August 24, 2020

“My name is Nergiz, I spent my childhood with a sympathetic family, in a clay house, at a slum Kurdish neighborhood called Al-Hilalyia. Due to the Baath regime’s policies, we were ridden of all our basic rights, including being a citizen. When it was time for me to go to school, Arabic was the official teaching language. Because I was from a Kurdish family, I didn’t understand anything. That is why my first Arabic sentence was: I hate life.
I expressed the challenges I faced in my life through writing, to express myself and my difficult life.
At some point, when I attended Kurdish lessons that were taught secretly, I wrote my first sentence in the first class, saying: I love life.”

“In the beginning of high school, after I secretly learned the Kurdish language, I started teaching children that divine language. My happiness couldn’t be explained.
In the beginning of 1997, I joined the Kurdistan Freedom Movement to become a guerrilla and protect the mountains of Kurdistan.
Then in 2000, I published my first poetry book called “Xelata xewna me”, and my second book in 2002 in Qandil, called “Hesret” and in 2015, two prose books called “Mesin” and “Stêrvana” at Qamislo. Today, after all I went through, I am participating in the Shahid Harkul exhibition for my three books, “Rûpelên Jîyanê” “Gulîyên Esqê” and my novel “Çirik”.
Some of the stories from “Gulîyên Esqê” include some women’s prose, who gave their lives for Kurdistan’s freedom. I have gone to their place of martyrdom and written there.”