On Being a Loveable Kurd

Illustration: Cincinius — **Illustration:** Cincinius

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Translated by Anxious Madilicious

Bu yazıyı Türkçe okuyun

I grew up in a family who made their living from trading, living in a small Kurdish community that could not participate in the public sphere. My family was fighting to protect their Kurdish identity and their mother tongue in a Kemalist environment, so I was born into that struggle that aggregated all the experiences of my family and became a part of it. I unconsciously inherited the idea that I had to make myself lovable when dealing with the outside world. Although the signifier “outside world” refers to the reality outside, I use it to express the reality of exclusion which befalls every identity in Turkey outside Turkishness and Sunni Islam.

My family was very crowded and had a relatively higher socio-economic situation within their small Kurdish community. So as they grew in size, they finally took the decision to move when our house became unable to accommodate all of us. We found ourselves in a new neighbourhood, a new school, a new process of ‘integration’ and ‘accommodation’, and a familiar battle. Mashallah, we were making plenty of babies. My siblings were getting married one after the other, adding even more members to the family. When we moved to our new neighbourhood, we encountered the uncanny gaze of our neighbours. To them, we were some kind of Kurdish clan that settled right in the middle of the neighbourhood. My family and I were smiling bashfully all the time as if we were trying to prove that we were not a threat to those gazing eyes. In time, I realised that the women in the family (my mother, sisters, and sister-in-law) were bringing food to the neighbours. The empty plates would come back with praises and smiles. We were able to trade a plate of delicious food for a single smile.

My family was known to arrange regular mevlits/azaa (a traditional funerary rite, involving meeting in the house of the bereaved to pray, usually accompanied by food), inviting our relatives and Kurdish friends as well as the neighbours. Of course, the neighbours were attending the mevlits because they already knew about my family’s cooking. But this also allowed them to enter a household that they deemed to be dangerous. I think as they made their way in, they would recognize that we’re not a threat, as they would come back to our house again and again. They had to taste our food and cultivate a yearning for it, to realize that we were not dangerous. I guess it is essential to highlight two details at this point: my mother and the other women in my family did not cook Kurdish meals the traditional way by adding hot chillies into the pot while cooking. Instead our meals were generally accompanied by İzmir’s unique, long green peppers. This was an idiosyncratic conflation of Kurdish and Aegean cuisines. Instead of cooking the chillies with the food, we would spice the meal by eating them raw on the side. We would not offer green peppers to neighbours; it was solely a part of our eating practices. All the women in my family were known to be great cooks both in our Kurdish community and in the new neighbourhood.

Soon the neighbours started to visit us outside of the mevlits. Every time I saw them, they were always eating a local meal from our region. My folks seemed happy with this. I did not have much contact with these women. I would not talk to them, only running into them whenever I went into the kitchen to get myself something to eat. Whenever I came home from school, I would see them engaged in conversations about religion as they ate. They would also find women’s solidarity in these get-togethers. Despite all their differences, I saw them unite under their shared interest in religion and their experience of male violence.

In my middle school years, I heard one of the neighbours in our kitchen asking for money to help some children’s education expenses. It was the first time I had ever seen this woman. I asked her whether any of the money would reach Kurdish children who could not go to school because of poverty. All it took was a single look from my mother to shut me up. If it were up to me, I would never allow these women, to our home or to our kitchen. I would never let them taste our delicious food. I think the reason why I was able to become a rebellious Kurd unlike my mother and sisters, was due to the fact that I had a strong, supportive family behind me. My family, on the other hand, never had a support mechanism to make things easier for them. My rebellious stance, sets me apart from them in this regard. Ever since my childhood, I’ve never refrained from speaking out about the discrimination and hardships of the Kurdish experience. Although I profess that I am not as naive as my folks, that I do not strive to make myself loved by others, I acknowledge that I’ve experienced dimensions of their experiences, and I will most likely keep experiencing them.

As my folks were constantly trying hard to make others fall in love with our family and our identity, I used to come to blows with the Turkish kids at school. There were times I used to come home crying. Whenever I told my mother about it, I expected her to angrily rush to school and reprimand those kids. But she would always remind me of her humanity by advising me that anger can never be a solution. I suspect my mother found relief in denying her anger against the discrimantion she suffered her entire life. Contrary to her, I would not hesitate to lock horns with other kids against their discriminatory and derogatory behaviour. I would not try to be lovable. In the public sphere where I was supposed to benefit from my right to education, I learned to communicate through fight and struggle rather than through love and sharing like my mother. My integration into the public sphere was possible only through a persistent struggle. While I never revealed the inherited traits of being a loveable Kurd to the kids at school, I would to my teachers.

At some point my family started to send food and meals to regular celebrations at school, just like all other families. My teachers fell in love with these dishes and started seeking more. So my family started sending meals for teachers outside those events. The same mechanism that worked its magic with the neighbours had found its way to my school. My siblings, nieces, and nephews were also going to the same school as me, and my family was very diligent about our education. Their solution to the discrimination we faced at school was to offer their tasty dishes. In return for these offerings, we were able to experience the respect and love we deserved, at least to a certain extent. Now when they looked at us, they no longer saw the offspring of a Kurdish clan. Instead, they saw food. This allowed me to show the courage to go to the teachers and seek their help whenever I felt harassed by other kids.

Did my family and I really have to go through all that struggle and strife just to be liked by others and avoid those baleful eyes that stare at us as if we are dangerous? We had to, because it was through those meals that our neighbours were able to tolerate hearing our mother tongue, or to respect our language and identity. Perhaps it was through my mother’s meals that we were able to enter their community with our Kurdish language and identity. Perhaps this was how we managed to feel as safe as any other family in the neighbourhood.

As a Kurdish person, I do not believe that my family and I have an excessive need or desire to be loved. The reason we were responding to our neighbours’ menacing looks with smiles was because we needed to feel safe in our living spaces. By sharing the appetising meals my mother cooked with her most sincere and well-intentioned feelings, we were able to subside their aggressive attitudes towards us. Just like any other identity that is not Turkish and Sunni, we were forced to make ourselves excessively lovable in order to live our lives in safety. It was through my folks’ food that my family was providing this sense of security. Our neighbours were soothed with meals that were cooked with our feelings and they were thanking us with their smiling faces. With our identity and language, we need to be able to live our lives feeling as safe as anyone. This is we will continue our fight as a family who always smiles and shares their food. As the daughter of a family who has been exposed to racism and discrimination in almost every domain of social life, perhaps the reason that I relay this story through metaphors about food may be that I have inherited the loveable Kurd status. Maybe one reason that compels us to smile all the time is the sense of trust we can’t find. Hope we can manage to live with the myriad manifestation of our feelings, including grief and rage.