Kurdish whispers

“We are understaffed and overworked,” lamented a brilliant happy personal tutor. Her name was Zeynep and she came from Kurdistan. She spoke English, Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, French and Esperanto. She collected magic stones from the Black Sea where she lived.

Her grandmother told her stories in Kurdish. Her language was out loud. It was outlawed by the scared politicians in Ankara. Kurdish people whispered.

In an unprecedented wave of support, millions of sad, yet strangely serene women facing callously arranged marriages filled with empty hopes and vague promises of love and happiness enlisted to engage strangers on distant borders.

This wave of support resembled the open handed movement in the moment, the long fare well gesture a mother reluctantly gifted her daughter recently before watching her disappear into the teeming stream.

"Be well my love," sang the mother. Her daughter joined a band of women, singing and sighing.

Commonalities

She talked of "homesickness." All the letting go. How she was born on Air and lived in a small French town on the Belgium border for some time.

How her temporary work visa finally expired and she returned home. She wore French designer sunglasses and they fit her brown oval face to perfection. One day it was skin tight jeans. The next an orange and green flowing sarong. A fashion touch. She had the island ease, a long black thick mane, the divorced island hubby and the one boy-child over on Lombok going to school. Living with his "uncle," a tribal chieftain.

She worked part-time in a small cafe-bar near the beach, the white sunset sand, rolling blue apprehensions, French tongued memories. "I am so bored," she said.

"I want to build some bungalows. I own some land. I need to develop a source of income."

She chatted up the odd European. She mixed drinks. She spoke with her son using her cells, her DNA. She stared at the sea. It poured into her black eyes. It was everything she'd run away from. To find herself. To discover her island again and again and again when she ran in reverse through dreams and memories.

 A yellow butterfly sailed through a garden. Darting high, low, in, out of fragrant red, yellow, white glorious blooms.

A diver spoke about money exchange systems after coming up for Air. How the value of economic currencies fluctuates. A butterfly and turtle have so much in common. One in air one in water. Both floating.

Metta.