The travel of a public singer in Kurdistan

The ActuKurde offers the travel diary of Elijah Guillou, public singer, who testified everyday Kurdish Diyarbakir, the capital of Turkish Kurdistan, along with two photgraphes association friendships Kurds Britain ( AKB) Gaël Le Ny and François Legeait. these travelogues written in October and November are experience traditional music, history, and daily repression ...

***

Given by the sun

With us, there is peace in the eyes, often joy. So common that no one notices his absence. A child in a home, a bum on the street. Even the look of old unemployed still shaking a spark, even tenuous. Is the joy of a neighbor who calls in one who is missing? Here, the misfortune is the same for all. As snow covers the country, it is deposited in the looks and covered with a dull solid color. Flake after flake. It seeps into discussions coffee in the songs, the program of the week, posters, pictures on the wall nearby, your own photos. Such a presence is hard to notice. We say that is the look of the people since the old transmit newborns. It is a romantic idea of ​​Middle Eastern melancholy. It is a mistake.

Evidence has emerged, discreet and glowing in the bright eyes of a young girl. His parents called Rojda "given by the sun" and life took her at her word. In a restaurant overlooking the Tigris, she sang songs accompanied by Kurds five teenagers his age. The songs were all militants, rebels or melancholy, his gaze was not. He clarity days of peace, as if the last thirty years had spread silently to pass. It took me to finally measure the whiteness of the surrounding darkness. Thereafter, I hoped find that brilliance in others eyes. Nothing. People who revolt, people who create, people who argue that you pull sleeve to tell you their story. But not reckless. Enough to give even more value to grain, gram of well-being in the eyes of a young girl. Resistant. Which is beyond the resistor. That is. Beauty never comes alone, it carries the beauty to come. It is a river in the plain. She is a woman on the Tigris.

***

The house Dengbejs - the mixed song

Today, when you get up, you feel the round of teas, chairs and sun as being a little part of you. You go to the house at 9am and Dengbejs everything goes as planned. Soon, it is noon. You are calm. The circle is closed, it is both the end and the beginning, the coals are hot. You are in unison. A Dengbej starts to sing, soon echoed by a younger and more a silence ...

The course of the afternoon is exactly what you imagine, reality and more. They sing one after another, without apparent rule. The taqlis these little beads that punctuate the daily rhythm of the songs and also swinging relentlessly between their fingers. Each singer is distinguished by a very particular style. Aesthetics is always the same but everyone is free to make its ornamentation, its flow, its breaks. Moreover, except for a few mumbled in unison by everyone sentences is the unique personality of each hit in the first place; it is an individual serving a collective voice. However, if compliance with the singer is obvious, it is not absolute, and life is the first guest at the banquet of words. You can get up in the middle of a song to wash hands, sipping his tea noisily or answer the phone. The singer himself, hearing his phone ring, can get out of his jacket, pick and integrate the conversation to his vocals. It then passes the camera to his neighbor and tells the story that he was burning. We have the right to take a break to spit, it has the right to sing out of tune ... waste does not exist. Love stories, old or chronic improvisations around news, everything gets mixed. Sometimes spectators spend studded door to come and listen to these wise and powerful monotonous melodies. We can see three yuppies in black listen thoughtfully few chapters and go without a word costume. Overall, there is not the crowd. The Dengbejs sing them and take care to circulate this material as smoothly as possible so that it keeps necessary to pass the course for the next decade without any loss strength. They joined the internet 2.0 and many other revolutions before, there is no need to worry for them. The vital commitment that the Kurds have in their history is responsible for providing new volunteers this small circle. If the oldest of them off, the youngest, a fifties fresh as a boy, has had time to learn the stories. Meanwhile, somewhere on the outskirts of Diyarbakir, a forty must feel his throat itch. It will soon take place vacated. And songs continue to burn.

