Çîrok Ecnebî photos and zines

I used to have a thing for some sort of survivalism. It was quite common in my social circles at certain time. It was inspired by being radical green anarchist who saw some signs of civilizations or environmental collapse everywhere. Earlier as a teenager I saw a coming of collapse in capitalism. But that was more a conclusion that came from reading too much marxist writings. As a typical teenager, I had no fear of death. Not even the collapse. Then again one could ask, did I even have imagination to think what all it would lead to if capitalism would had collapsed. Anyway, the survival from that meant back then the faith in working class. That was important part of my empowerment. Thanks to Class War federation and anarchist unions, for the first time I got pride of my socioeconomic background. Later in life my survival mode was more individual based. But of course not totally, after all I still was an anarchist. It meant more like learning stuff to be able to handle different extreme situations. Temporary collapses of infrastructure and repression from some evil forces. Self-defense, community organizing, first aid, feeding of masses, being able to fix and create circumstances whether they be material or psychological. A big variety of things.

That was and still is a learning process for life. Something you never can be enough good at. In a way survival, personal and your community’s, becomes one of the key things in life. It isn’t the worst one for sure. At least this kind of survivalism is not excluding others or competitive by nature. Learning and sharing and from that learning more. Whether it is about using guns or building safe spaces. Freirean, feminist and anarchist pedagogics in the mix. For the best of all the oppressed folks.

Surprisingly few things I learned about myself in all those years atleast from the survivalist point of view. It all came up in my face when I came to Rojava. After all North East Syria sounds like a place where some serious survival skills are needed. And of course, some of the things learned before were handy for sure but some things I did seriously underestimate. One of those things was writing.

“Books saved my sanity, knowledge opened the locked places in me and taught me first how to survive and then how to soar.“

-Gloria E. Anzaldúa

I’ve loved reading since I was a small child. At least that’s how it has been told to me. Still it was fairly few times in my life that I would have gained any official expertise or career paths with it. Those few schools I went were not much of a success. I got more interested in radical literature than anything useful for serving the capital or even academic world. Punk, animal liberation, radical green stuff, queer, anarcho-whatever, you name it. Living the life in margins with zines, pamphlets, small printing press publishing and underground literature. This flourishing DIY culture encouraged me to write as well. On walls, on paper, and sometimes even to internet even though I am more in favor of the first mentioned ones.

I had studied earlier my behavior under heavy stress, without sleep, in fear, hunger, and so on. Things you would actually think that are important in a war zone. I didn’t study enough what happens when I am in a situation where I cannot express myself due the language barriers nor make publications or even write in my own language. That was something that started eat me from inside after some months. Sure I had a diary and so but it is not the same way of writing to me than with zines. And after half a year I started to go down. Works were not going well, political situations started to go worse. All out war started to seem more likely. I got used to the wild dogs barking in the night and waking up to some casual shootings, to extreme hot and the situation that you find often scorpion under your mattress, but I did not get used to the thing that I cannot write zines, put out pamphlet and bind books. That started to keep me awake at nights. I felt like i cannot process the things I see or feel. Experiences of good and bad and neutral. They all will get lost or blurred too much from my head if I don’t write them down and put out in the ether. And other thing was the lack of zinester community. Because I don’t work in some cultural sector here, I don’t have any connection to any literature underground or subculture of authors. I haven’t even seen a single copy machine in more than 9 months not to mentions any bigger printing devices. Before I saw them daily for years and years.

I had to make a decision, to let the piece of me die inside, or to start writing. Choice was obvious, as I didn’t come here to die. I came here to learn and live. And for me to live seems to mean to write and already I learned that writing is key factor of my survival.

Çîrok Ecnebî,

Rojava

Text about survival which didn’t survive

This short story was originally written on December 2021 to a Paper and Ink -zine that had a survival themed issue coming up. My writing sadly did not succeed to that zine. I was really attracted to that zine (which I had never seen on real life) after looking up some photos of it. Really nice looking and as I value paper prints over everything this zine would have been especially nice to be included. But things did not turn out that way so I have to practice more writing and try again later. Check out the Paper and Ink -zine from this link: https://www.scumbagpress.co.uk/

And make sure you buy those publications quickly as they run in small print numbers.

