It means food that tastes like memory. Dolma, biryani, kuba, mastaw. The smell of lamb and spices drifting through my mother’s kitchen on a Friday afternoon. Meals that take six hours to prepare and twenty minutes to eat — and that’s exactly the point.
It means having a passport that doesn’t match your heart. Being Kurdish means being part of a family that stretches across mountains and borders and generations. I can walk into a Kurdish café in London, Berlin, Nashville, or Stockholm — and within five minutes, someone has offered me tea and asked whose son I am.
We’ve got plenty of stories. And we’re finally ready to tell them ourselves. i am sam kurdish
“Oh, so you speak… Kurdish? Is that like Arabic?”
It means never quite fitting in. Not fully Western, not fully Middle Eastern. Always a little bit other — but proud of it. I won’t pretend it’s all poetry and good food. It means food that tastes like memory
Being Kurdish means carrying grief. The kind that sits in your chest during news reports about Kobani or Afrin or the latest crackdown. The kind that makes you check your phone first thing in the morning when things are quiet in the region — because quiet usually means something bad happened overnight.
By Sam
It means Newroz. The fire. The dancing. The feeling that spring is not just a season but a political act — a celebration of resistance, of new beginnings, of a people who refused to disappear. I’m Sam. I work a normal job, argue about sports, and have a plant I keep forgetting to water.
by tisunov
