A Midyat Woman in the Barracks

Rastinews — Zeynep is small, fragile, withdrawn — like an autumn bird driven from its homeland before its time. Her untimely migration will, sadly, keep her from flying home once the seasons turn to spring, back to the land where she was born and raised. Because she is an asylum seeker.

"A woman from Midyat, in the barracks..."

The day she flew here alone, she spread her wings wide across the sky, and like the Simurgh of legend, dreamed of the day she could bring her two children to join her. But as days gave way to months, and months to years, her wings fell from her shoulders.

Her son's name is Azad — she stresses that it means "freedom" in Kurdish. Her daughter is Hazal, which, she explains sadly, means a leaf falling in autumn. The two names seem an unhappy product of the political climate in the land where she lived.

Now 3,400 kilometers separate them, and Zeynep seems to have no wings left to fly with; they are broken. What could bring her here alone, to a gray country whose language and culture she does not know, whose seasons she may never grow used to, whose sky holds no stars for her, if not pain?

Speaking of pain, people say it fades with time. But what of the marks it leaves? Those marks remain. As long as Zeynep lives, the pain will keep burning inside her.

She is a victim — a woman, a mother, a person without a country. A woman from Nusaybin whose questions were never answered, a victim of the "trench" period.

Zeynep is just one among thousands driven onto a road spanning thousands of kilometers. She is now "a woman from Midyat, in the barracks."

Starkenburg Barracks covers thirty hectares of military ground on the southern edge of the city. Once a vast industrial site, it was handed over to American troops after the Second World War. When the soldiers withdrew in 2015, asylum seekers from around the world took their place. Inside the barbed-wire perimeter stand two pointed wartime bunkers. For Zeynep, herself a victim of war, staying here, breathing that atmosphere, must be its own tragedy.

This is an asylum camp — the address of hope, of waiting, of longing, of broken emotion, of loneliness, and above all, of uncertainty.

Waiting is like a worm that has made its home inside a tree, gnawing at it until it withers.

Waiting is like fear that has nested inside a person, consuming them little by little.

Waiting is like nights with no morning...

Zeynep's room looks like a large hall. It was once a special meeting room where orders were issued to soldiers. Now it holds Zeynep and five other women driven here from other poor countries — six migrant women trying to sleep on three stacked bunk beds, each facing an uncertain future.

None of them speaks another's language. Broken German gives way, more often than not, to hand gestures.

Zeynep is a small, delicate woman from Midyat. She speaks fluent Kurdish — for now, at least. I say "for now" because a language not spoken is destined to slowly die.

The story that brought her here is just as grim:

"There was a great mulberry tree in front of our house. I still see that tree in my dreams. I'm baking bread beneath it. As if it was never cut down, never bombed — as if it was never torn out by the roots."

The land where Zeynep was born and raised once ground hard wheat kernels into flour, mixed it with water, and set it to the fire. That is how humanity was delivered from hunger.

Long before Moses and Jesus were born, that land already existed alongside them. Yet now it feels impossibly far away. And that land has sent out so many migrations with no way back.

Into her young life, Zeynep has packed all the suffering of an entire people. She counts on her fingers the young people from her family and community who have died; tears fall onto her fingers as she counts.

"Most of them don't even have a grave," she adds.

Zeynep's first migration came when others decided her marriage for her, moving her out of her father's house. She lived with a large family. Her husband was a truck driver who worked mostly across the border. He had many relatives in Syria and spent more time there than at home.

Their house was large, and other daughters-in-law lived there too. Over time, some of them left and settled in Mersin.

Despite every hardship, Zeynep was happy in those years. She had two children and a warm home. But the happiness did not last long.

A process known as the "Solution Process" began. Midyat filled with more young people than she had ever seen on its streets. Zeynep baked more bread beneath the mulberry tree.

"Autonomy, freedom..." they said.

In Midyat, boys too young even to grow a mustache walked around carrying weapons. They were so confident that no military intervention followed.

Every doorway, every street, spoke the same language: "defense zones" — that is, trenches.

The trenches — in her words, those grave-pits — were dug in such numbers that almost every doorstep turned into a construction site.

The people of Nusaybin, who had already witnessed state-perpetrated killings and massacres, and who had seen thousands of young people killed and just as many arrested, grew uneasy.

Elders who had lived through it all warned the authorities that this boded no good. The response was a deathly silence.

Not a word came from anyone.

The people were helpless, anxious, afraid...

The trenches were dug, like grave sites.

The Zeyneps baked more bread.

Mothers grew anxious.

They mourned their dead sons and daughters, tearing at their hair.

Mothers screamed...

Still, no one heard.

Not since Midyat became Midyat had it seen days like these, with no soldiers at all.

On a decision made by the family elders, Zeynep and her family — seven people in all — left for Mersin to join their relatives, taking nothing from their home.

"We'll go back once things settle down," they said.

Only months later, from the news and the papers, did they learn that not one stone was left standing upon another, not one life left whole, in their homeland.

In Mersin, Zeynep did wage labor for the first time, with her two young children beside her.

"We picked citrus, cleaned stairwells, worked day jobs... whatever work there was, we did it," she adds.

History has become Jason once again, come to seize the Golden Fleece. Medea has opened her arms to him without reserve. Along with the Golden Fleece, thousands of young people have been killed — some even burned in the basements of their homes.

The houses — once crowded with people — now stand like ruins from prehistory.

"We came, and you weren't here."

"How happy is the one who says 'I am a Turk.'"

The graffiti on the walls is chilling and terrible.

And so the region emptied out in its greatest exodus yet, scattering into the metropolises.

"We came, and you weren't here" had become reality.

The Mulberry Tree

For a century now, here, in front of this door...

Bread was baked in its shade.

Children played in its branches.

Owls perched on it and delivered bad news.

Beneath it, the young dead were washed and wrapped in their shrouds.

Now it stands like an old witness, its whole trunk torn apart by bullets.

Burying her past and her spirit in the trenches that had been dug, Zeynep became a day laborer under the harshest, filthiest conditions, alongside thousands of others on a road they did not know, in a language they did not speak.

Her husband, who spent all his time in Syria, gave Zeynep's place in the bed to another woman, another victim, and left, walking away from the home and their children.

Warm-blooded migratory birds fly to other warm countries when the seasons turn cold. Those birds know that once the sky warms again, they will return home, to their nests.

They will rebuild their homes and live again among their own communities.

But that chance has been taken from Zeynep and those like her.

Zeynep says she has lost everything she had:

"If I'm alive, it's for my children."

Zeynep left her children with her older sister and made her third migration — to Europe, a place she believed was far from the smell of gunpowder — together with dozens of other Kurds.

Her only security was the gold around her neck.

She invested her sole capital in human smugglers.

In Europe, she would work, save money, and finally bring Azad and Hazal to her side.

Zeynep, a woman from Midyat, in the barracks...

Her flawless Kurdish mixes with halting, broken German.

Her asylum application was rejected, on the grounds that "there is no problem in your country."

She has appealed again.

Azad and Hazal are waiting.

Zeynep will work and earn money.

She will send the money to her older sister.

Her sister will buy flour with that money.

She will mix the flour with water and salt and bake bread.

Azad and Hazal will both eat their fill.

Her sister will call out to the children from a distance:

"The bread is about to be ready…"