Remembering Ali Gezer (Zerdeşt Dersîmî)

One Hundred Twenty-Three Months Later

After ten years and three months, I returned to the conflict area from ten years and three months ago. I walked again on roads I had only passed once before. I went on paths I had walked before and ones I hadn't. There wasn't really a road in Şeşdarê. I called the places I walked "roads".

Şeşdarê! Şeşdarê! Şeşdarê!

Its ridges were silent and lonely. Its paths hadn't been widened and turned to dust by guerrilla boots. Xelil Sümbül, Seyfi and Cudi Ş.Weyt's units hadn't come for action in the June heat. The June heat wasn't there.

Neither was there the pain of a female guerrilla with her ankle shattered by a bullet hidden among the bushes, nor the sound of gunshots fired from a guerrilla's barrel to prevent that pain from growing even greater by falling into the hands of betrayal.

Cobras weren't spewing death. Neither howitzers, nor 57mm guns, nor 120mm mortars, nor tanks were striking Şeşdarê relentlessly and mortally. The silence of not striking had enveloped everything.

Peshmerga hadn't surrounded everywhere; they hadn't "started work" with Kalashnikovs, PKMs, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. The sycophantic shouts of the Peshmerga to please their masters weren't heard around.

I searched for the most heroic guerrillas of the three units positioned along the rocky ridges. I looked for:

• Team Commander Şervin
• Squad Commander Agitê Garisi
• Team Commander Mazlum GAP
• Deputy Squad Commander Mazlum Avrupa (Halfeti)
• Team Commander Sozdar
• Xelil Sümbül
• Seyfi

And many more I searched for, but they weren't there. Each had fallen as martyrs fighting in a mountain, pass, road or battlefield of my country, or shot treacherously from behind.

Şervin; Team Commander, spirit of comradeship, invincible symbol of women's resistance and will, activist, lively, enthusiastic and passionately devoted to Freedom.

Şervin wasn't painted head to toe with Zınar's blood. Şervin didn't smell strongly of Zınar's blood. The scent of Zınar's blood soaked into Şervin's clothes didn't reach my nose.

Şervin wasn't bringing her comrade Zınar, who had been shredded under the rain of mortar and artillery fire, and then face to face with cobras, refusing to give up on him. I wasn't rushing to Şervin's aid with my backpack and weapon; with Mervan's Kalashnikov and Zana's sniper rifle. Mortars weren't falling and exploding furiously to my right, left, front and back.

A guerrilla I didn't know, shot and wounded in the foot, wasn't boldly crossing the bare hill under my curious and concerned gaze, carried by another guerrilla I didn't know.

As always, the commander of the other unit, comrade Seyfi, wasn't standing tall and upright on the open ridge, coordinating the battle without regard for the rain of bullets, cobra, mortar and artillery fire, without taking cover from Kalashnikovs, PKMs and rockets. I couldn't plead anxiously, "Comrade Seyfi, Comrade Seyfi, duck down, come over here to us, you'll be shot." Bullets weren't raining there. Mortars weren't falling, cobras weren't striking.

Seyfi wasn't there...!

There, just five meters down the slope, the moans of Zınar - whose left leg was severed below the knee by tank fire, right foot broken, most fingers cut off, and forehead pierced by a small piece of shrapnel - weren't rising. Zınar's head wasn't on my lap.

Zınar, head on my lap and moaning, wasn't looking into my eyes saying "Am I going to die?" So I, with my heart bleeding, didn't give him a bitter smile saying "Come on, it's just a small piece that hit you, you're whining like a child." To Zınar saying "My leg, I don't have a leg," I couldn't lift up his severed foot, whose skin hadn't yet detached, from inside his trouser leg to show Zınar lying on his back with his head on my lap, and say with a smile tinged with pain, "Here's your leg!" And then I didn't lean down and kiss Zınar's forehead for the first and last time.

The slope was covered with bristly grass. My knee wasn't there. Zınar wasn't on my lap. There was no amateur stretcher there, and on the stretcher there was no young, dark-skinned Zınar weighing 80-90 kilos despite his short stature. Therefore, he wasn't falling off one side or the other of the narrow stretcher.

Şervin, all her clothes stained with Zınar's blood, wasn't beside me. So we couldn't prepare the stretcher again right across from Deriye Davetiye, tying Zınar to it in full view. When we hadn't gone 25-30 meters, 5-6 mortars didn't hit where we had been, engulfing the place in smoke and dust.

And Zınar wasn't taking his last breath right there. I wasn't witnessing a martyrdom for the first time. The tears in my eyes weren't drying. Kani and Hozan, afraid of blood and the "dead", weren't moving away from us. Şervin and I weren't left alone with Zınar.

Şervin and I didn't hastily dig a grave under a tree with a bayonet and gun cleaning rod. Şervin wasn't there, no one was there.

One hundred twenty-three months later, when I went to the tree I never forgot, Zınar's grave wasn't visible. The area under the tree had been leveled, likely used as a sleeping place. Unaware that Zınar lay there.

We dug the grave a little. The soil had hardened a lot. We marked it and left, intending to take him to the martyrs' cemetery later.

Zınar was there. Seyfi, Xelil were there, Mazlum, Sozdar, Cudi were there. Şervin was there. I wasn't there. There was no June heat.

Zerdeşt Dersimi
Haftanin - Şeşdarê