Sipsey Street Irregulars: Kurdish Proverb

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Kurdish Proverb

Kurdish woman and Peshmerga fighter.

Peshmerga, Peshmerge or Armed Forces of Kurdistan (Kurdish: Pêşmerge or پێشمه‌رگه ‌‌) is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters. Literally meaning "those who face death" (Pesh front + marg death) the Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan have been in existence since the advent of the Kurdish independence movement in the early 1920s, following the collapse of the Ottoman and Qajar empires which had jointly ruled over the area. Peshmerga forces include women in their ranks.-- Wikipedia.

When my son came back from OIF1, he brought me a Peshmerga headcovering (kufiya) which is close in pattern to the one on this guy's head above. Matt is a big fan of the Kurds. It was given to him by a Peshmerga fighter just for being an American soldier. Americans, except for Woodrow Wilson who sold the Kurds out to British and French imperialism in 1919, are very popular in Kurdistan.

Anyway, Matt showed me how to wrap it around my 7 and 3/4 Charlie Brown head and I must say I looked stylish. I keep it in my collection next to the South Vietnamese Ranger jacket.

Here's a link from 2007 about the Peshmerga: http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001412.html

Anyway, I was looking through my stuff on Kurds (they figure in Absolved's final chapters)and found this Kurdish proverb.

"Mirina ser piyan baştire li jiyana ser çukan."

Literal Translation: "Death on your feet is better than life on your knees."

Damn right.

Mike
III

6 comments:

chris said...: Mike,

Just thought you would appreciate the comment, I was watching a re-run of the original miniseries "V" the other night.

There is a scene where an elderly lady walks by one of the visitors ships and tosses a Molotov cocktail inside and it made me smile and think of this site.

Should things ever get that bad here, I would imagine that similar things would happen.; November 5, 2009 at 9:43 PM
Anonymous said...: "Better to die on your feet, then to live on your knees."
I know I've heard that proverb before, from another source, or sources. Anyone know where it originated? Or is it one of those Universal Truths that spring up anywhere & everywhere that there are free people?

B Woodman
III-per; November 6, 2009 at 7:40 AM
Anonymous said...: Here's an interesting article on the Kurds regarding the Iraqi war, http://faciamus.blogspot.com/2006/11/kurdish-key-to-middle-east.html; November 6, 2009 at 9:16 AM
RJMcKee III said...: I remember the Kurds ran TV ads thanking the USA for our help liberating them from the guy in the hidey hole.; November 6, 2009 at 9:22 AM
ParaPacem said...: Although I have never had the occasion to learn it firsthand, I have heard for years that the Kurds and also the Sikhs, embody the best qualities of honor and loyalty that one sees in modern warriors; I am glad you devoted this article to the Kurds.; November 6, 2009 at 7:24 PM
Happy D said...: I knew their was a reason I liked the Kurds.; November 7, 2009 at 4:20 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Kurdish Proverb

6 comments:

Blog Archive

Followers