Short Story English To Kurdish Pdf
Maryanna Vernia
The festival was held at the Mohammad Sheikho Center for Arts in Qamishlo where some 75 out of a hundred short stories were nominated for the competition. The nominations included 32 stories in Kurdish, 25 in Arabic and 18 in Syriac.
Speaking to Kurdistan24, Ehmed Bave Alan, the Editor-in-Chief of a Syria-based Kurdish newspaper Byerpress, said that war is not the only issue that concerns people in Rojava. Alan added that many cultural events and activities are still ongoing in the region.
Regarding the aim of the festival, Berivan Khaled, the head of Authority of Culture and Arts, said that introducing people, academics and journalists to the short story as a literary genre is the purpose, not just the rewards.
Amid the violence and devastating civil war in Syria, many cultural activities are held every year in Rojava. These events include the Afrin Short Film Festival in April and Kurdish Language Day in May.
Burhan Sonmez is one of the most interesting voices in modern Turkish literature. His book Istanbul Istanbul is one of my favourites and recently won the EBRD prize for literature. As a result, I was deeply honoured when he agreed to meet with me to discuss his writing and work as a member of the activist group PEN International.
Burhan: The process was very long. My first novel took me ten years. Because when you are away from home, in exile, the current of time is a bit different. You don't feel it. On one hand you feel it very heavily, on the other hand you feel it very lightly. You don't rush for some things while you are rushing for others.
Burhan: My first thought was not to write about that. I wanted to write a book about Istanbul, about how can we see Istanbul from different points of views. When we write about Istanbul from the west, we see the east. When we write about Istanbul from the east, we see the west. But what about if we write about the city from the underground? What can we see from below? There is no east or west, north or south there is only upward and only the sky and the real Istanbul. Then we start to question the reality when you are underground and in pain.
Burhan: The way I write is that I have a general frame idea. I know the frame in my mind. I start taking notes about some scenes, places, stories and characters. The first page in the first chapter takes me one year. Because when I write the first page I think about the rhythm, the melody of the words and the combinations of verbs and adjectives and the forms of the sentences. Through that one page that takes me one year, I see the whole book in a mirror. After finishing the one page it is so easy to write the rest. It might take me five years to write the book but much easier than the first page.
Lets move onto my next question. The book is about imprisonment and torture. But you shy away from describing the torture itself. It all happens off-stage as it were or is described by the characters when they return from it. Why did you choose to do that?
Burhan: Because I was not interested in torture or the feelings torture gives you. What you feel before and after torture was the main thing for me, because at that point you can see the invisible side of a personality: Our fears, our hopes, that kind of thing. I wanted to keep the story around that circle.
Burhan: I think partly. You know in current modern literature we usually don't borrow a certain genre. We like a combination of different genres. I would like to see this book as partly prison literature and also architectural or urban literature. The soul of a city, what makes a city like Istanbul itself?
Luke: How do you see it as part of Turkish literature? There is kind of a lot of short story writers in Turkish literature. Obviously, Sait Faik springs to mind. Do you see yourself as part of that tradition as well?
Burhan: Story telling is a strong pattern in this book. I wanted to bring our traditional story telling into a modern frame of literature, to have a bridge from story telling and short stories to the modern novel.
Burhan: Yes. Also one of his books is the legend of the Bulls (The Legend of the Thousand Bulls ed.), I don't know the title in English. There are so many books and Ince Memed of course.
Burhan: There are so many writers in Turkey. Like you said Sait Faik, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar to me are kind of knights of words. They were very brave. I believe they had a certain type of talent. Turkish poetry in the twentieth century was very strong for example Nazim Hikmet, Ahmed Arif, Turgut Uyar, Glten Akın. While I was a teenager, because, as you know, translated novels are very common and very popular here, I read a lot of foreign literature: French poetry, Russian classics, modern English writers and that kind of literature was always part of my life.
