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This illustration by Comics4Syria for SyriaUntold is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (Comics4Syria/SyriaUntold)Translated
by Pascale Menassa
This
article forms part of a special series focused on Oral Culture
and Identity in Syria. It is the outcome of an ongoing partnership
between SyriaUntold and openDemocracy’s
North Africa West Asia in
a bid to untangle the roots of sectarian, ethnic and other divides in
Syria.
Blurb:
Some
Kurdish stories about Arabs and other Arab stories about Kurds are
harsh and hateful. Often, the content of this oral culture passed
from one generation to the next is not a completely faithful
reflection of reality.
(Qamishli)
Kurds and Arabs in the Jazira region have had good neighbourly ties
for most of history. It may come as a surprise that tribal alliances
mixing Arabic and Kurds were formed and fought against similarly
composed composition depending on interests and local power
struggles. But living in close proximity and under similar
circumstances did not prevent the formation of stereotypes. On the
contrary, there is a rich oral dictionary of terms, tales and
proverbs ingraining stereotypical notions that has lasted for
generations.
In
Syria’s Jazeera region, Arabs and Kurds differ culturally, in terms
of how they made a living and social traditions. Kurds made a quicker
shift from nomad to urban life, while Arabs took longer to make that
shift. Kurds became more developed in agriculture and raising cows
and poultry, while Arabs herded cattle. Even now, Kurdish villages
tend to be greener than that of Arabs While Kurds had a cultural
elite of clerics and mullahs, Arabs did not, and they would resort to
Kurdish clerics and mullahs in religious and legal matters. The new
generation of Kurds tends to limit births to a certain number per
person, while Arabs have more children. All these differences between
Arabs and Kurds resulted in different ways of living and thinking,
manifesting themselves in the oral heritage of both communities.
The
Arabs in Kurdish insults and proverbs
Jazira’s
Kurds have a rich oral heritage targeting their Arab neighbours. For
starters, they refer to the Arabs as Shawaya
[semi-sedentary
tribes], which is usually considered a degrading term as it implies
naivety and simplicity. Shawayas
are Bedouins who recently settled down and became civilized, unlike
the Arabs who have lived for centuries in major commercial cities
like Damascus and Aleppo. Some Bedouin Arabs take pride in this
label, although city dwellers use it to mock them, just like Upper
Egypt citizens are joked about in Egypt. This
oral heritage falls under the name-calling or insults, the use of
mostly negative terms that seek to instil superiority and highlight
the ignorance of “uncivilized” others.
Some
Kurdish stories about Arabs and other Arab stories about Kurds are
harsh and hateful. Often, the content of this oral culture passed
from one generation to the next is not a completely faithful
reflection of reality. Some stories, especially proverbs, may have
entered the popular heritage dictionary under specific circumstances,
or due to a particular incident. They reflect a specific experience
and have nothing to do with the resulting stereotype that becomes
permanently adopted by the other community. Just as frequently, the
opposite may be true, the stereotype is built with negative and
discriminatory intent, relegating a group to a position of
inferiority and stigmatizing its modus vivendi. Shocking nicknames
are deployed to mock a group’s way of thinking, the problem-solving
techniques they apply to life, and even appearance.
The
most common insults and expressions draw on the legacy of deep-rooted
tribal tensions in the region known as east of the Euphrates. When
a Kurdish child cries or feels pain due to sickness or injury, his
mother tries to appease him and adds to the regular cuddling
expressions a strange one that says, “May
fire break out in the tents of Arabs.” Here, the mother is blaming
the Arab community for her child’s tears and retaliates by cursing
them verbally. The adage reflects a Kurdish irritability towards Arab
tents in the region that has endured over generations. That sentiment
dates back to that era when the child’s ancestors came into
conflict with the Bedouins over land, water and pastures.
Most
of the time, the expressions are just said randomly and might have
lost their real implication. But they show how clearly negative
stereotypes about Bedouin Arabs or Shawaya
have
endured in the mind of the Kurds. The negative image remains carved
in people’s minds and is repeated in the spoken language – in
this case Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect mostly spoken in Syria and
Turkey. [Syria’s Kurds also generally speak Arabic, except for the
elderly who did not get the chance to mix with Arabs or study in
schools following Arabic curricula imposed by successive
Arab governments.] This
oral heritage is drenched in the desire to offend and undermine the
other.
“Don’t
say hello to an Arab, they will sit on your Abaya [traditional attire
consisting of a loose-fitting overgarment],” is another proverb
commonly used by Jazira’s Kurds to typecast Arabs. The expression
basically means “Beware of Arabs as they don’t know their
limits.” It alludes to Arabs being nosey people, who meddle in the
affairs of others and exploit their generosity. The saying is not
used exclusively to describe Arabs. It can also be used by a Kurd to
describe a fellow Kurd who is a gossip.
