Thirty-Three Bullets - Ahmed Arif

I.

This is the Mengene mountain

When dawn creeps up at the lake Van

This is the child of Nimrod

When dawn creeps up against the Nimrod

One side of you chills against the Caucasian horizon

The other side is a prayer mat, the Persian lands

Glacier stalactites up on the summits

Fugitive pigeons at water-pools

And herds of deer

And flocks of partridge...

Gallantry cannot be denied

In one-to-one fights they are unbeaten

For thousands of years, people of the region.

Come, how shall we break the news?

This is not a flock of cranes

Nor a constellation in the sky...

But a thirty-three bulleted heart,

Thirty-three springs of blood,

Flowing no more...

Calmed to a lake on this mountain...

II.

A rabbit arose from the bottom of the slope;

Its back is motley,

Its belly milk-white,

Lonely, pregnant, a mountain rabbit,

Its heart heaved to its mouth, poor thing

Can bring anyone to repentance...

It was an uninhabited, a solitary time

It was a faultless, naked dawn..

One of the thirty-three looked;

His body with the heavy void of hunger..

Hair and beard all tangled,

Lice on his collar...

Glanced, as he saw his arms got shot,

This lad, with hellion heart,

Once at the rabbit

Then futher, futher back...

How he so missed his delicate carbine now

Sulking under his pillow

And his young Harran mare

Her blue-beaded mane

A blaze on her forehead

Three fetlocks white

Cantering flirty and agilely

His chesnut mare

How they had flown in front of Hozat!

If he were not now

This helpless and tied up

With a cold barrel rigth behind hic back

He could have taken refuge in these heights

These mountains, the friendly mountains, appreciate your worth

God willing, these hands would not put anyone to shame

These hands can flick off

The ash of a burning cigarette

Or the tongue of the viper

Sparkling in the sun

On the first shot...

These eyes were never fooled

These fore-knowing eyes

Of the ravines waiting for the chill

Of the soft, snowy betrayal of cliffs...

Unavoidably,

He was going to be shot

The order was final

The blind reptiles would devour his eyes

The vultures his heart.

III.

In a solitary niche of the mountains

Coincident with morning prayer

I lie

stretched

Long, bloody...

I have been shot

My dreams, darker than the night,

No one can find a good omen in them

My soul taken before its time

I cannot put it into words

A pasha has sent a coded message

That I be shot, inquestless, judgmentless

My kinsman, convey my feelings precisely

Or it might be mistaken for a fable

These are not rosy nipples

But a dumdum bullet

In my shattered mouth...

IV.

They applied the decree of death

They stained

The half-awakened wind of dawn

And the blue mist of the Nimrod

In blood.

They stacked their guns there

Laguidly searched our chests

Our delapidating corpses

They took away

My red sash of Kermanshah weave

My prayer beads and tobacco pouch

All gifts to me from the Persian lands

And left us behind

We are guardians, relatives, tied by blood

Across the river

We have intermarried

Our daughters, these many centuries

We are neighbours

Shoulder to shoulder

Our poultry has mingled together

Not out of ignorance

But poverty

And that we never got used to passports

This is the guilt that kills us

We end up

Being called

Bandits

Killers

Traitors...

My kinsman, convey my feelings precisely

Or it might be mistaken for a fable

These are not rosy nipples

But a dumdum bullet

In my shattered mouth...

V.

Shoot, bastards

Shoot

I do not die easyly

Like the warm ashes under the mantle

I have words buried in my belly

For those who understand.

My father gave his eyes on the Urfa front

And also his three brothers

Three young cypresses

Three chunks of mountain with yet unfulfilled dreams

And when friends, guardians, kin

Met the French bullets

Out of towers, hills, minarets

My young uncle Nazif

With a budding moustache

Handsome

Light

Fine horseman

Charge, brothers, he yelled

Charge

This is the day of honour

And reared his horse...

My kinsman, convey my feelings precisely

Or it might be mistaken for a fable

These are not rosy nipples

But a dumdum bullet

In my shattered mouth...

by Ahmed Arif

[Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat - 1982]

[Edited by Muzmin Anonim - 2006]