Writers are in danger so are journalists and academics not only in Turkey -Turkey is unfortunately very popular nowadays- but from Saudi Arabia to Mexico, from Russia to Eritrea. We have to perceive all those places with, of course, our local ties.
Luke: Part of what you do with PEN is helping writers who have been arrested. I was wondering if there is a theme running through there from your work with PEN to Istanbul Istanbul, which is about prisoners?
Burhan: No because when I was writing Istanbul Istanbul, I didn't have any active connection with PEN. When I was writing that book maybe five years ago, I was a member of English PEN and after that book was published I was offered a position at PEN International.
Burhan: This is just my personal opinion. We shouldn't be very expectant about these sorts of organisations. We can not bring everything into reality. But we can show one thing in this world. Nobody is alone. When my writer friends or journalist friends are in prison, they know that they are not alone, in Istanbul or the world. When a journalist is shot dead in Mexico, other journalists know that they are not alone in this world. We always support and help each other. I think that this is the main thing PEN can do. On the other hand, we have influence over governments and international institutions.
Burhan: Yes. That kind of letter shows that writers support each other. In this world, big financial corporations support each other, or arms dealers support each other or corrupt politicians support each other. They should see that writers also support each other. You can sentence a certain writer to prison that will not make us scared. Still we will help each other and we will never step back. That's the point.
Luke: Another difficult question. You have been a political exile before. Are you worried that your work with PEN might cause problems for you? Sorry if that is too personal a question.
Hassan Blasim is an Iraqi writer and filmmaker, whose series of short stories The Iraqi Christ won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014. He speaks to Ruya about being a film student in Baghdad at the time of the UN sanctions, shooting his controversial film The Wounded Camera, his journey on foot to Europe, and his upcoming anthology, Iraq + 100.
What was the first story you remember being told? It was a French novel for teenagers which I read in translation. It might have been The Three Musketeers. It was full of action and tales of knighthood. In hindsight, I find it a bit commercial, but the story stayed with me.
In The Iraqi Christ, Salwan notes that there is no fantasy fiction in Arabic literature. Is this something that you believe as a writer? Arabic literature lacks genres, and I am critical of this. It has no variety like Western literature. We do not have fantasy, surreal or war literature. Our only discourse is reality and we do not venture into new territories. I am currently editing an anthology of short stories, Iraq + 100. We have asked Iraqi writers to imagine Iraq in 100 years. The writers are surprised and ask, why Iraq in 100 years? For them, this means finding political solutions for the country.
What are the roles of magic and horror in The Iraqi Christ? My work is often described by the international press as Magical Realism. Both my books The Madman of Freedom Square and The Iraqi Christ, have horror in the backdrop, though The Iraqi Christ has more elements of black humour. It reflects the environment the stories emerged from. A car explosion in a market, where children die, is a fact but it is also a horror story.
What writers do you most admire?The Iraqi writer I like most and I even have a spiritual connection to his work is my friend Adnan Al Mubarak, who lives in Denmark. Lately, I like the works of the Japanese writer Haruko Murakami and the American writer Paul Auster.
What made the journey so difficult? I crossed to Iran from Kurdistan on foot. It took days to get through the mountains to Turkey. When I arrived in Istanbul, I was a refugee and an illegal immigrant. I worked illegally in restaurants, factories and gardens. My employees often took advantage of my situation, and the pay was minimal. It took me a year and a half to save enough money for traffickers to take me to Bulgaria. I tried four times and failed. Each time, I returned to Istanbul and started over. When I finally got to Bulgaria, I was working illegally in restaurants, and had an accident where I lost my finger. I saved for over a year, to pay the traffickers for the final leg of my journey. I got in a truck to Serbia, and went on to Hungary, then Finland. Illegal migration to Europe is risky. It was particularly difficult for the women and children I met on my journey, who had come from Pakistan through Iran. Each person had their own painful story. These stories about illegal immigrants are not covered enough in the press, which only provides general information. Each person has their own very painful story. Illegal immigration is difficult and tragic. There should be a serious effort from Europe and the countries where people migrate from to address the issue.