By Jan Pêt Khorto
At night, when the corpses are laid in queues
I sit...Alone
Staring at your offspring, Adam,
And I remember Able
Feeling shivering in my limbs without motion,
In fear of a sleep like your murderer son’s sleep.
At night,
When the owls escaping from our smells
I sit
And penetrate with my eyes the webs of spiders that surrounding me,
I push with my deadbeats arms
Flies that are bored like me of the breath deadbeat people,
And remember you, father
I remember you Noah,
Remember your drowned people
Remember your pigeon and crow
Remember the olive brunch
And close my eyes.
At night,
When the lamps of God are putting off,
And the light is taken off our solitude,
I sit
With creaking overwhelming my ears,
Humming, probably, I don’t know
I hit my forehead with my fist .. I hit .. hit
Fleeing from your talks about me in your houses
Among your women and children
Among your parents,
And a monster wears me.
I stand in rebelliously
Rapping the silence of the night
Pressing the air with my hands
Right...left
Keeping you away
I fight with imaginary knives, phantoms that lurk for me
I cruse you,
I cruse the nights, the days, lamps, knives
I cruse ethnicities, revolutions and nations
I cruse the scriptures, maids and hymns;
And I reach the borders of God
To be blocked
After a punch from a warden who calls me a Kurdish...
I close my eyes,
Bend my head
And sleep under a rain of swearwords.
Sunday 6 June 2010
Exile IN Exile
By Jan Pêt Khorto
“Extremely unbelievable!” Many newcomers in Denmark say this when they compare between the ways of processing the asylum system and treating of foreigners here with their homelands or other EU countries.
Especially when it comes to the “patience” and “slowness” of processing cases, moving between the asylum centers every while, the living conditions, the way of handling their situations if their cases being rejected and what happens in the “Kommune” after getting the permission to stay in Denmark, and the ways of integrating the refugees (school, praktik, ... etc). Problematic is also how refugees are expected to know all the system and rules in a few months, the authorities confusing them with their letters in Danish every day without worrying about if they got the meaning of it or not, and plus all of that, the updating news from the Danish People’s Party and their leaders who are making the situation of asylum seekers and refugees being worse and worse here in Denmark.
I didn’t mean that the system is not in “working mode”, it’s absolutely systematic and well-organized, but if the government here is used to it - even though that I heard a lot of criticisms about the health care system and other topics from some Danish people - they should not expect from the newcomers in a short time to know everything, therefore the general picture becomes that the foreigners are dumb or they “came from behind the cows", as a kurdish saying goes, which means that they only know farming, so many of them are not able to be integrated.
Some spent months, others spent years in their way to Denmark, having the dreams in their imagination for a better life, living, future..., and suddenly being in front of a huge wall of rules and laws against the foreigners, smashing all their hope’s columns, and being ordered to be a Danish person - whereas no European would be Somalian or Iranian, if we changed the positions. And those rules are not only aimed at the asylum seekers or refugees, it’s concerning all the foreigners who come to Denmark. But would the Danish people, when they have to be in another country for any reason, have to change all him/her self to be a part of that community?
Before some days, I read an article in “Copenhagen Post” about comparing the leaders of the Danish People's Party to Hitler, and actually – if we tried to remember that period of time – we will see that when he was talking about the “pure Germany”, and now hearing about deporting the foreigners and having the “pure Denmark” as Pia Kjærsgaard likes it, don’t you think it’s a bit close?
“Becoming a part of the 'selected'", as Michala Clante Bendixen, member of the Committee for Underground Refugees says in her last article in Politiken newspaper on 16 of May, or being a citizen, is getting to be a kind of dream for the foreigners or let’s say “the Aliens”. Or, as Michael Svennevig, the Danish Novelist and play writer, says: “to be accepted in the group is one of the main targets which you have to work on”. But, let’s have a moment of thinking; many reasons were under the light when those people fled from their homelands, political reasons or humanitarian, and now they have another kind of surviving project in this community called “holding the spider’s network” where every body have what's call "starting help" from the government, which you have to make a dramatic system for your self to reach to the end of the month doing nothing - just eating and school. But, what kind of integrating it will be if you are just attending school and have no ability - because of the Financial situation - to do any thing else?. So this network is the lowest limit to live which you will feel like you had been stock in it with no moves.
So, do the humanitarian organizations - Amnesty International, Red Cross-Asylum Department, Danish Refugee Counsel to name a few - have any kind of effects on the present government with the situation of “Aliens” here, I don’t think so, and if, it will be like a painkiller injection for a short period of time while they cook more new laws and rules in their “politician’s kitchen” for the guests.
“Extremely unbelievable!” Many newcomers in Denmark say this when they compare between the ways of processing the asylum system and treating of foreigners here with their homelands or other EU countries.
