Reheval Rêzan, You Became One With the Free Mountains

We always worry about not being able to describe what we experienced while writing, and the full emotions we felt at that moment. Maybe it’s because everything is a little superhuman behind the door that the life we choose opens for us. When we are in it, we are always ready to go.

We look at the incoming, the outgoing, the ones we’re with. We turn with them and look at ourselves and the path we have taken. We have accumulated so much, witnessed so much, shared so much… Experiencing all this in a miraculous party like the PKK adds more meaning to this. Because this is the right address for purification and simplification against polluted emotions and rusted hearts. Well, if we ask what makes it so big, what gives it this power and meaning… the answer is our martyrs who devote themselves to struggle and freedom.

Living according to the reality of war and acting with the awareness that a comrade will die in the struggle for freedom at any moment creates a deep commitment and spirituality. Because you know that your comrades, whom you drank from the same bowl and shared the most difficult conditions, will one day write the epic of valor in a majestic war. That’s why, like a camera, your mind captures a glance, smile, laughter or a word that will guide your life from every comrade you see and makes it eternal. But the difficult thing is how we can describe the feelings created in us by those frames that are not erased from our minds in their most real form. That’s why we often think about whether we can describe a comrade and we always feel that it is very incomplete. Now I’m fighting a big fight to explain to you too. I’m asking what is the most accurate and how can he be described as a martyr?

I remember the first day you came to the mountain. It was the last days of autumn, we were approaching winter. I was the guard outside, after greeting everyone and sipping the first guerrilla tea on the mountain, you came outside and sat next to me. It had rained and the distant mountain range was covered with fog. It smelled of earth and wet wood. You wanted to feel it deeply, you wanted to know it. Your excitement was reflected in us. In fact, you were so excited that your body began to tremble. But when I thought that it was just cold said, “I’ll give you my kefiye (scarf) if you’re cold”, “No, look, I came to the mountain, how can I not shiver? This tremor is from excitement. Now that I’ve come to the mountain, I don’t want anything else.” you said. And I said to you, “Oh, wait, what is this, now I’ve come to the mountain, you say enough is enough for me, after a while, you will start to impose on me when I will go to Bakur.” When I said that, you just replied with a smile.

You had a trait that was very exciting for every moment of life. While you were having a conversation, a discussion, an evaluation or practical work, your excitement was always reflected in us. In short, you would be very excited about the life of the PKK. Because you knew that the cure for all our wounds was here and you always felt it deeply. There was no limit to his agility, courage, enthusiasm and modesty. And your love for life and your comrades… That’s why you would try to make all the moments meaningful by living all the emotions to the fullest.

Rêzan, meaning “the one who knows the way”. Yes… You took your name from a friend Rêzan Erzurum, who went to take action against the enemy in the city center of Dersim in 2015 and was martyred there. You were impressed by his courage, his fearlessness. That’s why you said you wanted to be like him by taking his name. You set out on this road to find and know.

You wanted to approach the mountains like a mother and take everything you could from it. That’s why you left yourself in his lap like a mountaineer, like a child of the mountains. And the mountains walked you, raised you. Yes, you were born to be a guerrilla. You had all the characteristics of a guerrilla, kept it alive, and made an effort to complete the missing aspects. You had great curiosity. Your wish was always to be a professional guerrilla, to improve on that basis. Because you knew that this process could only be answered in this way. You’ve already managed to create it yourself in a very short time.

Our Leader says the PKK is a labor party. Labor is integrating because it beautifies, makes meaningful, endears and protects. The more effort you put into something, the more priceless it becomes in your eyes, you avoid everything. You have enlarged life with your labor and sprinkled all the beauties in the hearts of your comrades, in every frame of life, and you have so internalized this life in yourself. This feature would sometimes embarrass us. Because you never get tired, when we go on missions, you do the heaviest, you do the hardest, and you don’t complain a bit about it, on the contrary, you always motivate your comrades by laughing and creating morale.

Yes, dear friend. You are part of the beauty created by the PKK… You set out with your word to the martyrs and the country. With every step you made it bigger. Every martyrdom has brought you closer to the word of revenge. By embroidering these in the deepest part of your heart, you never let it be defiled. Stop and think maybe a thousand times. How will I take revenge for the bodies that have fallen to the ground, for the most beautiful faces and brave men and women?

You promised to join the PKK at a time when the enemy attacked in its most brutal form. You made your way to the mountains of freedom in a process where you carried out brutal practices against Kurdish youth. You carried only your faith and your anger with you. You could not turn a blind eye to so many attacks, massacres and brutality. You were trying to deal big blows to the enemy by dedicating yourself to PKK guerrillaism in every aspect in order to have a big accountability. You took part in the sharpest and most brutal war in our history of struggle. You have witnessed the heroism in Zap, Avaşin and Metina. With this awareness, you marched on the enemy without hesitation.

You joined this war when you were going to Bakur. It is every guerrilla’s dream to engage in guerrilla activities in the North. Because the northern mountains are our qibla. You participated in the war in such a process. Because everywhere you stepped, there was a trace of a martyr. The sense of responsibility this created in you was dragging you to fulfill the promise of revenge. That’s why you attacked the enemy positions at the front, fearlessly as always. You dealt him unforgettable blows.

You were writing the heroic epic of a just cause, while they were the victims of a purposeless and unjust war. You were shooting,every bullet that came out of your barrel became the language of the storm in your heart and it was echoing on all the peaks.

Just as you got your name from your friend Rêzan Erzurum, thousands of Kurdish youth will carry your name, walk on the paths you have walked, and realize your dream of Free Leadership, Free Kurdistan, by displaying unmatched heroism in the freedom struggle.

Now on a continent children kiss the sun
mothers lament on another continent
the sadness of a faded garden on my face;

I’m drifting away
I say that living can only be so right
but this is so beautiful oh the love rose of spring
daisies break in an ugly whirlwind of death;

You who leave your longings for roses in a delicate spring
You flew away like a coy bird
drawing an endless blue to hearts
While the pain of time is processing, to the laughter of life…
Nuri Can