Bêritan Elyakut-Cahide Harputlu/JINHA

KOBANÊ – "If you want me to explain Viyan: she was an artist and a fighter. For her, separating art and war was contradictory," says BermalAmargi, who long fought alongside the poet and fighter slain while fighting against Daesh on Monday.

Viyan, a fighter who practiced the Kurdish folk song/poetry tradition of dengbêj, was known among the ranks of the YPJ and beyond for her work. Her composition "Kobanê," was made into a music video just a few months before she died.Viyanwrote the piece to communicate the extent of the desolation and loss in the city.

"Viyan would always say, 'My people are under tyranny; [PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan] is stuck between four walls. How can I leave behind fighting and go work in arts and culture?'"Viyan's art and her fighting had the same goal. In telling the story of the resistance and in raising the morale of her comrades, Viyan was aiming for a different world.

Viyan's personality, as both and artist and a fighter, was marked by a close attention to discipline and self-improvement.People who first met her found the dengbêj harsh and severe, but Bermal said she was actually very sensitive. Her disciplined attention to her comrades was a form of care.

"Viyan really worked on us," recalled Bermal. "She couldn't stand empty-headed, inconsistent personalities." She would often tell her comrades that bodily discipline reflected the soul; from her body to her voice, her bearing demonstrated an inner strength.

"With every passing day, Viyan was always making sure she was improving herself as a fighter and as an artist," said Bermal. "And Viyan would remind us that we may be fighters, but we needed to prioritize art and culture as well."

Viyan found any fall in morale as unacceptable among her comrades. Always attentive to the state of those around her, Viyan saw even the jokes she made with fighters losing morale as part of a coordinated effort to elevate their struggle.

Bermal said Viyanwanted her voice to reach beyond the emplacements where it raised women's morale and to reach women around the world and inspiring them to take part in their own self-defense. Viyan was herself a native of Eastern Kurdistan who joined the battle to defend the Rojava women's revolution, rebelling against the approach to women in her native Iran.

"Losing Viyan to martyrdom affected us all," said Bermal. "But after this, we have to think about how to take on those qualities of hers. In our comradeship, in war, in our discipline, in our smiles, in every difficult moment: we're trying to keep Comrade Viyan's spirit alive."

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