Nawroz (Kurd New Year’s Day)

Once upon a time in Kurdistan a king named Zoak weighed his people down as a real despot. This king fell ill: two serpents were menacingly
rising up in each of his shoulders; they wanted to eat up his brain. They hissed without stopping and trying to slot into the king’s ears. Bearing his situation no more, Zoak called a doctor that gave him a terrible advise: in order to get free from those two serpents, he would have to give them an adolescent’s brain every day. This advise was taken and the ministers gave regularly the king some young boys. In consequence of the fact that the victims augmented, some Kurds decided to withdraw to the mountains in order to escape from this monster. Among them there was a smith called Kawa who had just sacrificed a lot of sons; he finally decided to rebel together with his companions and in order to give a signal to the whole population, he declared: “When you see a fire burning on the top of all the Kurdistan’s mountains, you could try to rebel all together.” Everything went according to his predictions, and during the rebellion Kawa and his companions killed the king and his ministers, putting an end to the royal oppression. They called their first day of freedom “Nawroz”, “The New Day”.

But Nawroz is also the statutory Kurd holiday. It comes to the 21th March opening the spring. It is a feast of political meaning, the authorities are aware of its importance and so forbid it.

March, the 21th, the Kurds go to the tops of mountains to light a fire. Fire is the symbol of life, of spring that is renewing and the symbol of revolution. Even if the authorities forbid it, the mountains light because until there will be fires on the tops of mountains in that night, there will be Kurds in life.

When the whole people meet, the intellectuals and the professors read revolutionary, traditional or hand composed poems. Then all the listeners sing the most famous songs dedicated to Nawroz. The song of the Kurd poet Piramerd begins with these words:

Today is the first day of the new year
That comes back to us.
It is an ancient Kurd feast
And its return fill us with joy
Here is the sun that rises
From the tops of mountains.
It is the martyrs’ s blood that
Is reflected in the dawn.
It isn’t worth crying the martyrs,
Because those who live in their
People’s heart never die.
It is that vermilion colour
That takes the news to the Kurds,
Nearby as well as in the nation’s borders.

In this poem a new symbolic meaning of fire appears: it is the Kurd blood spilled as a price for independence, whose colour not only blemishes the dawn but also comes from the fires burning in the night.

Piramerd is not the only one to have written about Nawroz. On people’s request, numerous poets and cantors were inspired from this feast and a stage adaptation, between myth and reality, had a great success in the cities of Kurdistan.

This success and this feast keep on worrying the authorities that every year are scared of its possible consequences. For that the Iraqi state has tried to cover up this feast giving it an Arab name, with a different meaning and has called it “The feast of trees”; whereas in Turkey it has been totally forbidden.