Botan Times EnglishUnhappy Words

You discover strange words for yourself, you ignore some of them and buy some. After words get together, you lend some, sell some, give some for free. What will you do with these words? They have already been flying and walking everywhere, why do you follow and dance with them? Yes, you are dancing with words, but you take even the most painful ones on your back and raise them. Sometimes they rise more like a mountain, like a river they flow thickly, and if you accidentally fall into the river you will drown. Sometimes they blaze away as aizle fire, you dare not touch them in any way.

You cannot neither avoid them completely nor you no longer want to record them in your heart. Whether you want them or not, they have a place in your mind, it is inevitable, a nest has been made and it is enclosed with fences. Those words grow in the nest of your mind and spread. Sometimes you cannot even get ahead of them. When you go to the seaside, sometimes you want to throw them into the sea to feed the semi-smart fishes. But words are so stuck that you cannot move them. They cling to each other and don’t leave them alone. Then you say at this time, what happens when you lend them or sell them? How can you get them out of your mind? Or which minds want to acquire them? Are they like you, like you ignore or buy and hide it in a nest? What is the meaning of this? Sometimes you think you have to clean noxious ones to keep them alive, to protect them from the poisons of the unnecessary. But you don’t make any conclusion, you just record them, you don’t dare to get rid of them at once, you say God forbid, if one day I become without words!

You walk around and when you see an empty place, you sit down and put your knees together. You are racking your mind and taking a word forcibly. You put it in your palm, you look at it, you measure it, you estimate its weight and give it a value according to the number of letters. Some of them are rotten, they are empty like rotten kernels, they have no weight. Words that look more like a fruit than rotten nuts fall from the tree almost for no reason. You don’t want to get rid of them quickly, otherwise their hearts are broken, you say goodbye to them with your gaze and dig a hole in the dry ground. Almost everywhere you walk, there is a hole that you dig, almost everywhere, there are some of your words hidden in those holes. When you say goodbye and bury them, mostly your heart and your mind are relieved. But sometimes you hide them despite their weight and strength. Of course you hanker after your heart, but still you do it.

For as long as you can remember, you are going after words. Their colour and shape, smell and taste, hardness and softness always make you wonder. When you travel to a new place you are always following words. It’s interesting, you want to change the ones in your mind and replace others with them. At these times you get confused, so there is no place for all of them in your mind. You have to pile them. But nowadays, you huddle together every word that you learn then you realise your mind has exploded. All the words you have saved for years fall like drop into other minds.

Read in Kurdish

This news was translated by Betül Demir

Author Profile

Sevda Orak Reşitoğlu

She was born in Tatvan in 1988. She studied French Language and Literature at Istanbul University. She received her Master's degree from Artuklu University and her PhD from Dicle University. She is currently working at the Kurdish Department of Artuklu University. She is also a translator and has translated several articles from English and French into Kurdish. She translated the book of Kurdên Yarsan by Shahab Vali from French to Kurdish, published by Avesta Publishing House in 2018.