Especially when it comes to the “patience” and “slowness” of processing cases, moving between the asylum centers every while, the living conditions, the way of handling their situations if their cases being rejected and what happens in the “Kommune” after getting the permission to stay in Denmark, and the ways of integrating the refugees (school, praktik, ... etc). Problematic is also how refugees are expected to know all the system and rules in a few months, the authorities confusing them with their letters in Danish every day without worrying about if they got the meaning of it or not, and plus all of that, the updating news from the Danish People’s Party and their leaders who are making the situation of asylum seekers and refugees being worse and worse here in Denmark.
I didn’t mean that the system is not in “working mode”, it’s absolutely systematic and well-organized, but if the government here is used to it - even though that I heard a lot of criticisms about the health care system and other topics from some Danish people - they should not expect from the newcomers in a short time to know everything, therefore the general picture becomes that the foreigners are dumb or they “came from behind the cows", as a kurdish saying goes, which means that they only know farming, so many of them are not able to be integrated.
Some spent months, others spent years in their way to Denmark, having the dreams in their imagination for a better life, living, future..., and suddenly being in front of a huge wall of rules and laws against the foreigners, smashing all their hope’s columns, and being ordered to be a Danish person - whereas no European would be Somalian or Iranian, if we changed the positions. And those rules are not only aimed at the asylum seekers or refugees, it’s concerning all the foreigners who come to Denmark. But would the Danish people, when they have to be in another country for any reason, have to change all him/her self to be a part of that community?
Before some days, I read an article in “Copenhagen Post” about comparing the leaders of the Danish People's Party to Hitler, and actually – if we tried to remember that period of time – we will see that when he was talking about the “pure Germany”, and now hearing about deporting the foreigners and having the “pure Denmark” as Pia Kjærsgaard likes it, don’t you think it’s a bit close?
“Becoming a part of the 'selected'", as Michala Clante Bendixen, member of the Committee for Underground Refugees says in her last article in Politiken newspaper on 16 of May, or being a citizen, is getting to be a kind of dream for the foreigners or let’s say “the Aliens”. Or, as Michael Svennevig, the Danish Novelist and play writer, says: “to be accepted in the group is one of the main targets which you have to work on”. But, let’s have a moment of thinking; many reasons were under the light when those people fled from their homelands, political reasons or humanitarian, and now they have another kind of surviving project in this community called “holding the spider’s network” where every body have what's call "starting help" from the government, which you have to make a dramatic system for your self to reach to the end of the month doing nothing - just eating and school. But, what kind of integrating it will be if you are just attending school and have no ability - because of the Financial situation - to do any thing else?. So this network is the lowest limit to live which you will feel like you had been stock in it with no moves.
So, do the humanitarian organizations - Amnesty International, Red Cross-Asylum Department, Danish Refugee Counsel to name a few - have any kind of effects on the present government with the situation of “Aliens” here, I don’t think so, and if, it will be like a painkiller injection for a short period of time while they cook more new laws and rules in their “politician’s kitchen” for the guests.
P E N A B E R ... Kurdish literature in exile 2
En eftermiddag i selskab med kurdisk og dansk poesi, litteratur og musik
Firat Ceweri, Dorthe Nors, Alan Pary, Jan Pêt Khorto, Niels Hav, Axin Welat, Line-Maria Lång og Adil Erdem.
For Dansk PEN er litteratur en brobygger mellem kulturer. Vi vil med Shahrazade-turnéerne gerne give et dansk publikum mulighed for at stifte bekendtskab med en række forfattere, med rødder i andre kulturer og litterære traditioner, der har slået sig ned i de nordiske lande. Flere har omfattende forfatterskaber bag sig og er kendt blandt læsere verden over, andre er nye stemmer.
Samtidig er det i PENs ånd, at skabe rum for forfattermøder på tværs af nationale og litterære grænser, og vi er derfor også meget glade for at præsentere forfattere, der er rundet af de danske traditioner.
P E N A B E R ... Kurdish literature in exile 1
En eftermiddag i selskab med kurdisk og dansk poesi, litteratur og musik
Firat Ceweri, Dorthe Nors, Alan Pary, Jan Pêt Khorto, Niels Hav, Axin Welat, Line-Maria Lång og Adil Erdem.
For Dansk PEN er litteratur en brobygger mellem kulturer. Vi vil med Shahrazade-turnéerne gerne give et dansk publikum mulighed for at stifte bekendtskab med en række forfattere, med rødder i andre kulturer og litterære traditioner, der har slået sig ned i de nordiske lande. Flere har omfattende forfatterskaber bag sig og er kendt blandt læsere verden over, andre er nye stemmer.
Samtidig er det i PENs ånd, at skabe rum for forfattermøder på tværs af nationale og litterære grænser, og vi er derfor også meget glade for at præsentere forfattere, der er rundet af de danske traditioner.
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