Nurcan Yalçın / JINHA

AMED – Behind a locked door in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, there is a room full of memories—and stories of resistance.

In Kamile Bayram's home in the city of Diyarbakır, there is one room that remains locked at all times.Kamile's daughter, Azize Bayram (nom de guerre Evrim Andok) died fighting Daesh gangs attacking the city of Kobanê. Today, the memory of Azize and her life of resistance lives on in the locked room.

Azize was born in 1994 to a family active in the Kurdish liberation movement. When soldiers raided their village, the family fled to the city center. Azize was just six years old when her father Abdülselam went to jail. Azize, as the oldest child, raised her brothers and sisters as her mother Kamile struggled to support the family.

In 2008, when Azize was still a teenager, the law came for Kamile, as well. It was during the seven months that her mother was in prison that the idea of joining the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) guerrilla began to haunt Azize.Although she hated weapons and war, she saw no other option.

Azize, then using all the hours left after she finished school to care for her siblings,began to discuss the idea of joining the PKK with her sister, Raperin. They decided to join up together. However, their mother refused to let Raperin and Azize join the guerrilla forces.

"I said, 'Don't come now; you're going to school. You can go when you want, but I'll go first,'" recalled Raperin.That year, Raperin left her family behind and joined the PKK.Azize remained in the city, trying to finish her education. She did well in the university entrance exam, but the idea of abandoning Raperin still troubled her.

In March 2014, her family found a letter reading, "This isn't a decision made now; this is my promise to Raperin." Azize had joined the YPJ, the PKK-affiliated women's force battling against Daesh to defend the revolution in Rojava (Western Kurdistan). In the letter, Azize wrote that she and Raperin "grew up together, and we will live and fight together; hopefully, we will die together." Azize died in October 2014, as the Daesh gang launched an intense and brutal attack on the city of Kobanê. She had been in the YPJ for less than one year.

Kamile, who refers to Azize by her YPJ code name Evrim, has kept her daughter's room as it was, although Azize had asked that she turn the room over to the family's youngest daughter. Inside the room, which Kamile keeps locked, a half-empty bottle of water sits on the desk next to an open diary.

At the end of Azize's letter to her parents, she had written, "If I come back into this world again, I'd still want to be your daughter."Kamile, who is expecting a baby girl, says she has already picked a name for the child: Evrim.

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