Kurds
also use the expression “Arab Bazaar” to mean a hasty Arab deal
that does not have clearly defined standards. Syrians also call this
type of bargaining “kotra,” like when a client asks a grocer to
sell him what is left in the tomato crate at a lowered price without
weighing the product or calculating. This example reinforces the
image of the Bedouin as someone who does not have a sense of accuracy
in his transactions and resorts to simple
innate sale and purchase operations. Ironically, Kurds will have
what they call an “Arab
Bath” which means washing the head and neck only without showering
the whole body. This expression insinuates that Bedouins or Shawaya
–
who did not settle in villages and towns until the mid-20th
century – do not take prioritize hygiene and just wash quickly,
given their nomadic lifestyle.
To
refer to a “gluttonous” or “avid”
person, Kurds use another saying that goes, “Like an Arab who
spotted soft cheese”. The expression also points to the poverty of
Bedouin cuisine and the Shawaya’s
appetite for unusual foods. Manifest in this proverb is the
superiority complex of Kurds, who feel they have led a civilized
existence, relative to Arabs who followed a nomadic and simplistic
life.
Past
generations of Kurds called children who were born with dark skin
“Arab” or “Arabo” while Arabs called their white-skinned
children “Kurdi”. Giving newborn Kurds Arab names became
restricted as of the early 1970s in Syria, and even Arab religious
names were no longer common. Kurds at that time were reaffirming
their national distinction and rejected any intellectual affiliation
with the Arab culture. But Kurdish tribes would still call their
children Arab names that scream Bedouin, exchanged visits and meals
with their Arab neighbors, and in many instances marriages between
Kurds and Arabs occurred.
Arabs
in Kurdish music and dance
Kurds
have always taken great pride in their musical heritage, their skill
playing traditional musical instruments such as the tunbur
[long-necked
string instrument similar to the mandolin] and performing different
types of Kurdish
dabke
[festive folk dance combining circle dancing with line dancing]. They
often incorporate Arab dabke
in their wedding celebrations, and share this dance with Arab guests,
all the while mocking Arab weddings for having one kind of dabke.
They sarcastically call this dabke
“Dahdah”. Dahdah is an Arabic word that means a short and chubby
person, and the aim here is to mock Arabs’ dance moves. An old
Kurdish saying expresses shock towards Arabs playing the tunbur:
“What
do Arabs have to do with the tunbur?”
Despite
the above, oral Kurdish heritage also includes the occasional praise
for Arabs who live with Kurds in the same environment. As the saying
goes, “O
good Arab, you are better than a brother and father.”
Kurdish
tribesmen also prided themselves on wearing the
jellabiya
[traditional
long garment] and the agal
[black
cord worn on the head by Arab men] and would describe eminent and
elegant figures as resembling Arab or Shammar sheikhs [tribal
leaders; the Shammar are an influential
Arab tribe expanding to Iraq, Jordan and Syria. It has a strong
history of cooperation with Kurds.]
The
epic songs, melodic poetry and old Kurdish mawawil
[traditional
genre of vocal music] constitute the most remarkable form of oral
Kurdish heritage. They all include flirtatious references to tall
Arab girls sporting black-lined eyes. The Kurdish folklore singer
Shakro, who is based in Turkey, has the most beautiful and varied
voice. His songs pay tribute to the beauty and attractiveness of the
“Araba”
[Arab female]. Arab tents made of goat
fur
are mentioned multiple times in those songs that have accompanied
Kurds on their journeys. Similarly, Arab cities and
people are mentioned in this type of oral heritage.
The
Arab poet Hatim al-Tai of
the Jahiliyya era [Arabia
before the advent of Islam] and other famous Arab figures are an
important part of Kurdish tales. The writings of Kurdish poet Ahmadi
Khani [1650-1707], in what seems like the first clear invitation to
Kurdish nationalism, compares the generosity of Kurdish princes to
that of Tai.
The
oral heritage of adjacent communities requires an accurate mechanism
of documentation and data collection. No author can summarize decades
and centuries of stories in a single paper or article. Arabs in the
region have all had something negative and positive to say about
Kurds. The documentation of these oral traditions must be accurate
and daring. The past must be written down, even the oral part of it,
by encouraging documentation. In particular, we should resort to
voice recording for old people, who are the keepers of this this rich
legacy. They are the ones most familiar with proverbs and tales that
reflect the perspective of different communities towards each other
across generations.