I received a note from a dear Argentinean friend who
had read my last poem “The Walls of Leyla” (https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-walls-of-layla.html)
He wrote:
“Indeed, Romeo and Juliette have existed through
Majnun and Leyla centuries before Shakespeare wrote his version of that love story.
But have you read “Dylana and Diram” by Saleem Barakat? It is the Kurdish
version of Leyla and Juliette, Romeo and Majnun. I know years ago we had talked
about your love of his writing style.”
Ha! “Years ago” was 1974, almost 45 years before we
started our journey around the planet. In those years we were stuck in a city
in war, with little electricity, dirty shelters, and uncertain future. During
those days in Beirut, I read most of the days, any book that I could find in
languages I knew.
And it was in 1976 when I read Saleem Barakat’s “The
Iron Grasshopper” (Al-Jundab al-Hadidi) about
the life of a Kurdish boy in Syria. The subtitle of the first section of the
book read “"The unfinished memoir of a child who never saw anything but
a fugitive land" which I understood well sitting in a shelter when bombs
were falling in the neighborhood.
… Barakat is a Syrian-Kurdish writer born in
Quamishli, where there used to be a sizable Armenian community. Many of my
friends were also born in Quamishli and eventually became citizens of countries
expanding from Australia to Europe and the Americas. We stayed in touch, sometimes
because of serendipity. It was one of these friends who after hearing from me
that I had indeed read extracts of Dylana and Diram, sent me Barakat’s “The Iron Grasshopper” this time in a French
translation “Le Criquet de Fer”
published in 1993.
“See if upon re-reading you will see what has
changed in you in 50 years, and what has not.”
So I did.
… I do not speak nor understand Kurdish, but I have
heard a lot of Kurdish in the streets growing up. I know a few words and a
sentence or two. So, as I was reading “Le Criquet de Fer”, the word “Azad” kept
on returning with resonance from my memories. It means “Free” in Armenian and Kurdish, but
was not sure if it was also used as such in other languages.
So, I Goggled!
Well, Azad is used both as a masculine name meaning “free
man” and a word meaning “free” in Asia Minor cultures such as Iranian, Turkish,
Armenian and Kurdish, but also in Hindi. Perhaps of the Silk and Spice Roads?
It is delightful that freedom, a concept and goal
shaping human cultures is also defined by the same word in so many cultures.
So I decided to research if the two other pan-human
concepts and aspirations also have common terminology. I chose “love” and “beauty”
for the languages which used Azad as
a common word.
Here is what I found:
A.
Love
In Armenian it is Ser
In Kurdish it is Evîn
In Hindi it is Mohabbat
In Turkish it is Aşk
In Iranian/Farsi it is Mehr
B.
Beauty
In Armenian it is Keghetsgoutyoun
In Kurdish it is çelengî
In Hindi it is sundarata
In Turkish it is güzellik
In Iranian it is Iranian/Farsi is Jamal
Maslow
and the hierarchy of human needs: When we mention
needs, in most parts of the world those who have taken a class of psychology
will bring Abraham Maslow’s pyramid to the discussion. Yes, that pyramid has
made us believe that we have a hierarchy that needs to be fulfilled stepwise in
order for us to find comfort, happiness, love and success in life.
Interestingly, in the original version of the famous Maslow-pyramid freedom is
a ‘luxury’ or meta-motivational need that comes after all other needs such as
food, security and shelter are fulfilled.
Today I am thinking about the work of Barakat, one
of the most prolific Syrian – Kurdish writers of the century. His name in
Kurdish is Bereket meaning good fortune. He has made Stockholm, Sweden, his
home since 1999 but all his writings, in original Arabic, are about the part of
the world where the word for freedom is the same but not the words for beauty
and love.
I am not sure how Maslow’s pyramid explains the
power of Barakat’s writing echoing the centuries-old sorrow and hopes of 35
million Kurds, the largest cultural group without a country of their own. Kurds speak their language in parts of Iraq,
Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan
and Afghanistan.
For them, freedom may not be a luxury.
…And, 45 years after reading his first autobiography
while in a Beirut shelter during the civil war of the 1970s, I cannot but wonder
if indeed Maslow had underestimated the desire of humans to place freedom atop
the list of their needs, surpassing hunger and shelter.
After all, a hungry but free man is more at peace
with destiny than is a man enslaved to material or non-spiritual desires.
Unless of course one has to cherish Shakespeare’s
Sonnet 57 where he writes:
Being
your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon
the hours and times of your desire?
I
have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor
services to do, till you require.
Somehow I know that Saleem Barakat never used this
Sonnet for inspiration….
November 27, 2018
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018
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