“On April 1, 1995, I travelled to the Middle East as an assistant to a German cameraman for an interview with Abdullah Öcalan. I got to know the guerrilla fighters in the central party school of the PKK better during the interview. After this interview with Abdullah Öcalan, which is also my first meaningful work, I decided not to return and to continue my life's journey here. Since then, my life has been taking place in the mountains of Kurdistan, together with the Kurdish freedom fighters.”
The path is the place where we begin to get to know ourselves and our counterpart. For this we only need to have made the decision once to set out and take the first step. We only have to have the courage to look at the path once. We must have dreamed only once of leaving the place of which we are prisoners. Just once the euphoria of finding something new, of discovering something new, must fill our inner being. Just once we have to make the decision to search for ourselves and set off…
Then the path will spread out before us with all its goodness. The path is always open to everyone. It may even be the only place on earth that awaits us all with open arms and leads human beings to themselves.
Is there anything more beautiful than self-discovery? Is the human being itself not the most beautiful gemstone on earth? And is not the most beautiful journey of our life the journey to ourselves? So far we have not really moved forward at all. The paths we have taken in the concrete cities, which always lead back to the beginning, are not ours. Not one of these paths has led us to ourselves. We have always looked at these cities, which do not belong to us, from a distance. We have always been strangers. If we stand in the evening at the same door from which we stepped in the morning, it means that we have not made any progress.
The first thing a guerrilla new to the mountains experiences is the pain of running. Every single step drives unbearable pain into our whole body. We then wonder why our feet are so powerless. Only then do we realize that the concrete roads have deceived us.
In our first days in the mountains our feet, shoulders and arms get to know an unbearable pain. With every step we take, our whole body writhes in pain. We then believe that we will never get rid of this pain. We turn our eyes to the mountain ranges ahead of us and almost lose hope. On these paths, all the loads that do not belong to us evaporate. Step by step our masks fall off and stay behind on the paths we walk. Step by step we leave behind on the slopes of the mountains the life that has been imposed on us for thousands of years.
While we can march on the paths of the mountains, we feel our body leaving us limb by limb. We feel the shell that holds body and soul crumble. This pain is unbearable. We feel ourselves distancing. We feel that we are leaving something behind. That is our dissolution.
We walk and walk and feel that we are approaching something. We can feel body and soul growing. That is our emergence. As something is dissolving from our body and from our mind, something new is being added. Our feet bump into rock and stone and bleed. Our clothes cling to bushes and tear. Hands and face hurt themselves on thorny herbs. Tiredness overflows our entire body. In those moments when we believe everything is over, our comrades give us support.
Then, in the middle of the darkness, someone holds our hand and pulls us slowly behind him/her. Another shares his/her bread, gives a sip of water. Our path takes us to a river. Everyone jumps to the other side. But we don't make it. We don't dare, we don't trust our feet. Then the friends on the other side of the river stretch out their arms and call out to us. We pause for a moment, gather all our strength, take a deep breath and then jump. We are already on the other bank. We dared to jump! Who would have believed it! As we continue walking, we feel a change in our feet.
They start to find their way by themselves in dark nights. We can't believe it. Are these our feet? From now on our eyes see everything, our ears hear every sound. After our body, our heart begins to change. Also our desires, our dreams change. We see our own dreams now. We can really feel body and soul. Now we are ourselves! Our soul has left its shell. Our body has freed itself from its chains. Our dreams belong to us. And the path we walk is ours. It will lead us to new horizons.
As we walk along the paths of the mountains with excitement, we see horizons that we have never seen, never could have seen on the streets between concrete buildings. This is the moment when we realize that the horizon is not a line in the distance.
The higher we climb, the more we realize that the horizon is never the same and always waiting to be discovered. Every mountain we climb offers us a different horizon. In the mountains every sunset is unique. No day is like the other and ends like no other. Nothing is repeated here. Because we have discovered that behind every mountain we climb there is a different horizon.
For us Kurds, walking and moving is something new that we are learning. We learn to build up distances and take steps forward. For the first time we try to open new ways and to move forward on our own way. After thousands of years of walking through the streets of civilization, we leave their labyrinths for the first time. For the first time we escape from our labyrinths and look to our own horizon. This our own way, our attitude and our view of life is something we no longer give away after all we have experienced…
Şehîd Halil Dağ, guerilla, filmmaker, journalist
1973-2008
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