Couple months later I got an idea while reading zines from internet that why not try to send this one to Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness zine. Such a nice publisher! After few months I asked whats up and got reply that they will get back to me shortly. Time passed and after waiting again more than a month I got reply that this text was not really what they were looking for. So I decided to put it in my blog then. Check out Tangled Wilderness pages from here: https://www.tangledwilderness.org/ 

There’s some good stuff to read! I’ve liked some of their zines during the years. I’m not quite sure but possibly even one of the first Rojava related zines I’ve read was published by them a long time ago.

Well, I guess it is now quite obvious to make a conclusion that this is not a good piece of writing as it is rejected already twice. So, I wont send it anymore anywhere but publish it only in this blog.

Hopefully one day I’m able to write more better stories and get published on these mentioned zines also. Just have to practice and read more! Especially now when the situation here in Rojava stresses me out a lot as the security situation just got worse than earlier (due the constantly increasing number drone attacks) and I only work, eat and sleep and that sure isn’t the best way to develop writing skills.

This story was sent to Sand Journal on december 2021 but it did not got published. Sand is a nice looking journal but obviously not suitable for my zine style writings.

Anyways, here is a book nerd strory from last december and a photo from May 2022 from a nice little park in Qamishlo city. There are lot of flowers, some trees, statues of famous kurdish authors and poets and building which is used to hosts forexample book publishing events. Really nice place to sit and read!

(picture of Mûsa Enter – Apê Mûsa)

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War-torn bookworm

Leaving my book collection was one of the hardest parts when traveling to another side of the world. It might sound a bit strange since I had to leave most of my friends, comrades, hobbies, house, most of my life behind. I could not fit more than three books into the two backpacks that needed to be enough light to carry around. Possibly for really long distances and under the burning sun. Traveling to another side of the world and voluntary entering a war-torn area from where millions of people have fled around the world. I headed to North East Syria.

After some time being in here, Rojava, as we mostly call it, I realized that I took a lot of wrong things with me. One those wrong decisions was books. I should have taken more. Even few light and small ones would have made a difference. Or think more carefully which books to take. Now I just took a few randomly from the pile of books that i hadn’t yet finished, but had started and they seemed enough interesting. And they are the sort that is not sold out from publisher. So that I could more easily abandon them if needed. Without heart aches. As I really am a book collector also. I don’t even know how many books I own. More than thousand. Hopefully less than two thousand.

Language is something I miss the most. I love my first language and hardly learned any of those new languages that would be useful here. English is not one of the useful ones here as I’ve come to notice. However here are some books available in print format in English. Very few but still some. I’ve managed to get a hold of a few older books some internationals (voluntary fighters for the revolution of Rojava) have left here and they have been giving little comfort for my endless hunger of books.

I did manage to attend on a local bookfair. And as always at bookfairs tend to happen, I bought some books. Sadly not enough. At that point I hadn’t yet been here long enough to realize the amount needed. Back then I didn’t understand what it does to state of mind and way of thinking when there is no paper books to read. I do have an ebook reader. It gives a little comfort but it sure isn’t the same as reading books, zines and journals printed on paper. Not for me. Not for book loving bookworm.

This of course should be just a minor thing, after all I am in a war-torn country. There should be some bigger concerns. And sure I didn’t think of books when trying to hide from enemy drones, and often in the evenings the possible scorpions under my mattress appear to my mind than books before falling a sleep. But still. I cannot help it. I think of those books almost daily. And it hasn’t changed at all during the first 6 months.

Cirok Ecnebi,

Rojava

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Cover letter:

The short non-fiction story written to Sand Journal is about my travel to North East Syria to volunteer for the ongoing revolution. The story focuses on the unexpected side which I faced as a person who has a passion for reading and for which I was not at all prepared – the lust for (printed) books. I have not been writing earlier in English. In my native language I write and publish zines and pamphlets regularly. My pen name (the Kurdish name) was given here by some comrades. Cirok roughly translates as “novel”. Here we do not use our official names and some times not even nationalities as it is some sort of a security protocol inside the apoist movement.

