CENTRAL NEWS
Now all the cliffs of Kurdistan are listening to the cries of a valiant. All the cliffs are pleading with the sound of Rüstem’s last bullet… A waterfall accelerates its flow, a cloud is brewing in the skies of Heftanin, a pure breed is galloping at full speed in the plains of Serekaniye and a hawk rises its wings from the cliffs … A hawk rises its wings from the summits of Xantur, his name is Rustem.
He didn’t become Rüstem just to get a name. He carried his name to be as warrior like Zaloğlu Rüstem, as wise and brave as Rüstem Cudi, his name is Rüstem.
If a baby who has just arrived in the world lives its entire life walking on the trails of the first whisper of his name; Rüstem followed the name that was whispered into his heart and went to the mountains.
How much time must one kill to be mountainous or from the mountains? How many memories should one collect in his saddlebag in order to have lived a mountain? Or, How big should a person grow and how strong must his knees be to understand the mountain?
Rüstem’s is a resistance that disrupts all the rules of the mountains, where every stereotype about the mountain is perhaps sett from the very beginning. Because when Rüstem was just a beautiful spring sapling he had not even left behind a year of walking these mountains, his beard had not sweated yet. And yet he rose to the sky. He carved his name into the book of legends with a resistance that surmounts his young body a thousand times.
He felt all past and future pain of his country on the edge of that cliff, he felt it in his heart. And he was not the only one. His mothers, ancestors, elders, and their predecessors sought refuge in the abyss, in order not to succumb to the cruelty of the tyrant, to be free for a moment rather than living a lifetime without honour.
Rüstem heard. He heard the cries of children, of the brave women and young men. He heard the cries of the elderly who were too wise and proud to surrender the memory of a history, to the hands of the unfriendly. Most of all, he heard the voices of his own comrades. He heard the shrieks of those who stood hand-to-hand on the edges of those majestic cliffs. He heard the echo of the guns as they bashed against the rocks, in the hands of women who were too brave to hand over any piece of their honour to the enemy. A young man, who was respected even by the enemy, heard the last slogans of those valiant who sung them as if they were folksongs.
Everything becomes more meaningful with sacrifice – it gains meaning with those who sacrifice themselves. What love can we speak of, if everything that fills the gaps in this infinite universe does not owe its existence to its own sacrificers? Yes, this time the mountain owed being a mountain to Rustem. Whatever the mysteries of resistance on those cliffs were, they owed Rüstem’s valiant heart.
Everyone spends their life somewhere. I laughed and cried with Rustem. I rose to Halay! I looked many, many times at the smile in your eyes. It’s like praying to God… Should we cry for him, be proud of him, how do we look at him, how to understand?
It is as if Rüstem collected the most glorious resistances of all time in his young heart. All the beauties of those who resisted have added a piece to him, otherwise to what historical flow could a heart only in its 20s owe so much beauty to…
Yes, I have never seen him, but my heart is warm as if I have known him for years. Every time I look at him, I feel ashamed of all my insufficient sides but strong enough to rip them all out in a blink. Because we were children of the same nation.
Just as his guerrilla comrades are proud to say “We are passengers of the same road, It is nice to have crossed the same path as him, what an honourable thing is to defend the same cause as you,” I say the same.
I say “it is my greatest honour to come from the same land as you and be the child of the same people!”
AMARGI ARHAT BA
