SABRI THE TEACHER

[mchyet at library.berkeley.edu]

From: "Michael Chyet" <mchyet at library.berkeley.edu>
Subject: SABRI THE TEACHER


     
                         SABRI THE TEACHER
                         Michael L. Chyet

     I called a Kurdish friend in Turkey on the Kurdish new year, Newroz
[March 21], to wish him 'Happy Newroz'.  I was told that he had been
gunned down two months ago, another victim of nameless Turkish death
squads.  Sabri was about 46 years old, the father of six children. When
I met him in 1988, he had brought one of his children to Ankara for a
medical operation and was staying with mutual friends.  Although we only
spent a day together, I knew that I had found in Sabri the sort of Kurd
I had dreamed of having as a teacher: someone whose knowledge of the
language was so sound, and love of it so deep, that he could lapse into
a poetic recitation at a moment's notice.
     When he described things -- words, concepts, ideas -- his bright,
intelligent eyes sparkled, as he brought previously unclear images into
sharp focus.  In the short time we spent together on that first meeting,
he opened up and shared with me several things that had happened to him.
Someone reported him to the authorities for teaching a hand-picked group
of Kurdish children to read and write in Kurdish -- in secret after
school.  For this he was imprisoned and tortured, and never again
allowed to follow his life's calling -- teaching.  Nevertheless, he was
known to all as Sabri Hoja, i.e. Sabri the teacher.
     Although I dearly wanted to come visit him in his home town, on the
road between Bitlis and Diyarbakir in Kurdistan of Turkey, by the end of
my year stay in Turkey, when I passed that way, I was hesitant to risk
another run-in with the police, and was worried about what might happen
to Sabri Hoja after I left, if I was indeed being followed.  When Sabri
later learned that I had passed by and had not come to visit, he was
deeply hurt.  I resolved not to pass up the opportunity a second time,
and in 1992 I spent five glorious days with him and his family -- but I
am getting ahead of myself.
     When I returned to the United States, I did not hear from Sabri
Hoja for a long time, and I eventually received a long letter in which
he wrote me in detail about what had happened to him in the meantime. He
and many other Kurdish men in the area had been rounded up and thrown
into prison, where they were blindfolded, kept in freezing conditions,
and tortured  -- with cudgels and shock treatment.  Their only crime was
the fact that they were Kurds, and proud of it.  The police who
interrogated Sabri and his companions told them that they should either
go to the mountains to join "their PKK friends" or leave. Sabri Hoja
ultimately had to move from his home town to a nearby city, because the
local authorities were making it impossible for him to earn his
livelihood as a newspaper seller, by warning the townspeople not to buy
from him. At the end of the letter, Sabri Hoja expressed concern for my
well-being, having heard belatedly about the San Francisco earthquake of
1989.  He had been in jail and incommunicado when the earthquake
occurred, and only learned of it at New Years, from a television program
reviewing the year's major events.  
     When I read of his worry about me considering the cataclysm that
had rocked his life that year, I could not keep back the tears. I felt
it was my duty to translate his letter into English, and to make sure
that it got the attention it deserved. A friend of my father's was able
to connect me with Amnesty International, and they gratefully accepted
the letter, stating that it was next to impossible to get that sort of
information about the goings-on inside Turkish prisons.  They also
informed me that my friend Sabri already had the official status of a
Prisoner of Conscience, a detail which he did not know until I told him
during my visit in 1992.
     Another long period of silence ensued.  I became worried, and asked
an American friend who was living in Turkey at the time to try to track
Sabri Hoja down for me.  Shortly thereafter Sabri sent a letter with a
business card, proudly informing me that his family had moved to the
nearby city of Batman, where he had found a good job selling household
utensils.  From then on we were in touch by phone and letter, and I
eventually came for a visit, during which Sabri took me to nearby
Hasankeyf, now a picturesque town on the Tigris, and an important
capital in past centuries, with its mosques, bridges, and cave dwellings
which extend for miles in all directions.  This lovely town is slated to
be at the bottom of one of the man-made lakes which the Turks are
building as part of the GAP water project on the Tigris and Euphrates.
     During our time together Sabri Hoja sang me Kurdish songs, recited
poems for me, told me stories, and introduced me to his friends and
relatives.  His wife and daughters made wonderful home-cooked meals,
which we ate while sitting crosslegged on the floor.  Although the
apartment was comfortable, it only had three bedrooms for eight family
members, yet they insisted on giving me the largest one.  The American
gifts I brought for them pale in comparison with the intangible riches
I came away with. When it came time to leave, I learned a Kurdish
expression which I have had occasion to use since: "Your place will be
empty", which means 'You will be missed'.
     Last year, during one of our phone conversations, Sabri sadly
informed me that a dear friend of his, whom I had met during my stay,
had been gunned down in front of his own home, just down the street. 
Sabri said although it had happened several weeks before, he was still
badly shaken by it.  Little did I know then that I would be saying the
same thing about him a year hence.
     My friend Sabri Hoja was no terrorist. He didn't have a dishonest
bone in his body. And yet he believed that the struggle of the PKK, the
Kurdish Workers' Party, against the Turkish government was a just cause.
He told me that while the Kurdish guerrillas were fighting up in the
mountains, the life for Kurds down in the cities was made easier, more
bearable.
     Now the Kurds -- who have reacted with violence to Turkish
oppression, but have caused relatively few deaths -- will surely be
labelled as 'terrorists', while the Turkish government, which has
proudly boasted in recent days of killing people (PKK members, but
people), and has also been slow to investigate death squads like the one
that gunned down my friend Sabri, or his cousin last year, or the writer
Musa Anter in 1992 (to name only three out of hundreds of such
killings), gets off scot free.  Turkey will no doubt continue to get
American -- and Israeli -- support in its efforts to 'root out
terrorism'.
     What is the definition of 'terrorism'?  Why are some groups
labelled as 'terrorists', while others are 'guerrillas' or 'freedom
fighters'?  Why is the PKK called a 'terrorist organization', but the
Peshmergas of Iraqi Kurdistan are 'guerrillas'?  Why are certain
activities called 'terrorist' when performed by one group, but called
something else when the same activities are performed by a NATO ally,
for instance? 
     No, my friend Sabri Hoja was no terrorist.  And yet he was arrested
several times in the past, and tortured by the Turkish authorities for
such 'crimes' as secretly teaching Kurdish children to read and write in
their own language.  It was often enough through underground study of
this kind that Jewish scholarship survived for 2,000 years. Are we
completely sure that we as Americans are doing the right thing by
supporting a regime that throws people into jail and tortures them for
such activities?
     I have often been advised not to draw a parallel between the plight
of the Kurds and the treatment of Native Americans in this country
during the 19th and early 20th centuries, because this will make
Americans feel guilty about the Indians, and hinder their ability to
give the Kurds a fair hearing.  Today I am going against that advice. 
American public opinion prevented the Bush administration from leaving
the Kurds in the lurch during the Gulf War.  If it happened before, it
can happen again.  There is one major difference between the Kurds and
the Indians:  it is too late to undo most of the damage done to the
American Indians, but it is not too late to save the Kurds from a like
fate.
      My fellow citizens ought to protest the use of American tax
dollars to help the Turkish government's destructive campaign against
the Kurdish people.  My fellow Jews ought to disavow support to Israel
if that government continues to share its military know-how with the
Turkish state, in full awareness that this knowledge will be deployed
against the Kurdish people.  To those who claim that such aid is limited
to the fight against 'terrorism' I say: If that is so, then explain the
death of my friend Sabri Hoja.