***

The house Dengbejs - the sun

Above all, it takes time. Today the house dengbejs is open, but if the songs that share here have been preserved since the glory days of Mesopotamia, there is a few thousand years, it is not just for swinging tea served. Anatolia, is not also speaks to sing but to burn a song, we must proceed methodically and raise a pile of embers thick enough before to get started. The place, a large patio surrounded by walls of black stone, is entirely devoted to these old singers who come here to burn the past and present drinking tea. The future, it is the skin of their great-grandchildren. Admission is free, you just have to sit and wait. It is 9am, there is nobody; the anguish of a new appointment but missed you hugged Hosanna, a first Dengbej arrives. This is a young man, about 50, who had a three-piece suit for the occasion. Tea drinking, the discussion begins. You do not speak Kurdish, it does not matter, he is responsible for the conversation. He was soon joined by his eldest son, a bearded piercing eyes wearing traditional clothes, a turban and baggy trousers crotch pending. Another tea drinking speaking of the origins of some French words. Aggressive come from Kurdish Ager, fire. It explains the paths of languages ​​from Mesopotamia to Rome via Athens with pieces of sugar that eventually soon dissolved by the heat of the 4th tea that we provide you. It is 10am and we realize that the sun rotated. Chairs, table and sugar to the other corner of the patio to catch it moving. It heats slowly. Another Dengbej sits, dyed hair and neat tie. The conversation continues, you feel Fluency in Kurd but it is the pedagogy of your contact you student. The steam rises as your fog dissipates. Other dengbejs arrive, the circle widens, they serve you tea while the sun rotates. Chairs are moved and starts to chat. We chat, you are served tea and the sun rotates, the sun is moved while others dengbejs arrive and are served tea. It is noon. The caffeine and sugar boil your belly. Around you, no one shows any trace of excitement and you understand that we will have tea to drink something before it burns any song. You broke your youth face. You feel a little bad with everything that thickens your blood sugar and tea that made him to leap then you will lie on a mat in the small dark room. You palpitating so many that your head out. When you wake up it's dark and everyone is gone. The sun rotates and here, it is he who decides ...

***

Memory and Youth

When you get into the collection of traditional songs, it was romantic images full head. We imagine walking in the mountains for hours, arriving at the ground end of the day on not a hut inhabited by an old man. Ideally, he had a long beard and quavering voice. Ideally, it will have suffered a lot during his life and song, broken but powerful, bear traces of his courageous fight against the weather, oppression and holes memories. Anyway, when you embark on such an undertaking, it would be Alan Lomax in the Mississippi Delta. But life has this fun it seeks to methodically dismantle all fixed ideas in your head, so it may be curled. My first collection of traditional singing is made to a teenager, mid-morning, the lodge-keeper HLM Kayapinar.

Abdullah's voice was tremulous but not full, but his short ancestral chant. Entitled "Be PIRAZ," he tells the founding myth of the Kurdish people, the king Zohac had two snakes on his shoulders. Every morning he would sacrifice two children whose brains he used to feed reptiles. Topics soon tired of reproducing loss, began to replace two brains by sheep brains. Each day, the child was saved to hide in the mountains, soon joined by other miracles. Gradually, the children band was large enough to be called for a people, it was the Kurdish people.Everything is already there, the central power and the mountain as maquis. The story could stop there but life this fun plant in each reign it the germ of its decline. The day of spring (Newroz) Kawa the blacksmith had enough to sacrifice her children. So he set out, slipped in by stealth the castle and killed the king Zohac. It is in memory of this happy outcome that each year, the arrival of spring, the Kurds celebrate the victory of the oppressed against the oppressor.

And every fall, they are disappointed. Around me, everything indicates that I arrived late autumn. In the clouds and looks shredded branches, heat days of peace is covered with a layer of gel. Decline each door he in him the seeds of its revival? Since their absence, many forgotten people have doubts. For now, singing Abdullah door spring is lacking in his own. His voice and mustache are full of promises. Tomorrow, the memory will come from the youth.

***

Ibrahim and lizard

The atmosphere here is one I always dreamed of. In one corner, a man repairing a violin in front of her son in another, three teenage humming an old song learned yesterday, from time to time, an old Dengbej sings. Her voice is clear and powerful. The sentences are short. They are the upper of this cozy poetry that the musicians know the place by heart. Silences are filled. As a poem, which was connects us. We are in Mesopotamia Kultür Merkesi, the cultural center dedicated to the traditional Kurdish music. Mamoste Macir Murat sits near me. He does not say much: a little politics, a song and a story. His eyes are a stormy sea. Each word takes you: "The Prophet Ibrahim was to be thrown into the fire when a lizard walked to the fire with a drop of water in the mouth. The executioners asked him:

- What are you doing, little lizard?

