About this story
Abdullah Pashêw is speaking as a Kurd who has seen his people hunted, erased, and treated as something to be swallowed and forgotten. The question “Do you crush us?” - " قڕمان دەکەن؟" is not asked with fear. It is asked with anger, pride, and certainty. Even if we are killed, even if our bodies are consumed, even if our land is taken, we will not leave. The poet says that if Kurdistan is turned into a house for others, we will still remain inside it. If our flesh is eaten like cheap food, we will return in another form. We will become what cannot be removed: worms in the soil, microbes in the blood, snakes in the stomach, pain in the veins. This is not self-insult. This is resistance. It means that oppression does not end us; it spreads us. The poem shows how Kurds have been dehumanized for generations, and then turns that cruelty back into strength. If we are treated like disease, then we will become the disease of injustice itself. We will appear in your sleep, in your food, in your water, in your language. You will not be able to escape us, because we are part of this land and this history. Even joy is not safe from us. If you celebrate our death, your joy will turn into mourning. If you hold funerals for us, they will become laughter in your face. Night will not hide you from us, and morning will not free you from our presence. We will stand on the horizon and block the sun itself. This poem is a promise. A Kurdish promise. That no matter how many times we are killed, banned, buried, or denied, we will not disappear. We have learned how to survive inside pain. We have learned how to exist even when everything is taken from us.