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Third person bio:

Cirok is working class based anarchist from Europe. He has not managed to get any degrees from schools during his life but as a dreamer still wishes one day to achieve one. To Rojava Cirok went to see and learn from the revolution and about Democratic confederalism. Three books traveling with him are Miguel de Unamuno’s “The Tragic Sense of Life”, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells and Pierre Rosanvallon’s “Democratic Legitimacy”.

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On May 1st (International Workers’ Day), 2022 short story of mine was published in Rulerless -magazine. In a digital form. but the print version should also come out soon. Really exited about that as I have eternal love for paper printing. I also have eternal love for the 1st of May. As working class anarchist it has always been my favourite holiday and celebration day of the year.  I carry the Haymarket martyrs always in my heart.

But about the Rulerless magazine – my input there is a short story named “Good mazot – Fumes from Rojava” and one bw photo of a diesel burning heater, sube.  I wrote the story last year, around december. Now that the first winter with sube is behind me I’m still amazed about the amount of diesel that those heaters were burning. It was a lot. And besides the heaters the diesel was burning also in generators and cars. Massive amounts. Fumées massives.

Rulerless – an anarchist anthology “Love, hope and joy” can be read from the link below.

https://www.rulerless.org/love-hope-joy

Most likely all of us have heard or read about the war in Syria that started around 10 years ago. It has been the bloodiest war in recent times. UN said the body count to be over 350 000 and the amount of refugees because of this war is something like 12 million. The area is suffering from extreme drought, poverty and corruption. It sure sounds hopeless. Bit less know but still relatively well known is the stateless state, the autonomous administration that was born in the area in the middle of all those mentioned horrors. Revolution that carried the Kurdish name Rojava was set up in the midst of those drying lands. People trying to build an area with freedom of women, peaceful co-existence with all ethnicities, direct democracy and ecology. Who would ever oppose such things? Well surely there are many who do, but I mean that most of us people who believe in humanity and such, would not oppose stuff like that. It also got me interested and like many anarchists alike, I traveled to Rojava. To see it myself, to live through it. To learn and share, to be part of something that is changing history.

I guess learning good things always requires of learning bad things as well. And I assume that revolutions are never just smile and sunshine. Sunshine on the other hand is something that Rojava surely isn’t lacking. I came on early summer and was aware of that Middle East is hot. But I really didn’t think it to be that hot. Endless amount of sunbathing and exhausting heat. I’ve only lived in North America and and Northern Europe and this was something I couldn’t imagine beforehand. And it was not only me who couldn’t take the heat, most of people were not outside during the daytime. Temperature was over 40 for months. Nights were not much better. People said it is like this nowadays. That it gets worse every year. The lack of electricity was making it even worse. Some places had shortage of water for weeks at the time. Loud generators were spitting black smoke while trying to transform the dirty diesel into electricity. Motorbikes, cars, pickups, trucks, spitting also black smoke in the air. Clouds of pollution that are not really moving anywhere but was just standing still. Soil turned into dust and when there is wind that sand dust flies around and gets deep into your skin, inside your laptop, your clothes, your lungs. Black shoes were not black after walking just few steps outside. I felt being on some desert but this area was not suppose to be desert. Us humans just made it that way. The climate change didn’t wait until we got some agreement on the carbon cuts. That fact really slaps you in the face here.

The region is facing the worst drought in years. Some say in 25 years. Numbers don’t really matter anymore as the soil is just vanishing with the wind. Disappearing from an area that is suppose to be the breadbasket of the country. In worst case that will lead to famine. Last summer there was already a shortage on bread. And this is the Rojava. The place where people try to manage stuff so that there would not be famine. Unlike the neighboring country, Assad’s Syria, which is way worse. There is the same drought and besides that the corruption on all levels of society. Then there are neighboring countries like Iraq and Iran where people and students protest heavily against the corrupt leaders that cannot manage in any way the problems that climate change has brought. There is Turkey, a country that is putting more effort on sabotaging Rojava’s water supplies than putting down forest fires and disappearings of lakes inside their own region. This area is surely drying out faster than it should. Studies show that global warming happens in this part of the world faster than in other places of the world.

