A Woman Who Grew Up in the Zagros Mountains

This poem was written by Ruken Viyan Gever in tribute to comrade Emîne Erciyes, a vanguard PKK and PAJK militant and commander in the YJA-Star women‘s guerrilla forces, who was martyred in 2020 in the Medya Defence Zones.

Zagros…

It is not just a mountain range,

but an ember burning in the hearts of the people,

an ancient song whispered by history.

And within that song walks a woman…

Her steps race with the wind,

her gaze rooted beyond the horizon.

She is patient like earth,

fluid like water,

resolute like fire,

free like the wind.

When the Zagros Mountains embraced her,

it nurtured her like a secret. Because these mountains know women.

Because these mountains were the first place where the voices of women,

chained for centuries, echoed.

And that woman came to the mountains to break these chains one by one.

She was a Turkmen woman. But she was neither confined to ethnic

codes nor narrow nationalist minds.

She recreated herself in the shared pain and hopes of the peoples.

She became a sister in the honorable resistance of the Kurdish people,

a pioneer in the path of women‘s liberation,

a comrade in the mountains.

When she recognized Rêber Apo,

a light lit up in the dark tunnels of her mind.

She was no longer merely a seeker,

but a finder,

a transformer,

and a guide. She found new meaning on every slope of the Zagros.

She discovered not only the geography but also her own inner universe.

For her,

guerrilla life wasn‘t an escape,

it was a confrontation.

It was a rebellion.

It was a revolution of centuries-old repressed femininity, gender, effort, and consciousness.

And most of all,

she made this revolution by living it.

Those hands that quilted a comrade‘s back on the coldest mountain night.

They were the same hands that held the honor of a people in the hottest conflict.

Sometimes her voice became a song,

sometimes a slogan.

But always the voice of a life woven with resistance.

The flowers of the Zagros Mountain blossomed differently with her.

The rocks bore witness to her footprints.

And the wind still whispers her name in the morning mists:

“That woman passed through here...

Carrying freedom on her shoulders...“

Because she wasn‘t just a body.

She was an idea,

a soul,

a rebellion,

a love.

She was a woman who grew up in Zagros,

multiplied in Zagros,

became immortal in Zagros.