We were sitting in a guerrilla camp. A newly arrived guerrilla fighter wearily put down her backpack and handed another fighter some letters she had brought with her. The letters were opened one by one, and something fell out of one of the sealed pieces of paper. I couldn't make out what it was, but my friend's spontaneous reaction pointed to something beautiful. It obviously made her happy, and I was curious, especially when she said: "Heval, look, that comes from Girê Cûdî!"

In her hand were two small pieces of wood, which she looked at for a long time from both sides. "Look," she said excitedly, meaning, "Look at it: this is the meaning of everything, this is what we want to create, show and say." Perhaps she was thinking of the person who had worked on this wood and what she felt when she did so.

How strange. To most people, such things seem small and insignificant. Yet the world, in its desire to destroy itself, is trying to destroy precisely this ideal value created with seemingly small things.

The resistance in Girê Cûdî

The guerrillas in Girê Cûdî have been fighting against the Turkish occupiers for three years. They have carried out many successful actions and revolutionary operations. They have repeatedly entered the occupiers' positions and confiscated their weapons. They have been attacked several times with chemical weapons. During their actions, they have been wounded, some have fallen. In their ears, the mortars and howitzers fired continuously by the occupiers, echo.

Cheating death

You might say now: "The guerrillas are used to this." Like lack of sleep, hunger, fatigue, constant bombardment and the state of constant action... Yes, that is the reality of war. You pull yourself together and get used to it. In a place like this, where your days are numbered and in the heat of the moment you sometimes cannot even find firewood, immortalizing the flags of the PKK and YJA Star on splinters of wood has a special value. You cheat death.

The small gift was immediately passed on. The friend said nothing, perhaps words were unnecessary. Perhaps she thought that this piece of wood did not need words and that the energy would eliminate any distance. Only she herself knows what was going through her mind. I turned to her and stretched out my arm. She put the small piece of jewellery in my hand.

The gift had been sent on 21 March, for Newroz, which heralds the arrival of spring. It was now June. In war, things sometimes take longer. On the back of the pieces of wood made into pendants with the symbols of the YJA Star and PKK, it said "Girê Cûdî". That makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't this little homemade gift made of Girê Cûdî say everything there is to say?

Fighting position for a new life

Girê Cûdî is not just a war zone. It is a position in which a new life is put in practice and built and women and men are together in freedom. Girê Cûdî is a place of resistance in order to be able to be human. That is what is remembered and what should be announced. This area is the habitat of the most beautiful people of Kurdistan. They want to avoid becoming one of the peoples forgotten by humanity.

What is not said disappears like dust in the earth, a drop in the sea or the energy of the stars in the universe. Things that are not spoken about buzz through life as uncertainty. When people fight for freedom in their colonized country and for a new life, every moment is important. The values ​​that emerged in Kurdistan's struggle for freedom create new beauty every day. Every day, a new heroic story emerges from this struggle. We can experience some of them, we can hear them and feel them. The small wooden pendants with the resistance symbols from Girê Cûdî testify to the ability to remain human.