Three Poems from Rojava, Syria

Taha Khalil is a writer, painter, and intellectual who was one of the first Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activists in Syria. Today he hosts a regular television program on Ronahi TV in Qamishlo and is one of the Rojava Centre for Strategic Studies’ three directors. Displaced from his home by the Islamic State’s attempt to exterminate the Êzîdî, Zêdan Xelef (b. 1995, Izêr) arrived with his family to the Chamishko IDP camp in late 2014. His current projects include translating Whitman’s Song of Myself into Kurmanji. Poet David Shook’s most recent booklength translations are Jorge Eduardo Eielson’s Room in Rome and Pablo d’Ors’s The Friend of the Desert. Their new verse collection, Atlas estelar, is forthcoming in 2020. POETRY Three Poems from Rojava, Syria by Taha Khalil Scapegoat And the knife is in your hand You look just like Abraham, our prophet I’m your old, old Ishmael. Captivity Late at night As if I’m a winter sparrow Your hand draws me from my nest Your hand closes around me Something beats in your hand And the quiver will remind you, for a hundred years. Execution to Khawla Ghazi The young man who knelt on the edge of the asphalt The young man whose hands were tied behind him The young man who was dreaming of sparrows Before being shot in the head Before the murderer finished reciting his verses A pebble ached beneath his knee The young man shifted his weight And prepared for the bullet. Translations from the Kurmanji & Arabic By Zêdan Xelef & David Shook WORLDLIT.ORG 35 TAHA KHALIL, UNTITLED, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

Art · Art history · Literature · Painting · Poetry · History · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts