By Zelal Zagros
This will be a personal account of how me and Bişeng Brusk got to know each other in Rojava, how we spent time together, how comrade Bişeng Brusk has influenced my life course going forward and how, despite enormous distances, our paths have time and time again crossed and intertwined. It is a path that begins in Europe and continues to the free mountains of Kurdistan, where its grand finale takes place.
After I made the decision to get to know the revolution in Rojava, it was clear to me from the beginning that I would only stay for a determined amount of time. It should have been a time of learning, understanding, and discovery, through which new alternatives for our struggle in Europe could be found. The comrade who was responsible for our structures visited our location again and again. With her bright and open eyes and her wonderful and unrestrained laugh, she stood out to me from the first time. Although we could not speak any Kurdish at all at the time, that did not hinder us from having a lively and intensive exchange with each other. Above all, Bişeng Brusk has had a great influence on many of us, including myself, in our lives and struggle. For many of us she is the comrade through whom we first encountered the power of the freedom struggle of the PKK and PAJK.
Conversations that aim to create understanding, build up new thoughts, and help the other person progress have unfortunately become a rarity in this world where individual self-interest dominates. Without using big words, but rather simply through an aesthetic and radiant attitude, it was she who made us question ourselves. Many internal contradictions were resolved in a completely natural way. I still clearly remember how much time she took to discuss the meaning of internationalism and a globally connected struggle, despite the language barrier. It was never the theory, but rather the practice that really convinced us. A love for the details in life has made me realise time and time again how much we, as comrades from Europe, understood so little about real life and rather created crazy dream worlds with incredible theories and discussions far away from the reality of struggle.
Over my early days in Rojava, Comrade Bişeng opened many new perspectives in my understanding of an internationalist and globally interconnected struggle. For example, once during a long car ride in the rainy winter of Rojava, she turned her head back and asked me whether I thought I could fight in an internationalist manner, when fundamentally I had always remained regionally bound in my thoughts and actions. Whether one's own struggle would not, instead, always remain constrained within nationalist boundaries and thus under the umbrella of a state-centric mindset. Whether I could even understand, with rather superficial words, the depth and importance of the internationalist struggle for the entire world and humanity. Comrade Bişeng was very clear and transparent with her words, she pointed out our mistakes and criticized us, but we never felt offended by that. This is because she, through ideological depth, never attacked the person per se, but rather the system behind them. At that moment I felt ashamed, a very revolutionary kind of shame, because it made me question old patterns and ways of thinking.
It was a defining moment. Right there, even though it took me some time to really express it, I decided very quietly and deep in my heart that I wanted to become such a strong and expressive revolutionary so that I no longer just wanted to talk, but rather wanted to fight within myself, together with my comrades, and against the enemy. At that moment it was clear to me that I cannot always suppress the longing for freedom, that I do not want to be satisfied with a partial freedom and that I want to give more power to the many internationalist martyrs through a radical choice, becoming myself an internationalist fighter who overcomes all national borders in mind and spirit and thus creates a wonderful, new social freedom around herself.
We spent a lot of time with each other, talked a lot, laughed a lot, and saw a lot of places together. A selfless person who gives their all to the revolution, who is no longer interested in their own well-being and personal comfort, generates admiration and respect in those around them. In other words, the militant modesty and radical devotion to the revolution that were very characteristic of our comrade are also reflected here. Above all, this is what creates this unconditional love and connection in battle among us. Indeed, it is her honesty and her courage to assert and advance the ideology of women's liberation that has given us as young women so much new hope and strength. I want to put it this way: In a world where everyone fights for themselves, where hope and faith have become a crazy fantasy, where we long like robots for a short life dictated only by a deadly routine, and where we long to escape and forget the thoughts, feelings, and contradictions created by capitalist modernity, Comrade Bişeng has managed to bring us closer to being human again. She gave us, as young women, the love that made us able to love and she gave us the faith that made us finally believe in ourselves. This is exactly what we see as a revolutionary and militant pioneering role that manages to put the new paradigm into practice.
There were times when we didn't see each other for a long time, but that never meant we grew apart. The day I went to the mountains for the first time I knew that eventually I would see her again, and thanks to our contact through all the comrades it was possible for us to feel and anticipate it so much more. After I finally got there, she was one of the first friends I saw. She personally found and gave me the guerrilla clothing, and this moment was very meaningful because she was the comrade who had accompanied me through all the work from the very beginning up to the arrival in the free mountains of Kurdistan.
What does it mean to love? And where will we find the truth? For us, this search lies in continuing along the paths taken by our fallen friends. What is the truth of our Şehîds? For many people, this is a huge contradiction and very difficult to understand, but this is one of the core points that connects us so profoundly in this struggle and one of our most important values, which we protect with body and soul. It is our pure cooperative spirit, based on a common ideology, that transcends time and life and death. Our Şehîds, who overcome even death in their belief in a better life and in their love of freedom, become a part of eternity, they become the epitome of the Movement. They become the light that leads us out of the darkness.
Even though Comrade Bişeng Brusk has fallen, she lives on within all of us. She is immortal because she is still breathing through us and, through our fair and conscientious practice, she will live on forever. That is why it is so important for us to always remember and never to forget, because forgetting would be a betrayal to our history and the fate and struggles of our comrades. Regardless of whether we knew them personally or not, their words and actions alone have a huge influence on our own practice. No matter where we are, whether Rojava or Rojhîlat, whether Bakûr or Başur, even in Europe, everywhere we see the results of the great efforts that Bişeng Brusk and other comrades have built up in more than ten years of revolutionary militancy in working with the youth. Above all, it is our responsibility to pass on and consciously live the love and belief in the revolution and the pioneering role of young women, which she felt so strongly and for which she gave her everything. It is therefore also our duty and responsibility to build a strong and revolutionary militancy within ourselves and our surroundings that we remain loyal and faithful to, through which we can actively protect ourselves against the fascist and patriarchal capitalist modernity. It is also our duty to understand more deeply the scope and power of the revolution and, with respect and hope, never to separate history from the present and never to let the deep connection be severed, no matter where we are and no matter what we think or feel. In a strict sense, to always preserve all the great and revolutionary feelings that give us strength and that move us forward and use them to achieve clarity in the fight. That is why, in the name of our fallen martyrs, we call on all young people with a strong desire for freedom to take a strong position against all the enemy attacks and to take an active role in the fight for freedom and life, because only in this way will we be able to live up to this great responsibility that now lies on our shoulders. Only in this way will we be able to take revenge for all the fallen comrades.
“To be able to struggle you need clarity and clarity you achieve in struggle.”
Bişeng Brusk, 13.04.24
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