Jordan Elgrably

In a sense, the Kurdish homeland is a chimera, consisting of actual places spread across parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Although Kurdistan doesn’t form a nation-state, per se, Kurdish identity is strongly characterized by particular forms of the Kurdish language, culture, and history. As such, Kurdish artists occupy a fascinating locus in global culture, because they come from a people spread across four countries and a large diaspora in Europe and North America.

Zeynep Esmeray — playwright, actor, trans rights advocate — began her nomadic journey at fifteen. She migrated from Kars, in northeastern Turkey, to Istanbul, a move that appeared economic on the surface but was shaped by political, personal, and social forces. Since then, she has drifted from city to city, sometimes between homes within the same city, her bundle always in hand. That bundle is not only a sign of movement. In Esmeray’s work, it also becomes a way of carrying memory.

We live in words. Our very lives are governed by the politics of words: written rules, laws, texts, traditions, and the languages we speak. We live in our mother tongue, and others we acquire along the way. It goes without saying that there are many words and expressions in each language that are difficult to translate.