The cause for freedom is almost 40 years old. As children of a proud, courageous people, with sacrifice and resolve, they had faith to the end, they held on and today they are ready to pay any price necessary with no hesitation. There are many fighters whose sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers have joined the ranks of freedom. It is now possible to see people from the same family in the same fronts, same positions, fighting the enemy shoulder to shoulder.

Our journey in the Kurdistan mountains continues. In these final days of fall, nature is a veritable postcard. With great longing, we pass mud paths and steep cliffs. There are memories at every turn, and songs in every memory as I follow the courageous children of the Kurdistan mountains and listen to their memories and stories. This time around, I am witnessing the story of a father and daughter pair of guerrillas.

MAKING THE DECISION

The hero in this story is Arazad Botan. She joined the ranks of the guerrilla in 2014, a time when the fascist Turkish state and its derivative inhuman fascist ISIS gangs aimed to annihilate the Kurdish people. Arazad Botan is one of the many courageous Kurdish women who headed to the Kurdistan mountains to find meaning and the human within at a time when all the regressive forces and fascist practices were in full swing in the Middle East, and she said she took this name with the same purpose. She saw that the Freedom Movement fought for human values and she was impressed, and she decided to join to stand on her own.

HEVAL…

Arazad is not the first nor the last to fall into the magic of this mysterious word. Many guerrillas go to their temples with this mysterious charm and repent with this word. It takes on many forms in different places, but the word in the Kurdish Freedom Movement is “Heval”. Arazad Botan first heard this mysterious word from her uncle, and she wanted to meet the heroes of this word. She headed to the mountains of Kurdistan to walk the same path as them. This word became a light that breaks through the darkness. Arazad joined the guerrilla with such emotions and ideas, and to summarize the process as: “The excitement and the feelings a comrade gets when looking at another comrade, the strive for meaning and the ability to laugh despite all hardships impressed me.”

FIRST ENCOUNTER

Botan was still on her search in the Kurdistan mountains when she heard her father Siyabend Mardin had also joined the guerrilla. She couldn’t believe it, and was very excited. She thought of how he joined, how he came, what influenced him.

Arazad remembered the day she met her comrade father as she told the story: “On a hill in the Zap area, friends called me on the small radio and told me to go to where they were. I went. At first they didn’t tell me my father was there. They told me I was to go on a mission, and a friend wanted to see me. I sensed that my father had come then. And we headed to where we would meet this ‘friend’. It was a long way, we walked for several hours. We were minutes away when I froze in my steps in excitement. Should I shake his hand when I first see him? Should I hug him instead? Should I call him ‘dad’ or ‘Heval Siyabend’? I was deep in thoughts like this when Heval Siyabend stepped out of his squad and looked up, and our eyes met. I was shocked and I froze. But Heval Siyabend started to walk towards me. He shook my hand and hugged me. He couldn’t say anything because he was too excited. I was trying to believe my eyes as I looked at his weapon and radio.

We talked mostly about the guerrilla life and the war we were in. I learned that the jokes the friends made to me because we joined as father and daughter were also made to him. That was our first meeting.”

“WHEN DID YOU GROW UP?”

Arazad said they met several times after their first encounter and said the following on their last meeting: “Friend Siyabend came to where I was with a group of friends before crossing into Shengal. After they entered, the friends said there was a guest so I should go greet them. As I walked to them, Heval Siyabend came up to me. I couldn’t believe it, I was as excited as the first time we met in the ranks of the guerrilla. It was a time when I wanted to see him a lot, and I was so happy. We started to talk. We spoke like two comrades rather than like father and daughter. Heval Siyabend was happy and surprised that I joined the talks, and asked me, ‘When did you grow up?’ I answered 'I grew up in the meantime'. I said the war in Kurdistan made Kurdish children grow up fast. We asked about comrades to each other for a long time. Then they said they were going to head to Shengal and we said goodbye.”

IT’S GOOD TO BE IN THE SAME FRONTS

Arazad Botan said after that meeting she headed to another area and her father-comrade went to Shengal, and that the blood relatives in the guerrilla are source of great morale. She concluded with: “Being in the mountains is very different. It’s difficult to explain, you have to feel it. It is especially beautiful, meaningful and exciting to be in the same fronts fighting for the same cause with your father, mother or siblings. And I still get as excited as the first time in all radio talks with Friend Siyabend. It gives me strength.”

THE RETURN

There are dozens of stories like guerrilla Arazad Botan’s in Kurdistan, hers is but one.

There has been a relentless struggle in the Kurdistan mountains for 40 years. This struggle for the freedom of the Kurdish people has seen families come together in the ranks of the same fight in the mountains. With this story we have witnessed and the feeling and excitement it created in our hearts and minds, we head down the path ways in the cold winds and the leaves of autumn towards our destination...