My name is Þivan Encü
My name is Þivan Encü
My name is Þivan Encü
I am not a statistic.
I am a “human being”!
And I have a story too…
I am a child who fulfilled his longing for his mother in his dreams; I am a child for whom his mother longed for many many years…
My father took me with him and left my mother when I was too small…
For many years, I looked for my mother’s smell in my dreams, and I couldn’t find it. At last, I couldn’t stand it and returned to Roboski three years ago, to my mother and my siblings…
Now that I was with my family, I could put up with anything.
I was the eldest boy of a family with four children. I have done many different works for the last three years; sheepherding, portage, digging works or smuggling; I have done anything I could…
I was very tired that day as I had shepherded to earn 15 TL. My hands, nose and ears had almost frozen by the time I returned home. I had still not relieved my tiredness when my cousin Bedran knocked at our door and called me, ‘come, we are going!’…
My mother told me to not to go as I was very tired.
But, does poorness care about tiredness or cold? We started to follow our donkeys…
We were holding the leashes of our hopes, each one of us was singing a ballad…
“The ways are long
Ways, the memorized pages
We shall go when children are in sleep
They shall not cry…”
On the way, I used to listen to my uncle Selim with admiration as he sang this song. I used to wish my father could also sing like him…
It used to be my turn to sing when he ended his song. While singing the “Halabja” song of my namesake, I used to lament for a disaster, to mountains and all around…
We were on the way back to home when I was killed while singing the most mournful part of my lament! The bridge of my life was broken just like a glass breakage…My lamentation touched the ears of the pilot who dropped bombs on us… My stern words are because of the heavy burden of living put on my shoulders; otherwise I was a small bird and I died of grief, while I was about to die of exhaustion… ‘The childhood of a person is his homeland’ they say; they killed me in my homeland, they killed me on my homeland…
I am Þivan Encü; one of the “thirty four” who were caught by the storm in the earlywood of their lives…
I am the "ax hawar! hawar! hawar!" of Þivan Perver’s Halabja lament… …
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me!?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
I am not a statistic.
I am a “human being”!
And I have a story too…
I am a child who fulfilled his longing for his mother in his dreams; I am a child for whom his mother longed for many many years…
My father took me with him and left my mother when I was too small…
For many years, I looked for my mother’s smell in my dreams, and I couldn’t find it. At last, I couldn’t stand it and returned to Roboski three years ago, to my mother and my siblings…
Now that I was with my family, I could put up with anything.
I was the eldest boy of a family with four children. I have done many different works for the last three years; sheepherding, portage, digging works or smuggling; I have done anything I could…
I was very tired that day as I had shepherded to earn 15 TL. My hands, nose and ears had almost frozen by the time I returned home. I had still not relieved my tiredness when my cousin Bedran knocked at our door and called me, ‘come, we are going!’…
My mother told me to not to go as I was very tired.
But, does poorness care about tiredness or cold? We started to follow our donkeys…
We were holding the leashes of our hopes, each one of us was singing a ballad…
“The ways are long
Ways, the memorized pages
We shall go when children are in sleep
They shall not cry…”
On the way, I used to listen to my uncle Selim with admiration as he sang this song. I used to wish my father could also sing like him…
It used to be my turn to sing when he ended his song. While singing the “Halabja” song of my namesake, I used to lament for a disaster, to mountains and all around…
We were on the way back to home when I was killed while singing the most mournful part of my lament! The bridge of my life was broken just like a glass breakage…My lamentation touched the ears of the pilot who dropped bombs on us… My stern words are because of the heavy burden of living put on my shoulders; otherwise I was a small bird and I died of grief, while I was about to die of exhaustion… ‘The childhood of a person is his homeland’ they say; they killed me in my homeland, they killed me on my homeland…
I am Þivan Encü; one of the “thirty four” who were caught by the storm in the earlywood of their lives…
I am the "ax hawar! hawar! hawar!" of Þivan Perver’s Halabja lament… …
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me!?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
