The Exiled Language - Arsalan Chalabi: Translated from Kurdish by the author

Writing in Kurdish, a forbidden and unofficial language, caused significant psychological  strain. Kurdish poems were found only in the mountains, beyond the city, or concealed in  private rooms. Since my teenage years, I have sought to connect with Kurdish words in print.  Encountering them ignited a profound response within me, occasionally blurring the boundary  between reality and imagination. 

Writing in Kurdish posed significant risks. Persian and Arabic dominated schools, universities,  and government offices, effectively excluding Kurdish from official domains. These languages  controlled all institutional functions, preventing Kurds from challenging the established  bureaucratic order. 

All these institutions lined the city’s main street, which also contained the only bus stop and  taxi stand. Despite a population of nearly 10 million, Iranian Kurdistan lacked train stations  and metro systems. In the early 2000s, bus stops and administrative centers symbolized modern  life. Beyond that street, however, the area resembled a village, as if time had reverted to the  early twentieth century. Modernity existed only there, and Kurdish felt like a foreign language.  This did not concern me. Writing in Kurdish quickly became inseparable from my life. In my  mother tongue, I created a parallel world where words were bold, restless, and wild like horses  whose hooves shook the ground. 

At times, those words felt like wild, uncontrollable waves. When I experienced sadness, and  the outside world became harsh, a voice in my mind urged, “Write. Write in Kurdish, Arsalan. 

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Just write.” My other world expanded through my mother tongue and the long, winding stories  my mother and grandmother told—oral Kurdish tales that rarely left the house but found a  home in my world. 

During my school years, security officers frequently monitored the use of Kurdish words,  which created a tense environment. Skipping school was not an option. My father, resembling  an old Western sheriff, subjected me to his own trials marked by threats and warnings. Although  neither he nor his ancestors attended school, my generation in the late twentieth century was  the first to have this opportunity. 

Persian and Arabic words were part of my home life, yet I kept them locked away in my school  bag. Without the threats from my teachers and father, I would have avoided these languages  entirely. Occasionally, my exhausted father expressed his frustration by opening my school bag  in the living room and throwing textbooks at my face—math, science, physics, Persian  language, Persian literature, Arabic grammar—alongside notebooks filled solely with Kurdish  words. These notebooks contained simple poems and folk stories I had memorized from  cassette tapes of my mother and grandmother. Not a single Persian or Arabic word appeared in  those notebooks. In those moments, I felt grateful that my father was illiterate and could not  distinguish between the languages. For him, it was sufficient that the pages were filled. 

My father believed that survival in Iran required learning Persian and completing school.  Whenever the Kurdish language or related issues arose, he would angrily declare, “The Kurds  are finished!” Each time, I felt a tremor within myself and my parallel world. My mother and  grandmother quietly withdrew to a corner, and a heavy silence filled the house. My father’s  words conveyed profound meaning—stories of partisans, bullets, grenades, rocket launchers,  years in prison, exile, mountains, trenches, corpses, and rivers of blood. Amid this turmoil, I 

retreated into my parallel world, where I found calm and continued the stories of my mother  and grandmother. 

During my first eight years of school, the security officer functioned as a living “No Entry”  sign. Students avoided areas where they might encounter him. Although officially a counselor,  he was not a teacher and provided no instruction. Every school had someone like him, and he  interacted with us more than anyone else. His mission was to transform Kurdish Sunni Muslim  children into Persian-speaking Shiites. This challenging and exhausting task depended  primarily on punishment rather than education. 

Each morning before classes, he stood before the uneven lines of students in the schoolyard to  begin the morning program. He placed a microphone in front of a tape recorder and played the  Islamic Republic’s national anthem. We were expected to sing along; however, he knew our  voices would not match the original, so he always played the original recording to reinforce it.  Then he shouted the words with great force. I always felt the anthem’s words strike my cheeks  like pellets. 

Every day, the classroom blackboard displayed a sentence in classical Persian Nastaliq script:  “Preserve the Persian language.” Above it hung a portrait of Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the  1979 revolution. Until early high school, my jaw, tongue, and lips resisted speaking Persian. I  felt like a broken machine; my speech was uneven and often stumbled, as if an invisible  handcuff tightly bound my lips. 

