I grew amid revolts, screams, and the smell of gunpowder. I grew up with the scent of an ancient land that is forbidden. I tried to grow.
My country is divided into four parts, and I am only one. I’m looking for my missing pieces in my powder-smelling soil. In my disintegrating country, the ground smells of gunpowder. I never knew the real smell of earth because my land is geography where massacres, genocides and gunfire never stopped.
My toys were empty bullet casings and pieces of bombs thrown to murder me. In my dreams, I was creating new lives out of the missiles and bombs were thrown for my assassination. I was a kid, and I was just a part of my country. I was as close as I was far from other parts of my crumbling country.
In my country, they say children do not grow. Yes, children do not grow up in the other parts of my country too. They’re not allowed to grow. That’s why we never grew up, and we always remained children.
As Kurdish children, we never met the phenomenon of the future. The more I imagined growing up, the more I’d get shot. I was on the eve of rebellions crying and screaming. The executioners were at work, and I opened my eyes on a morning when they would not let us grow again.
Today, October 9, I am standing face to face with the executioners who came to massacre my people. The sky would leave its blueness to the greys at first, and then the blacks. Smoke, screams, the sounds of the executioners reciting “Allahu Akbar.” The sky smelled as dark as the permit to slaughter the Kurds.
I never thought that from the sound of carnage the executioners would tear my body apart. I am 13 years old playing in a neighbourhood of Serekaniyê. I was slaughtered with a bomb called phosphorus by Turkish executioners. My body was on fire like my country. I was burning. I was burning like my country, and my screams were rising.
I heard Sara’s screams from Qamishlo while my cries were rising. She was screaming to the world that she couldn’t play again. Sara’s scream wasn’t because she lost her foot; the executioners had killed Muhammad. He was a child. As I was burning, I burnt like my country, and Muhammad and dozens of other Muhammads who had been slaughtered.
And then we were massacred again. Because we are Kurdish, our murder is halal according to the executioners of the Turkish state.
Our slaughter warrant was already approved. Like Cemile, who was put in a freezer in Cizre, Uğur Kaymaz, who was shot 13 times in his body, like the dismemberment of Ceylan’s hopeful gaze, I was going to be smashed by the executioners. Maybe even soil would not be thrown on me. Possibly my laments would not fit in my coffin.
There was no Apple Smell like Halabja, but I was slaughtered. My body was burning in the fire of hell. As my shouts rose as high as the executioner’s throne, I was beginning to ask, does God always treat Kurdish children cruelly?
I am the truth in the massacre of the Kurdish people. Even though our small bodies were torn apart, we vowed to grow and fill our missing pieces.
Sara Gulan
