1.1 The Question During the Break

It was a perfectly normal break.

Haval was sitting with Jonas and Marie on the low wall by the bike racks, the place where no one sits in winter and suddenly everyone does in March.

Jonas was eating a bread roll and talking about something else entirely. Then, with his mouth full, without any intention, he said:

“Tell me, you’re Muslim, right?”

“Nah,” said Haval.

“No?”

“Nah. Yezidi.”

Jonas kept chewing.

“What’s that?”

And then it happened.

Haval opened his mouth.

He had said the word a thousand times. When signing up for the club. In religious education class, when they had gone around the room. At home, when someone asked why they were going to his uncle’s on certain days.

He had said it a thousand times and never explained it.

“It’s like a religion,” he said.

Jonas nodded. He waited.

“Well – one of our own. Not Islam, not Christianity. Our own.”

“Okay,” said Jonas. “And what do you guys believe in?”

And Haval said: “In God.”

Then there was silence.

Marie looked at him, and it wasn’t mean, and that was exactly what made it worse.

“Cool,” Jonas said eventually, and continued talking about something else.

He wasn’t embarrassed to be Yezidi.

That was the point he didn’t immediately grasp himself. He spent a whole hour searching in the wrong place.

He was embarrassed that he had nothing.

Jonas could have told him two sentences about his church. Kevser could have talked about Ramadan until the bell rang. Haval had a word and nothing behind it. A label on an empty box.

In the fourth period, he typed it into his phone under the desk.

Yezidi

He read for four minutes. Afterward, he knew less than before.

It said something about angels. It said something about a peacock. There were two pages that contradicted each other, and a third one where he stopped after two sentences because he started feeling hot.

He put his phone away.

He had just realized for the first time that there were texts about him that he couldn’t judge.

At home, his father was in the kitchen cutting onions.

Haval stood in the doorframe.

“Baba. What exactly are we, anyway?”

His father didn't look up.

“Êzîdî.”

“Yes, but – what does that mean? If someone asks me. What do I say?”

The knife stopped.

It was only for a second, but Haval noticed it, just as you notice when a motor briefly cuts out.

“That we believe in one God,” said his father. “That we have a very old religion.”

“And what else?”

His father kept cutting.

“Ask your Dapîra.”

“But I’m asking you.”

“I don’t really know anymore,” said his father.

He didn’t say it sadly. He said it like stating the time.

“I heard it when I was little. The elders would sit together, and it was just something in the background. Here, nothing is just in the background.” He pushed the onions into a pile. “I could tell you things. Half of it would be wrong. I don’t want that.”

Then he went to the stove, and the conversation was over.

Haval stood in the doorframe for a moment longer.

He had thought he was the only one in the family who couldn’t do it.

On Saturday, he went to see his grandmother.

Dapîra Besê lived three floors above the main street, in a spot where the tram passes by every seven minutes and the glass in the china cabinet rattles softly. It’s been rattling for fourteen years, and she has never fixed it.

She opened the door, looked at him, and said:

“You’re coming alone.”

“Yes.”

“Then you want something.”

She let him in.

She set a glass of tea in front of him without asking and sat down opposite him. She needed a moment to do so. Her knee wasn’t at its best anymore.

Haval had prepared a sentence on the way, and he didn’t use it.

“Jonas asked me during the break what Yezidis are,” he said. “And I couldn’t say anything. Nothing at all.”

Besê nodded slowly.

“And now?”

“And now I want you to tell me.”

She looked at him for a while. Longer than was comfortable.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” she said then.

“Why didn’t you just start?”

“Because that doesn’t work.” Besê shrugged her shoulders. “If I start, you listen because I’m old. If you ask, you listen because you want to know. That’s a difference as big as day and night.”

Haval took a sip. The tea was too hot. At her place, it was always too hot.

“But I’ll tell you one thing first,” said Besê. “Otherwise, it’s pointless.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not a scholar. I’m an old woman who has heard a lot.” She laid her hands on the table. “I will tell you how I learned it. Not how it is. If someone tells you they know everything about us exactly – they are lying, or they are stupid.”

“That’s some weird advertising for yourself.”

“That’s not advertising.” She smiled briefly. “That’s the first thing you learn. Remember it better than anything else.”

Haval pulled out his phone and placed it face down on the table, which for him was something like a solemn act.

“Alright,” he said. “Start.”

Besê stood up.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

She walked to the cupboard and came back with nothing in her hands.

“I’m not starting with what we have,” said Dapîra Besê. “I’m starting with what we don’t have. Otherwise, you’ll never understand the rest.”

“And what don’t we have?”

She sat back down.

“A book.”

Nine Chapters

1 The Question: The question during the break · A religion you cannot open · Where we come from and where we live today

2 God and the Seven: Xwedê · The Seven · Tawûsî Melek · Why we have no adversary

3 Who carries the religion: Whose are you? · Those who know it by heart · Those who have passed it on · Why you cannot become a Yazidi

4 What you do without being told: Toward the sun · Places and Wednesday · Three days in December

5 The Year: Xidir Nebî · The Red Wednesday · The seven days we are not present for · A bit of both of us

6 From the first to the last day: The water in the bottle · Kirîv · The brother of the afterlife · How we say goodbye · Those without a grave

7 What is sacred and what you do not do: Sun, fire, water, earth · The matter of lettuce · Why there is no list

8 Laliş: A valley you enter barefoot · The man whose grave lies there · The phone call · We are going

9 And now?: The presentation · The same question, only from within · What I cannot say · Take me in, too