JINHA

MÊRDIN – Naime Uçar had been forced to migrate to Istanbul from her hometown Nusaybin while she was a child. She returned to Nusaybin where she describes as, “the city of childhood dreams” and built a new life. Naime, who had been forced to migrate again due to the attacks of the state, said, “I don’t leave this time” and she is making preparations to return her homeland.

Naime Uçar is from Mardin’s Nusaybin district. Her life story summarizes the life of the Kurds caught between resistance and migration. Naime’s village was burned in 1992 while she was a child. Naime had been forced to go to Istanbul with her family. As she says, “I tried to live in somebody else’s hometown as unhappy,” and she had returned to her, “city of childhood dreams.” However, she had been forced to leave her home in Nusaybin again following a curfew was declared in Nusaybin. She is living in a tent in Beyaz Su near to her hometown and waiting for return Nusaybin.

Naime told us her life story when we became guest to her tent. She expressed how life in big city creates unhappiness and illness and said, “I will never go there again.” She showed us the mountains, walnut and oak trees and said, “My life is here.”

“I learned the atrocity of the state when I was a child. I saw destroyed homes, dead bodies pulled from the wreckages and people killed when I was a child. They burned our village in front of us. We had forcibly left our lands. I know these people very well so I don’t ask anything from them,” said Naime and her only wish is to return her home behind the wire fences.

Naime also said that people cannot breathe when they live in their own homelands and said: “I would not change Nusaybin for cities where Turkish people live in. We don’t want people die. We want Nusaybin to be built and become beautiful like before. They are surrounding Nusaybin with the wire fences now. We want these wire fences to be removed and people to return their homes. We will make Nusaybin a beautiful place again.”

(ekip/fk/gd)