The Matriarch Messiah – Book Tour and Giveaway

Chapter 3

A country can’t be free unless the women are free.
—Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned leader of the PKK, recognized as a terrorist
organization by the US, NATO, and the EU.

Mountains outside Siirt, Turkey
12:40 p.m. GMT−8, May 1, 2021

“He didn’t die in vain, Zara.”
Two dark-haired women stand high, overlooking a green valley, beyond which there is another mountain, and another behind that. These are the northernmost peaks of the Zagros Fold, a 1500-kilometer creation of the Arabic tectonic plate smashing into the Eurasian plate twenty million years ago. They form a crown around the lands known today as the Fertile Crescent, extending from southern Turkey through northern Iraq, along the border with Iran and down to the Red Sea.
But for these two women, the only importance of these mountains is the safe haven they have provided for the people known as Kurds, who have found shelter and safety in these alpines for thousands upon thousands of years. Who until two years ago were the largest ethnic group in the world without a country.
The taller of the two women wears a grey outer gown over a full-length purple dress, black belt, sandals, and headscarf, the latter decorated with colorful embroidered flowers and carefully wrapped around her oval face, tucking away her shoulder-length dark brown hair. On her wrist is a simple wind-up watch.
Her almond-shaped dark eyes are fixed on the horizon, where she still sees the village.
“Didn’t he? Die in vain?” replies Zara. “I told my little boy brother not to join the PKK. We needed him at home. He was the last man left in my family. And now, there is only me, my mother, my grandmother, and thank Xwedê, still my great-grandmother.”
Putting her hand around Zara to comfort her is Peri, who in contrast wears a formfitting red cotton top covered by a loose beige sweater, black cotton capri pants, and tan sandals with sequins matching the ones on her sweater. Her
shoulder-length dark brown hair is pulled into a ponytail, with two stylish twists on each side of her face. And on her wrist, at the adamant request of her friend, nothing. No MoxWorld devices at all.
“He died while trying to get the women and children of that village, the one you imagine seeing on the horizon, up into the mountains as government troops searched for the PKK,” Peri states calmly. “He died a hero.”
“And what good are heroes?” Zara laments. “Especially when they are dead.”
Zara walks along the mountainside through the lush green vegetation of spring. Patches of red, purple, blue, and yellow flowers litter the landscape. She bends over to pick a number of red ones.
“My mother lined his room with poppies of this color after his death. The color of the blood shed by the men of our family.”
Following her best friend as she walks, as she always has, Peri asks, “Then why did you insist we meet here, if his memory brings back such pain?”
“Because you want me to help the Anatolian Kurdish separatists. There is a price one pays. My little boy brother did,” the taller woman replies, her long earlobes peeking out from her headscarf in the gust of wind. “I don’t agree with separatism. I believe we should work out a peaceful solution. One that would better the lives of Kurdish women. Equality for all as we saw in Rojava. Women and men governed together as equals. I want you to think about the
consequences of what you ask of me now.”
“They only want your advice. You do not have to take up arms.”
“They want my connection to him,” Zara replies, pulling her silk scarf closer around her oval face. She throws her poppies with the wind gust, which sends them flying a hundred meters as if they were little balloons.
Silence as they walk by a more crimson-red set of poppies. Peri bends down and picks some and hands them to Zara.
“I do not like that shade of red,” Zara says as she drops the crimson reminders of “him” and crushes them under her sandal.
“Why do I follow you, Zara?” asks the disturbed Peri. “You are so complicated.
Poppies are poppies.”