- I just save Ibrahim.

- You think you can put out the fire with a single drop of water?

- I know that this drop is not enough, he replied, but I have shown my camp. "

For this story, Murat invites me not to lose too much time in the corridors of neutrality. I understand the urgency but I'm here recently. Before the lizard, I must experience for myself the injustice which is so familiar. It is an almost obscene position. As we speak, hundreds of prisoners flow gently toward death. Murat out of 3 years in prison for singing in Kurdish and may return soon. However, the accuracy is the only weapon I have and it is a fragile weapon. A word too and everything collapses. In my country, the songs lose their luster by dint of seeking audience. The information is packaged as entertainment and a hunger strike is nothing but a boring replay. It is for these reasons that I came here to find a breath. He begins to sing. His eyes are bottomless.

I have not succeeded, I have failed

there is nothing to do

I can not experience the joy

there was wind, dust rose

it has covered all the love of my heart

so much trouble, so much trouble

despite my efforts, I could not enjoy

this love

this life

of this world

His despair is no posture. Compressed into his eyes, he bursts through his singing. Time is short and also weighs on me. I can not squeeze my pen. If I testify honestly, maybe I going to convince my friends to turn into lizards. If I add, if I marry an anger that is not mine, it will emit doubts. We depart facts. The old lady handcuffed become an argument to support it. There oppose other arguments, it will rise further as the war in Syria and liberalism and the Ottoman Empire. The old lady is already in the truck. I go to the indignation not counted. I can not squeeze my pen. Ibrahim is on fire. I write what I see. What I see is sufficient. I want to be a lizard.

***

Weekend û Ben Sen

Down the vehicle, the eyes began to sting. My right eye was no longer in it but near the left, which had to bear the full review of the situation, wept a tear formal Polis Brolem. That may explain why the taxi refused to charge us the race. A tourist who goes to Ben u Sen, it is not a tourist. There are neighborhoods like that.

Wedged between two hills at the foot of the walls of Diyarbakir, there was stuffed products of demographic explosion of the 20s. In the 70s, there was stuffed farmers who came to the city looking for work. Finally, in the 90s, when the Turkish army wanted to deprive the PKK of its mountain supporters, those who remained green were balanced on the roads and settled in a hurry in the least desirable places. Used to accommodate the misfortune to open heart, Ben u Sen received everyone hugs between his arms. The haste with which the area has been built has its charm: it is a little anything. The anarchy of its planning, it Gecekondu (built in one night) is a bubbling vitality. Very clever who can say what is the home Seyhmus where begins that of Ronahi. The small Serat chasing a hen may be the son of the latter, but it could also be the nephew of a cousin who lives 14 hens here. Whatever, children are everyone; such as ovens, firecrackers and stones that will launch on the windows of the school, the weekend came. Was no money to go hang out in town so we stay here, we take care with what you have in your hands. Chickens, chocolate bars ... sometimes stones and cops. Luckily. The police in the area, away from their own, are themselves seeking occupation. Each leisure.

However, it happens that the rules are not respected. Sometimes two armored cars come to meet photographers lost in the hills. It confiscates their passports are erased incriminating photos and asked them politely to please walk to the post, it is for their own safety. The cloud that surrounds children are not covered, guns and tear gas are just for decorum. But when a little boy, playing the game as we taught him, throw a rock at ground level, the policeman suddenly loses his smile diplomat and his rifle weapon. His superior yells at her: not before the French. He could have said thousands of other things. He did not say. The kids are left to play with the chickens and chocolate bars, the police made us lose an hour and gave us tea. They are not worried. In a few days we'll be gone.

