Handan Tufan-Zehra Doğan/JINHA

MÊRDİN – Derya Tağ left the besieged town of Cizre on the 16th day of the siege with her two children. Her husband Hasan, who stayed behind, is among the wounded in a basement in Cizre. Derya compared their story to the legend of Mem and Zîn, the lovers buried in the town, and said that the state was only encouraging the spirit of rebellion by besieging Kurdistan.

The Turkish state has waged a policy of genocide against the town of Cizre—most notably against the wounded people who state forces trapped in two basements in the town, preventing ambulance access. As the partisan pro-state media reports that a police “operation” on one of the basements has led to dozens of deaths, the families of the wounded who have gathered in the nearby town of Nusaybin have not given up hope.

One of the women maintaining a vigil from morning until night in Nusaybin, hoping to march into the blockaded town of Cizre, is Derya Tağ. Derya is the youngest of those waiting here. Her husband Hasan is among the wounded trapped in the basement. Derya, who notes that “this isn’t my first oppression,” has a story stretching back for years, a story of rebellion against her repressive family and struggle alongside her husband.

Derya’s life of resistance began in an Arab family in a village near the town of Midyat, in Mardin province. Derya, no longer able to stand the violence of her father and brothers, ran away to Cizre.

“I was a little girl whose every movement was met with serious insults and beatings,” said Derya. “It went on like that for years and then one day I said ‘well, why don’t I just run away?’ I left the house with just the clothes on my back for the house of my friend living in Cizre.” Derya began to work in Cizre.

“I was a woman who totally hated men, who just worked in a café to get the money for my daily bread,” said Derya. “And Hasan was one of the customers who came there. He was in love with me. He’d always send his friends, saying he wanted to meet, and I would always reject him, saying ‘I can’t even stand the sight of a man’s face.’

“I’ll never forget; one day he sent me a poem expressing his feelings. I tore up the paper the poem was written on and gave it back to him right in front of his eyes,” said Derya. “I didn’t believe in love and I definitely didn’t believe that any man could make me fall in love.”

Hasan proposed to Derya as soon as he managed to get her number. They rented a café to celebrate their planned engagement. That was when the police broke into the café and handcuffed Hasan.

“And with those handcuffs, I got to know the Kurdish struggle,” Derya said.

After Hasan was sent to jail, Derya went to his family’s house for the first time. The family was poor, with little more than a mattress in the room.

“It turned out that Hasan’s father had been killed by soldiers in the 1990s,” said Derya. “After I heard that, Hasan’s struggle became something holy for me.” Derya told Hasan’s mother that she had decided to marry Hasan and to move in with the family to help support them.

“As a woman who rebelled against that much cruelty, could it be Hasan who made the decision to marry? Of course it had to be me who made the decision,” said Derya. “We sent an engagement ring into the prison. We lifted up our rings—him behind the glass, me outside—and put them on. When a woman has an anarchist soul and knows no rules, that’s how her marriage happens.”

The couple had “no ordinary marriage,” according to Derya, who said her husband organized her. Derya compared their story to that of Mem and Zîn. In the Kurdish legend first recorded by Kurdish poet Ehmedê Xanî, Mem falls in love with Zîn, the daughter of the governor of the Cizîra Botan region, who her family hopes to force to marry to another man. The traitor Beko, through his lies, causes Mem’s death, after which Zîn dies soon after. The grave of Mem and Zîn stands in Cizre today, in the heart of the historic Cizîra Botan region.

“In this land of Cizre, I became the Zîn who rebels against oppression and he became Mem,” said Derya. “And our Beko was the state. He calls me ‘comrade.’ We had two sons later on. We have dreams that our children will be worthy of the Kurdish struggle, that they’ll be Kurdish leaders.

“When the curfew was declared, we decided to stay in our home with the children,” said Derya. “When the attacks got worse, on the 16th day he got me and the kids out; I was two months pregnant and I miscarried. He decided to stay; for us, land is a question of honor. He said ‘if I leave too, how will we have the gall to return to our home?’ and with that he decided to protect our neighborhood.

“I took my children and waited outside Cizre,” said Derya. “We’d talk on the phone every day. There were explosions the background, but he always had a smile in his voice. He’d say, ‘don’t be scared; think of all we’ve gone through, we’ll get over this too.’”

For 20 days, Derya has not been able to reach her husband. The only thing she knows is that he is wounded in a basement in the town.

Derya said that for years, they struggled for peace, but the state confronted them with tanks and artillery fire. She said that their hopes for peace died in the state’s mortar bombardment on their homes.

“Do you think that peace, once it’s died, can come to life again?” asked Derya. “A few days ago a neighbor of ours left the neighborhood. When I asked ‘was my husband there?’ the answer I got was ‘everyone’s face is covered in dust; no one recognizes anyone else.’ These faces, covered in the dust of mortar fire, have nothing, not even a stove.

“Doesn’t ‘self-government’ mean peace?” asked Derya, referring to the declarations of self-government in Cizre and other towns that the state used to justify the attacks. “Didn’t this all just happen to us because we wanted peace? I don’t want peace; I don’t want there to be peace. I just can’t live together with the Turks who help those oppressing us by staying silent.

“As a woman, I say ‘long live Kurdistan.’”

(mg/cm)