About me

Salar Darwesh

About the author

My name is Salar Darwesh, I am twenty-eight years old and live in Pforzheim.

I was not born here. I was seven when we arrived.

Seven is an awkward age. You are old enough to have experienced something, and too young to hold onto it. What I have from the time before are images without sound.

This book focuses on two people: an old woman who knows many things, and a boy who knows nothing. I am neither. I am the one in between — and I believe that is where many of us are standing right now.

We do not have a book. We have people. And people grow old.

At fifteen, I would have needed this book. There wasn't one. So I wrote it, as best as I could, explicitly including everything I do not know.

What I am not

I am neither a member of the clergy nor a scholar. I do not have the right to determine what is authoritative, nor do I claim it.

What I have done is: read, ask, write down — and at every point, state where my knowledge ends. Where the content comes from is explained in the book itself under How this book was made and in the bibliography.

If you know it differently

Then you are likely right.

In our tradition, there are multiple answers to many questions, depending on the region, the lineage, or the family. If, while reading, you think that is different for us, it could mean that I have portrayed something incorrectly. It could just as well mean that your family learned it differently.

From where I am, I cannot distinguish which of the two is the case. If you know — write to me. Corrections will be included in the next edition.

Little has been written about us, and some of it by people who did not ask us. Anyone writing about us now bears responsibility for what will be considered common knowledge in thirty years. I do not want a mistake of mine to persist for that long, simply because no one told me about it.

What is coming next

The series is planned as a trilogy.

Volume 1 — What we really believe. What Yezidis believe and how they live. Published.

Volume 2 — What we really do. The texts, the festivals, and the people who uphold them. In progress.

Volume 3 — What really happened. The history of persecution, Şingal, and what has not happened since then. In progress.