A peshmerga's love

on the train (picture by- SA)

I'm on the train... but no I am not writing on some fancy iWhatEver (iPad?!). I'm writing with a pen in my diary... which happens to be on paper. On this long journeyI have been reading Jean Sasson's book "Love in a Torn Land" after my Indian sister (we're a long story, but we met on mandalawi.blogpost long ago and have become pen-pals since) recommended it. 

Today, during this train journey I reached a page where Sarabast (a Peshmerga) writes to a Kurdish girl in Baghdad, in one of the love letters he writes:

"You are crushing my heart with your silence

Don’t be silent.

Don’t be cruel.

You are in every page I turn

In every word I write

All the birds here chant your name…"

In a second letter he writes…

"Dearest Joanna,

If sadness had sizes, I would wake up every day to a mountain of sadness.

If yearning had language and tunes, you would hear symphonies.

I know no geography except that towards the south. From the mountain top my vision is as clear as that of Zarqa Al-Yamara, and it pierces the distances towards Baghdad's gates to your window.

The north asks the south about you, the mountain tops ask Baghdad's buildings about you,

The pecan trees ask the palm trees about you,

But there is no answer.

I cover distances,

I go over mountains looking for one word of you,

But words are missing, and the distances are killing me.

Tell me how to reach the road to your heart,

Give me a sign, and I will be there.

I am ready to travel to you; only give me a sign,

And I will come to you. I do not want to lie to you,

But I mean it when I say I will sacrifice my life for you

Sarbast"

This is one of the many Peshmerga love stories I have read. Back home I often look through what is left of my own parent's letters (Sadly bags of notebooks and diaries were lost as they fled) the tragedy is my father's writing is too neat, beautiful  and the language is so poetic that I can't read it; mum's writing is so messy and quickly written that half the letters aren't there and therefore, I also can't read them. But the point I am trying to make here, my dearest reader, is that the Peshmerga were not only fighters in the mountains with guns, but life and its experiences made them loyal lovers and fighters of love, it made them poets and writers, it made them look into the world in a different manner and appreciate the smallest but the greatest things in life.

Today, in Kurdistan this isn't always the case. Maybe I am mistaken, maybe there is but we don't hear of it or see it. But this Peshmerga powered love that endured and risked, that fought and suffered is often no longer there. [SA just took a picture of me, seeing me write she says: "You are talking to the birds again," I smile. Maybe she is right, maybe I am talking to the birds. At least the birds might understand what I'm trying to say.]

Where are the words written on paper?... in an envelope sealed with love that was passed from hand to hand, person to person till it landed in the hands of someone who would confidently say their happiest moment in life was while opening that letter? Where is the feeling of smelling the paper, observing the ink, the handwriting, and the tear drops that have dried on the paper? I wonder where that feeling is when trying to analyze the way every word was written. Where is the poetic words that reflect feelings and thoughts? Where is the suspense of waiting for weeks or months until the next letter is receive?d

Where is the feeling of ones fingers slowly touching every word on the paper….?

Peshmerga, a freedom fighter for his country by weapons and with the mountains. And a fighter for love by the pen, with his heart. 

My dearest reader, in my father's words "aaaaaaax how the times have changed" 

(I know there are many punctuation errors here. I have tried correcting my computer skills aren't helping. You need to forgive me because this was all hand written)