporters in mourning and fellow humans in this
world and the next.
Let us help Roboski and Kurdistan, readers. For they
are waiting.
Copyright © 2012, respective author or news agency,
mideastyouth.com
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