I wrote obsessively until I was stopped. Near the end of my first year in high school, a security  officer discovered that I was writing poetry in Kurdish and confiscated my notebooks. The  situation deteriorated rapidly. Following a week of suspension, counseling sessions, speech  therapy, and a requirement to read extensive Persian religious poetry, I was pressured to enter  a provincial short-story contest. The story had to be written in Persian and focus on the Islamic 

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Revolution of Iran. I refused repeatedly, offering excuses. Any student associated with the  security officer was viewed as a traitor, and writing poetry or stories in Persian about official  events was considered even worse. Due to my interest in the arts, I had to interact with him  occasionally. At that time, I was involved in various art forms, including singing and acting in  absurd plays, but literature felt inaccessible. 

I only knew the folkloric stories recorded in my notebooks; the rest remained unclear. Since  childhood, a persistent voice has compelled me to fill those pages. This continued until my  father, informed by the school principal, discovered that the notebooks he had worked hard to  purchase contained Kurdish words instead of Persian and Arabic. That night was unforgettable  and violent. My mother and grandmother immediately left for a neighbor’s house. My father,  seemingly prepared for confrontation, struck me with a harsh slap that shattered my world. His  worn, rough hands tore at my cheeks. I remained silent, like a punching bag. When he grew  tired, he turned on the television and radio, increasing the volume of Persian and Arabic voices.  He tore my notebooks apart, threw the pieces at me, and searched the house for me. His body  shook, saliva hanging from his mouth. As always, I retreated into a parallel world to escape  reality. 

The past never releases its hold. For me, it resembles a relentless drill, continuously occupying  my mind both day and night. Even during sleep, it manifests in my dreams and alternate  realities. This sensation intensified with the onset of my exile. 

Relocating from the Middle East to Europe feels akin to entering an entirely different world.  Despite shared ancestry with Europeans, many aspects differ, comparable to two distinct  characters or operating systems. It requires three to five years in exile to fully comprehend its  impact. Initially, exile resembles a fresh, unnoticed wound; however, over time, it expands,  dominating the mind. Exile transformed my alternate reality. Six years after arriving in 

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Denmark, I occasionally felt overwhelmed by it without consent. Ultimately, these episodes  culminated in a series of incidents. 

The first episode, purely psychological, occurred at a train station in Copenhagen. When the  train arrived, I slipped into a parallel world without control or intent. Inside, the metro  transformed into a ship filled with mermaids and a small black duckling as our captain. The  tracks became an ocean merging with the distant sky. Everyone spoke Kurdish. A passenger  resembling the Little Match Girl from Hans Christian Andersen’s story—the youngest among  us—stood at the front conversing with the captain. At that moment, a voice entered my mind  from above, like a snake slipping into its hole, attempting to reach me. It felt like wind moving  through the ship and settling inside my head. When I tried to speak to the others, no one  responded. Then the voice transformed into the static of a radio unable to find a signal. The  waves outside grew louder than ever. Suddenly, in an instant, the waves swallowed the ship.  Like someone caught in a long nightmare, I jolted awake to find myself lying in a psychiatric  ward in northern Copenhagen. 

I prefer not to detail that disturbing period, but it took a month to fully return from my parallel  world. Later, the medication felt like deadly meteorites striking my planet. Everything  collapsed. Nothing remained the same. It was as if a flood had wiped everything away. My  Kurdish world vanished. Perhaps a wormhole swallowed it. 

My father and grandmother have passed away. Recently, I have been checking my mother’s  WhatsApp stories frequently. She has aged and often expresses her hope to see me again before  she dies. I share this wish: to sit beside her in Kurdistan and write a poem in Kurdish once  more, to see those words published, and to witness the Kurdish language flourish in  universities, schools, and government offices.

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Arsalan Chalabi was born in 1986 in Bukan, Iranian Kurdistan. In 2015, he was arrested by Iranian Intelligence Agency forces and accused of organising and participating in demonstrations supporting Kobani and the Kurdish people. He fled to Iraq after a temporary discharge. He traveled to Denmark in 2016 to seek political asylum, which was granted. He lives in Denmark. His other works can be found: Flemmes Vives Anthology vol 1 2017, Recours au Poems No 159, The Curlew, Hvedekorne Vol 3 2019 Det poetise bureau, Udkant Magazine, Plenum vol 4, Parnassus magazine, Nusyar Dastan, Hellbender Magazine, Politiken Newspaper.