Nurcan Yalçın – Zeynep Akın / JINHA

ÊLIH –Sinemxan Adsan is the granddaughter of a Kurdish rebel and the mother of two more. Today, she lives alone in a solitary concrete home in Batman, Turkey, where she spends her days reflecting on a long history of resistance and the lives lost to it.

Sinemxan's grandfather was Abdurrahmanê Eliyê Unis, who spent seven years in the Sason and Xerzan mountains organizing a Kurdish uprising in the Batman province of what is now Turkey. In 1926, the Ottomans quickly suppressed the Sason uprising. Sinemxan's branch of the family was exiled to Syria—or "below the line," as Kurds refer to the border that was drawn across their lands during that period.

Sinemxan's grandfather Abdurrahman was exiled to Damascus. Sinemxan's branch of the family was sent to a village near Qamişlo, where she was born. In Damascus, Abdurrahman became close with the Kurdish intellectual Celadet Bedirxan. Sinemxan grew up with the Bedirxans coming in and out of her rural home. The Bedirxans brought with them the culture of the Kurdish life of letters then emerging among the exiled Kurdish community.

As a new Arab population was increasingly sent to the village, the family headed north again. 36 of them crowded onto a train going back to the family's native Batman area, in Turkey. There, Sinemxan married her cousin. She was one month pregnant with her sixth child when her husband passed away after nine years of marriage. Sinemxan bought herself a sewing machine to support the family.

Because of their history, Sinemxan and her family were always a target for the Turkish state. One day, soldiers raided her home and smashed her sewing machine, alleging she was using it to sew clothes for guerrillas. As Sinemxan's children grew up well acquainted with state repression for their identity, they became increasingly insistent on joining the PKK and becoming rebels like their grandfather. Sinemxan initially came out strongly the against the idea.

"I said that guerrillas have to face all kinds of difficulties,[my child] made a snow house and spent the night there with a candle," she said. "So I said, guerrillas don't even have candles to burn; they go hungry and thirsty for days. This time, they didn't eat for three days." Despite Sinemxan's opposition, her son Ümit and her daughter Gülçin both joined the guerrilla. Finally, Sinemxan did sew a set of guerrilla clothes—her daughter's first. Both of her children lost their lives.

Today, Sinemxan lives alone. She says the solitude gives her more time to focus on the Kurdish literature she's been immersed in since the Bedirxans first came to her village home many years ago.

"For me, being alone is better; I can face my own problems, my own pain. I have more time to think and analyze," she said. "We've paid a price to come here today. From now on, we want to live in peace, without losing any more of our children."

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