JINHA

SÊRT – YPJ fighter Zehra Sezgin (nom de guerre Jin Viyan), who lost her life fighting Daesh gangs in Kobanê, has left the legacy of her bravery behind her, according to her mother Zahide.

Zehra never forgot the state's cruelty against her and her family that she experienced as a child. This knowledge drove her to join the ranks of the YPJ in March 2014 to fight the Daesh gangs attempting to break the Rojava revolution. She quickly rose to the rank of commander.

Zehra lost her life in Kobanê on March 6, 2015 in a battle with notoriously patriarchal Daesh gangs. She was 22 years old. Women bore Zehra's body to her final resting place in the city of Siirt on March 8—International Women's Day.

"My husband was in jail for a while. After he got out, police were constantly raiding our house," recalled Zehra's mother, Zahide. "Every time they came, they destroyed the place. They always claimed we were 'hiding something.' They would hit the children and my husband."

Zahide said throughout her childhood, Zehra was always fearless. She immediately responded to any injustice against her—including the police raid. Her childhood questions about why the police attacked her Kurdish family so brutally turned into a statement that Zahide remembers well: "I won't let them take this."

Zehra was a university student when she decided to join the YPJ in March 2014. She had a promising future and had traveled widely as a member of her sports team.

"She would always say, 'mother, you're going to miss me,'" recalled Zahide. "And I would ask, 'why, where are you going, that I would miss you?' Really she was telling me, in her own way, where she was going. But I never understood."

One day, Zahide received a phone call from her daughter. Zehra said she was in Kobanê.

"I asked her why she went," said Zahide. Zehra responded: "Mother, do you remember what the police did to us and to dad? I never forgot any of it."

Only in retrospect did Zahiderealize that the day Zehraleftearly one morning claiming she had to go to her university for an exam was the day she headed for Kobanê.

"She had an aunt, her own age. They were as close as sisters. She must have decided the day she was going to go. She had her aunt over that evening; it was a Wednesday," said Zahide. "Normally she would take Wednesdays off, but this time she took Thursday off. She spent Wednesdayevening with her aunt and got up early in the morning. I asked her that morning, if she had the day off, why she got up so early. She said she had an exam. Then she left the house and never came back."

During the phone call from Kobanê, Zehrasaid that she had kissed all her sleeping family members goodbye that night—except her mother, who she was afraid of waking. But her mother told her not to worry.

"I told her that she had chosen her road, and that now all of her friends there were the same for us," said Zahide. "I told her, 'Now they're our children too, our comrades, like you.'

"She said on the phone, 'I'll make you the mother of a martyr.' I told her, "Being the mother of a guerrilla is fine by me; I'm okay with that too,'" recalled Zahide. Although they lost Zehra only a year after she joined, the family was proud that in just that one year, their daughter had risen to the rank of commander.

Zehra's friends were devastated when they heard that she had been killed. Zahide said the massive turnout for Zehra's funeral was incredibly meaningful for her.

"She told me once on the phone that one of her friends had been martyred. This friend had seven children. She said, 'Mother, it should have been me who was martyred,'" recalled Zahide. "'My friends are next to me; they're dying before my eyes. Living like this is so difficult for me.'

"When I asked her, 'how are you still managing,' she said, 'mother, it's our willpower that keeps us standing.'

"We just want this war to end already. We don't want our children to come back to us as martyrs. We want them to come back smiling."

(şö/dk/fk/cm)