***

Before prison Baglar

Diyarbakir, Baglar, 30 October 2012 Ah. "I tell you Mom, what causes my torment. "The melody sung by protesters like this song as a French policeman looks like another policeman. The words I do not understand but I understand the eyes of those who support them. Today, they are thousands to Diyarbakir prison; However, the place of rendezvous was not clear and water cannons were responsible for making the difficult rally. The situation is not new and each side recites his lesson. Each dam calls his volley of stones; every stone, his punishment.Of course, the battle is uneven. The stone thrown on the armor of a tank designed to withstand bullets does not threaten the Republic of Turkey. But 28 years of conflict we contemplate. 28 years and 49 days. The spreading of the problem in time distorts everything. It is not a stone, it is the symbol of all the stones thrown from 84. Whoever throws is not a teenager, he is his brother in prison and his father died in guerrilla warfare. Farthest from the roots, it fulfills its role without knowing the function. Balconies, toddlers watching their elders fled into the narrow streets sucking the corner of a towel trying to dry between black smoke of white pepper spray and tire smoke. Eyes begin to sting and makes big sister back in the kitchen. Already, they learn the grammar of conflict. Amidst tanks and armed police, we can see a girl from school, a cart delivering wood walkers. With time, you learn to enjoy the peace hidden between two balls. Today, it is only a little war. For an outsider, it's a lot. A few blocks away, most of the crowd gathered around Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Kurdish party.Some slogans are beautiful: 'Destroy all cells. Those of the interior, those outside. ' And always the melody. Oh I tell you Mom. The helicopter passes. Amidst the dense crowd, bottled water is brought in a wheelbarrow. Old ladies offer candy. There was in the air a mixture of hope, fear and excitement. Everyone knows how the day will end. I was in had also explained the course that morning and every detail is checked: how quickly things escalate, how to position in relation to guns and stones not to run the risk, when to start running: not too early to not raise panic unnecessarily, too late of course. The helicopter returns. All this is so technical. Soon, the speech will be completed and the crowd will turn on. Soon, it will stretch and the police will feel overwhelmed. Soon there will be a new jet stone and a new replica. It will run in the streets, stop. Walk back, wait until the smoke clears. There will be no time to think. Soon, things will accelerate and it will be difficult to know what is happening. The streets will be blocked and it will follow the woman who enters a building. There will be fire. Were they real bullets? We look ajar by police around a young guy who does not move door. They return with the foot. Is he dead? One should stay to be sure but it pulls you by the sleeve. Should be installed. Hide. Hang on. This is technique.

***

Diyarbakir - October 27

They chose a place that resonates. Buildings of Sanat Street in the renovated area Ofis give songs demonstrators echo they lack. They are about 300 sitting on pieces of cardboard and blankets newspapers yesterday relataient promises that were not kept. In Turkish prisons, 680 prisoners Kurds began their 46th day of hunger strike. Their claims are not new: the right to defend themselves in their mother tongue before the judges, better conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, historical leader. For the rest, we'll see. Their cells and their determination are now beyond the reach of their friends in Diyarbakir. They go through and everyone understood. It is noon and despite the rally, the atmosphere is cozy. The songs are sweet and slogans are spaced enough to leave room for silence. A worthy reflection in response to the large police deployment will not find anything here to blur the border between words resistance and terrorism. A French tourist who does not understand the language can still read the word 'diyalogue' on panels claims. Yet indignation patterns are still many and each day can be one of the bad news. Anxiety looks attests. Children are gathering for a game and the explosion of fireworks used to celebrate Eid quickly confiscated by the parents. Over the years, we learn that the story does not always end well, the neighbor has not always pity that the police baton is not used in case of overflow. However, the sky is never completely blocked and the word of the Kurdish people must remain audible. Even if only sing one minute of two. After replacing the megaphone by building walls washed by rain. Even if what we hear not all. A little bit, it's a start.

Source: Elie Guillou, publice singer

Photo: Gaël Le Ny

- See more at: http://www.actukurde.fr/actualites/379/le-carnet-de-voyage-d-un-chanteur-public-au-kurdistan.html#sthash.2pBVy5Fr.dpuf

Le carnet de voyage d'un chanteur public au Kurdistan

L'ActuKurde vous propose le carnet de voyage d'Elie Guillou, chanteur public, qui a témoigné de la vie quotidienne des kurdes à Diyarbakir, capitale du Kurdistan de Turquie, en compagnie des deu...

http://www.actukurde.fr/actualites/379/le-carnet-de-voyage-d-un-chanteur-public-au-kurdistan.html