To Fadime

By Shahîn B. Soreklî

11/02/2002

[Editor's note: the poem below is about a Kurdish girl, Fadime Sahindal, who met her untimely death in the hands of her father in Uppsala, Sweden.]

In your eyes I see one of my sisters

buried in a marriage at fifteen

In your face I see the despair

Of a thousand Kurdish girls

with wings colourful but broken

yet lively and wanting to fly

In your hair I see the nights

of our country Kurdistan

mysteriously beautiful

yet full of dangerous waves

that can give or take life

Your lips are sealed in the photograph

but I hear your words in my ears

enough to fill a book with poems

expressing the agony of many migrant girls

who are loved to the point of suffocation

by those who mean well

yet their limitless love can kill

When the bullet broke your life

many hearts in Sweden bled

and in the country of your father

a star fell from the sky

but the clouds were too thick that night

no one could see it passing by

In my garden I saw roses weeping

or maybe the tears were mine

greeting your soul from Sydney

and begging your forgiveness at the same time

When your heart stopped beating

the stream of your dreams blocked

when your wishes were buried in dust

and the windows of the world got shot

many of us got drowned in shame

for failing to find the answers

Who should we curse for crushed roses

we were not able to protect?

How can we free birds from cages

without them being caught and slain?

Should we search for the lost answers

in the books of the prophets?

Are the answers in the law book

Or are they hidden within cultures?

I look at your photograph again and again

your face looks so familiar

I KNOW HER I keep on saying

with a feeling of guilt deep in my heart

tormenting me for having failed

to lend a hand before you fell.