From the pen of sehid Xelil Dag:
“I set out on this journey for the beauty of Kurdistan. I was going to collect those endless beauties with my camera. I was going to climb all of the mountains where the the guerrilla lives, and smell all the flowers that they smell; and my weapon would be the last thing I was going to use.
I think about the other reason why I transitioned to the North; this reason is a far more important one, one that I shared with very few people. I wanted to be in the middle of the war. My dream is to complete the rest of my life nowhere other than on the soil of the North. I wanted to be not in the corner or the outskirts, but in the center of this vicious war that is being imposed on the people; on the people of a man who is trying to be poisoned in the middle of the seas. And that’s why I gathered all of my supplies and headed to the roads of the North, even if I can’t do anything, I will at least walk in the footsteps of the guerilla … The most intrinsic and most hidden cause of my journey was to be renewed. I didn’t know how it would happen, but I knew that I had to renew myself, to give form to my thoughts and feelings; I had a very strong feeling that this journey crossed through this land. I can’t stand for anything to be worn out. I always want to feel the first moment of the excitement in my heart, to be able to constantly relive it. I am one of those people who believe that the heart and body must be renewed, even if it is at the cost of our lives. I’ve lived a life on these mountains. Even if it may not be very successful, I believe I’m now clean. I have never felt distance on these mountains, not with the comrades I had acquired, neither mentally nor spiritly. My surname ’Uysal’ became Dag. A name that just became, and although I didn’t deserve this name, I did everything I could to be worthy. The only thing that I bought to these mountains was my body, but this is incomparable to what I got from the mountains. I matured on these mountains. Not as a spectator, I took part with my whole being. I can give you the example of the film Beritan, which describes betrayal in Kurdish history, it teaches us about love, and demonstrates resistance. I’ve lived these experiences first hand. I have witnessed betrayal. I stayed with the people who resisted. I met friends who had combined their feelings love with their countries. I became a part of this life. In short, I am a part of this story.I started swimming towards the deep end. Instead of fluttering and struggling on the surface, I took strokes to the most fierce regions of the war, directly to its heart. I wanted to experience the hardest, the most unbearable, the most brutal.Only then, I could find myself deep in the depths of this world. I had to drown, to vanish. I should have been wiped out in this people’s army. There shouldn’t be a trace left of me. And from the depths, when I climbed up from the bottoms, I had to have been cleansed from my dirt, as one who has recreated themselves. This was my only aim in the mountains. Seeing as I had gone up these mountains, I had to have been mountainous; just as I came to the guerrilla, I had to have been a guerrilla.
Not on the outskirts,
Nor the corners,
I had to be right in the middle of the war; in the middle of the mountain, of pain, of joy, of difficulty and of love. Not wandering around the corners but directly in the middle.
On these mountains,
If there is going to be life, it must be like this. And if there is going to be death, it must be like this.”