One big problem is oil. There exists a theory that where is oil production there will be destruction of the area, both environmentally and socially. Middle East is like the oil pump of the world. Endless lines of oil trucks on the highways that go through fields turned into desert was a horrifying sight. Trucks on the asphalt roads that the burning sun had softened. Looking at those trucks in lines and few times losing count after seeing 40 of them, it really made me think is this really worth it. How many places we still are going to turn into Mad Max style deserts before we start to think there is something fundamentally wrong in our lifestyles in the western world. Literally, we suck the life out of these places and burn them into ground. Sure this was not a new thing for me, but seeing it in front of my very own eyes, well, it just feels more raw. Feels more brutal and touches you deep. And then there is the war. Drones and jihadists make things really hard here but still people try.

The problems I’ve seen here were not so much about people, but it more about the states everywhere. The colonialist and imperialist states that still play around here their power games and resource wars. Other states continuing to destroy the climate and the biggest bill to pay is here where the climate has warmed so rapidly. States really prevents the best potential to come out of people here.

When Noam Chomsky was asked earlier this year in an interview what he sees as the greatest obstacle in solving the climate crisis, his answer was similar as my observation here: Two major obstacles. One is of course the fossil fuel companies. Second is the governments of the world, including Europe and the United States.

Çîrok Ecnebî,

During the Christmas time 2021 in Rojava.

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(This was originally sent to UK based magazine called It’s Freezing in LA. It was not published. IFLA is publishing new issue soon and it has many interesting articles (and sure much better written than mine). Make sure to check it out:

https://www.itsfreezinginla.co.uk/magazine 

Luckily I have also managed to get published few times while being here in Rojava! Most of my submissions to journals and zines have not been published but here are links to few rare exeptions.

Once this exeption happened with this nice online literary journal and arts magazine from Canada called The Forget-Me-Not Press. It was a pleasure to work with those people and my story can be read from the link below. Mine is called Bark Nights and it is the last story on the issue 2.

I was told that this winter in Rojava was more cold that usually. One night temperature reached -9. To me that is not cold and after the burning hot summer of 2021 I enjoyed those temperatures of cold winter nights. 

https://www.forgetmenotpress.net/

One of my writings got published in a Third Iris Zine issue called Botanica. This zine was themed around the nature and human relation to it. My story is called “Not one but many” and it also has one photo of mine alongside the text. Both the story and photo are about the rough nature of Rojava. This zine can be bought both in print and pdf format. This was actually one of the two articles which I got first approved to be published while being Rojava. What a great feeling it was and a start for a zine writing after a long break. Later I learned that every published story seems to require 8 non-published ones for me. Here is the link: 

https://www.thirdiriszine.com/order  

(This story was written and send to Gutslut press as they had an open call in the end of the year 2021. Sadly I did not get published but I will try again later. Love their visuals! Check them out: https://gutslutpress.com/ )

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Man kink of the road

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When you travel across the world to a place where is war going on, some might think it is suicidal. And you go to that place not knowing any language that is spoken there and knowing that you are almost unable to learn new languages, it might make you feel alien when arriving there.

I decided to do it anyway. Even though I love my life a lot and even when I hate feeling alien. The thing is that I cannot escape my beliefs. I have some sort of never ending need to follow anarchist ideology that I discovered when I was a teenager. It has taken me to a few places around the world which I sure wont regret when I’m old and gray. I guess it is some sort of need for being honest to yourself. And sure, I might regret not having a bunch of children nor steady income when being sick and alone, but at least I tried to do so that the kids that somebody anyway made to this world would have still some sort of planet and would not live under tyranny.

