Kût

We kept silent, yet we were divided. Nothing was spoken. We went from our village Xalîqişlay toward Dîgor. The borders once traced by the Erez river between Turkey and Armenia had changed — this time the Arpaçay served as the border. From a distance the Armenian lands looked dark and barren; mountains and plains lay empty, no good spot could be found. The rivers that had become borders seemed as if miners had turned the earth over; the valleys lay thin and hollow.

On the banks of Erez, however, the Arpaçay remained untouched and pure, full of bird song and herds. Borders drawn by human hands always sadden me. I ask: what crime did the rivers and mountains commit that you lay hold of them, separating villages and towns and even the animals from each other?

A memory: when I was studying at the high school in Kars, in buses filled with cigarette smoke, did that longing for the borderlands coil around me like snakes on that day as well? I do not remember. I sat on the bus with my mother and father; my mother’s eyes were moist, my father full of longing. A lump formed in my throat — and over time that lump became everything to me: my worth, my book, my glasses, my bread — like green olives; the water slowly seeped into that wound.