March 21, 2022

(I have titled my talk, 113. Soon you will forget everything I say tonight, but perhaps you will remember just the title, 113—in Kurdish sed û sêzdeh.)

Kani Xulam

Busboys and Poets

Washington, DC

Newroz Piroz Be! Happy Newroz!

Before I share with you my thoughts about Newroz, I want to be associated with those who have thanked Andy Shallal, our incomparable host, the owner of Busboys and Poets!

This is an establishment that acts as a public square for Washington. It is a blessing beyond words. 

To see this place honor books, treat their authors as superstars, serve as a watering hole for the thirsty, and a restaurant for the hungry, comes close, for me at least, to what, H.L. Mencken, once said of his local library, “If there were no Pratt Library, Baltimore would probably still be a mob town!”

Thank you, Andy Shallal, for doing your civic duty to lift up the residents of this most important capital—in the world—towards kindness, tolerance, understanding, and, yes, love.

Let’s give our friend another round of applause!

Now to the theme of our evening, Newroz—the first day of spring, a time of rebirth for nature and spiritual renewal for all of us.

You probably don’t remember where you were on February 18, 2008–unless you are a friend of Michelle Obama or a close associate of hers. She found herself in hot waters when she uttered what came naturally to her, after her husband’s stunning victories in the primaries while she was in Wisconsin: 

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

For Black Americans, there was nothing unusual in her remarks. She had grown up Black in America and had her scars to prove it. As a freshman at Princeton, her White roommate had moved out on her because she couldn’t sleep with a Black woman in the same room.

For Whites, though there were mutterings, the unscripted sound bite offered a teachable moment. They didn’t hold it against her. They elected her husband president not once but twice. 

When Lukman Ahmad, the organizer of our event, a self-taught painter of Renaissance sensibilities, I call him Rojava’s gift to the United States—yes, let’s give him a round of applause as well—asked me to say a few words about Newroz this evening, I thought of Michelle Obama.

She is the first descendant of slaves to occupy the White House with her husband. 

Just stop and think about it for a second. 

Such a bloodless revolution is rare indeed in the annals of human history. I marvel at my luck for witnessing it as a hapless Kurd. I would do anything to see it duplicated in the Middle East.

Thirty years ago this spring, I was minding my own business running a family store in Santa Barbara, California. The city didn’t have a Kurdish community, ours was the only Kurdish family in town, but San Diego had a lot of Kurds. We drove 200 miles to celebrate Newroz with our cousins from Iraqi-Kurdistan.

I said Iraqi-Kurdistan, but for many of us, that might sound like, these days at least, Russian-Ukraine. Ukraine has been free for the past 31 years, and as we know from the news, it resolutely wants to remain so in spite of the death and destruction that is visiting its ancient cities. 

I wish there was a way to stop this man-made earthquake. 

Putin alone can not destroy so many cities or kill thousands of their helpless residents. I join peace activist around the world in urging Russians, soldiers and civilians alike, inside and outside of Russia, to start breaking Russian laws, because obeying them now means enabling and spreading evil in Ukraine.

In the unfree Middle East, noncooperation with the same wicked laws should also be in the cards. Sometimes, some generations luck out, the cruel laws expire on their own, as they did in the Soviet Union. A prison that held nations in captivity went bankrupt—allowing the likes of Latvians, Ukrainians, Armenians and Tajiks to be free. 

We Kurds would call it a blessing as well, if the states that hold Kurds in captivity were to crumble one day down the road.

I, for one, would remember poet William Wordsworth fondly—the Englishman who witnessed the American Revolution as a kid, and observed the French one as an adult, praised them as only the poets could and sang:

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! Times!”

That blissful day has yet to dawn for the children of the Middle East.

Forgive me for my flight of fancy. That is how we activists make it from one day to the next. I was telling you about driving to San Diego for our Newroz celebration in the spring of 1992. Given the time difference between Kurdistan and America, we got the awful news that scores of Kurds had been killed in Cizre by Turkish soldiers for wanting to celebrate Newroz. 

When the dead were tallied, they numbered 113.

On the way to San Diego, we had blasted the stereo with songs of Sivan Perwer, the king of Kurdish pop. On the way back to Santa Barbara, it was like following an 18 wheeler funeral hearse for 113 Kurds. Many of them would have been 50 or 60 or 70 years old today.

The world was too busy to notice our dead just as it was too busy, in 1981, to notice a White student’s decision to move out on Michelle Obama because she was Black. 

But despite setbacks and heartaches, our collective humanity moves forward. A year after Mrs. Obama’s move into the White House, the United Nations announced that it had adopted March 21, today, as the International Day of Newroz. 

Things don’t just happen at the United Nations. It turns out Azerbaijan had taken the initiative to spearhead the salutary effort. Iran had then seconded its motion. In the announcement, the Kurds were not mentioned. We were viewed as Middle Easterners and counted among the 300 million who celebrate Newroz.

As Dr. King was fond of quoting poet William Cullen Bryant, “Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again!” One day, soon I hope, we Kurds too will be honored by name and with our unique contribution to the celebration as well: that we alone have turned it into a day of defiance, a call to freedom, as befitting the mythical origins of Newroz.

After our emancipation and liberation, we may relax a bit, and adopt the haft sin, the seven s’s of our Persian neighbors, and enjoy the celebration as our neighbors do—as a day of picnic. In the meantime, our resistance will continue with songs and bonfires in Kurdistan and abroad for as long as we are a part of this world.

I started with Michelle Obama and I would like to end with her. The year the United Nations declared March 21 as the International Day of Newroz, the First Lady of the United States held the first ever Newroz celebration in the White House. I haven’t asked Andy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Shallals were among the invited guests.

The Obamas and one Kurd, as you probably know from the media, have been mentioned together in one sentence before. The Kurd who is equated with Mr. Obama is Selahattin Demirtas. Like Obama, the Kurdish politician is a lawyer and an author. Yes, you can buy his books at Busboys and Poets! The reporters love calling him the Kurdish Obama.

I think it is an apt comparison. In America, you elected your Obama to be your president. In Turkey, Mr. Demirtas serves time in prison at the pleasure of Mr. Erdogan just as Mr. Alexei Navalny does in Russia at the pleasure of Mr. Putin.

Oh, since one comparison has already been made, let me make another one. Basak Demirtas, Mr. Demirtas’s wife, would also compare well with Michelle Obama. If any of you know the First Lady, please consider talking to me afterwards. I would love to connect her with Mrs. Demirtas.

One more thing, if true democracy ever comes to Turkey, the Kurdish Obama, like your Black president, has the potential to become the author of another bloodless revolution.

Perhaps we will get to see that glorious day given the revulsion that the world has expressed towards Mr. Putin, the poster child of autocrats. Kurds and Turks, with their autocrats discredited and out of the way, like Blacks and Whites in this country, are capable of miracles—as you were in 2008!

Newroz Piroz Be! Happy Newroz!

On Twitter: @AKINinfo