I try to keep that and a bunch of other positive things in mind when stumbling around in strange situations in North East Syria for awhile. Actually I don’t have a slightest idea how long that while will be.

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This place use to be crawling with monsters. It was Isis caliphate. Their actions and practices were something that we would like to think were left far behind, like in the medieval times or Nazi Germany. But that shit was going on here just some years ago. And before that there were other problems with the Syrian regime. It feels somehow relieving that after all that crap, the period of horror, there came this new thing that is aiming for equality of different ethnic and religious groups, and especially trying to emphasize the destruction of the root of all evil – patriarchy. And that ain’t the root of evil only here, it is global. Here is a seriously interesting social project going on. It is called democratic confederalism. That’s something so democratic that it even draws anarchists like me from all around the world to come here and see it, participate in it, learn from it, and study it.

I would be lying if I’d say I don’t enjoy some special freedoms that are here. Like driving pickups and shooting with big guns. No licenses asked. But sure that’s not enough of a reason to be here, I mean if it would, I could as well have gone to Texas. And that’s never going to happen.

Crazy thing with Texas is that the gasoline pumped from this region is probably cheaper there than here. That’s something I’m having hard time doing the math about. Oil seems to be huge problem more widely in this part of the world. One of the things that draw foreign states here.

But freedoms ain’t ever for free. Here is sure also some stuff that I really suffer from. And I would be lying to say that life here would not be stressing the hell out of me on a daily basis. The hardship of language, the heat, the drones, the food, giving up of some individual joys. But then again, it would be ridiculous to not see the biggest revolution of our time because of not being able to give up small personal pleasures. If I would not have come here, I’d be later regretting it for the rest of my life.

The name of this story came from the sweet black truck I happened to see once when visiting Qamishlo (first photo). It somehow touched me. As here we all are asexuals. Not kinks nor anything else either. Is that reasonable? Well that would be a whole another story to write about.

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Photo taken while ordering falafels

(and asking if the white sauce is vegan).

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Life after death is here very present in everyday level. People who are part of the movement here and get killed became shehids, martyrs*. Their names and faces are everywhere. In shops, street billboards, offices, bumper and window stickers. Some roundabouts, parks and buildings are named after them. Their stories are shared in TV and magazines. People take pride in it, along the sorrow of course, when their family of friends are shehids. The graveyards are massive. Gravestones have photos and flags. Funerals are sometimes huge mass events with talks and honoring rituals. I have to say it is impressive. And even for me, after a short period time, it makes sense. This is a good way to keep the loved ones lost in our lives. In our struggles.

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Comrades with us, Şehîds.

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Elements of death and community here have reminded me of Maurice Blanchot writings on those topics. Things how communities are actually built through death. Blanchot is haunting me as I cannot get my hands on his books here and I cannot remember exactly what he wrote. If death would be actually the glue that binds the community together. Here it really would be like super glue.

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Çîrok Ecnebî, Rojava.

Anarchist and zinester from the so-called western world, trying humbly to learn and at same time trying actively to avoid the traps of orientalism. Enjoys most to see the ruins and ashes of the old evil empires.

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twitter.com/cirok_ecnebi

nitter.ca/cirok_ecnebi

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*=more about the shehid culture can be read on:

https://www.anarchistfederation.net/on-the-culture-of-the-shehid/

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I will collect here some stories, photos and links. Stories are those that I have not managed to get published. Photos are some random ones taken while travelling around. Links are to some zines and magazines that I have managed to get myself published. Let see later if I will have more time to put here also something else.

I also have Twitter account where I post and share stuff randomly: twitter.com/cirok_ecnebi

Mostly I read nowadays Twitter through Nitter as it is much faster and as internet connection is not really the best one here, and Nitter can be read without login. I enjoy the feeling that not every link and tweet wich I open is registered and monitored. Give it a try! Here is a few instances that work fast atleast here in Rojava and with VPN:

nitter.nl/cirok_ecnebi

nitter.ca/cirok_ecnebi

nitter.actionsack.com/cirok_ecnebi

Hevalê pisîka min.