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by Awa Sow
Participants
Host: Awa Sow
Guests: Lavin Ous
Recording starts
Jingle 00:23
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Awa Sow 00:25
How are cultural identities experienced and navigated in the context of statelessness? Welcome. This is Diaspora Diaries, a podcast powered by Transmission Roundhouse. I'm your host Awa, and today I'm here with Lavin Ousi.
Lavin Ousi 00:39
Hello. Hello.
Awa Sow 00:41
Today we speak about the complex realities of Kurds, the world's largest population of stateless people, and how cultural identities and expressions of autonomy can exist in the diaspora. And before we dive into it, Lavin, do you want to introduce yourself?
Lavin Ousi 00:57
Yes. So I'm Lavin. I was born and raised in North London to a Kurdish family. I'm a Kurdish woman, and I teach language and creative language practice to people of all ages, of all backgrounds. And that's me.
Awa Sow 01:14
I'll ask you a question I've asked across all of my episodes to all of my guests so far that is kind of a leading question for Diaspora Diaries. Do you consider yourself as part of a diaspora?
Lavin Ousi 01:28
I'd say yes, because growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandma, and she would always speak of what it is to be Kurdish, and the way she would describe it is through how we keep our culture alive across so many different spaces, across so many different countries. And so when I grew up and learned that the vocabulary for that that existed was diaspora, that's how I choose to hold it still to this day. And so that's why I'd say yes to that question.
Awa Sow 01:58
The case of Kurdistan and Kurds is so complex, partly because Kurdistan is not recognized as a sovereign state in international law, diaspora and Kurdistan is just so inherently intertwined. And I've thought about a way of asking a question that is not reductive, but there's so many things that come into play.
Lavin Ousi 02:25
Yes, I definitely think trying to answer what Kurdistan is and what it is to be from Kurdistan to be a very complex set of possible answers, and depending on the Kurd you are talking to, and their history and their specific like location, the answers would be different. For me, it's kind of in two parts, the actual geo cultural location of what Kurdistan is. So that being Southeastern Turkey, that we call Bakur, Northern Iraq, which we call Bashur, Northwestern Iran, Rojhalad, and then Northeastern Syria, Rojava. So that's like the geographical answer. In terms of the cultural identity of a Kurd and what it is to be from Kurdistan, I think, as a stateless people, there's just like I said, so many varieties and recombinations of what it is to hold on to your culture, try to preserve it, sometimes reject it in the name of trying to survive new cultural terrains and experiences and worlds. So definitely think that's a very unique answer to each Kurd there's 45 million Kurds, something to that figure globally and as stateless people, like I said, we don't have a national identity per se under like the legalities of what it is to have a country, but we do. We have, consistently throughout history, exerted our right as a people who feel a strong sense of quote, unquote, nationhood. This is very much our reality, historically and in society today, and I don't think that there's anything that can be done that will change that. If history taught us anything, I think it's that.
Awa Sow 04:08
So as a Kurd that grew up in London. How does that take shape for you? What does it mean to you?
Lavin Ousi 04:14
Growing up in London, North London, specifically, I've realized only now, actually in my 20s, how palpable the shared cultural identity of Kurds are in the neighborhoods that I grew up in and kind of just never really second guessed, because it was just all I've ever known. It took me talking to other Kurds from different cultures different countries, to realize the sort of uniqueness of each location in which we congregate. And in North London, my family, they are very, very aggressively. Kurdish is the best way I'll explain it like there was just no doubt in my mind growing up that this was my culture, and this is where I was from. And it's funny to. Where you're from, because when you think about the immateriality of it, you know, it feels a lot less concrete, but it felt very rooted. And that, I think, was a very big blessing in my life, in terms of feeling anchored by a sense of self and a sense of community. And my grandma was a huge role in that, all my aunties and uncles, because there's many of them. And also just being in environments where I was allowed to say that I was Kurdish. I was allowed to speak Kurdish. I started school only knowing Kurdish. So yeah, that was my experience of growing up Kurdish and actually putting a putting words to what that was. Because for me, it was just who I was. And then you have to sort of box yourself in once you start socializing and being around other kids and other cultures and you identify yourself.
Awa Sow 05:46
You mentioned immateriality. Can you tell me a bit more about that? What you mean?
Lavin Ousi 05:52
Yeah, the condition of not having a country, not having a physical, bounded geographical location, and yet feeling such a strong sense of community and togetherness that's anchored in food, language, tradition, you know, and that being, in and of itself, something you can't always tangibly see or touch, but you feel it, and you know it's there, and it's practice and it's lived.
Awa Sow 06:19
I think that's such an interesting perspective. In earlier episodes, some of my guests mentioned how as part of the diaspora, you sometimes have this sense of your culture being diluted as you pass down from generation to generation. And it seems like, in your case, it actually is the opposite. The displacement actually allows for the culture to live and for the culture to flourish and develop and be be lived, not even live on its own, but be lived and be taken on by its people.
Lavin Ousi 06:57
I think as you're speaking, I'm also formulating my where I want to add nuance as well, because I think my understanding is all Kurds have known historically is self determination, self validation and Self legitimization. And I think it's not something new wherever you find yourself, whether it is in the quote unquote homeland or whether it's quote unquote abroad, you're doing that same process of preserving your culture, finding ways to keep it alive, trying to instill it in the generations that come. And so that's like the consistency of what it is to be Kurdish, and therefore that's what makes it strong, regardless, like, there's not like a set location that sort of is the the heart, and the most concentrated form of it
Awa Sow 07:55
Has the monopoly over the culture, right?
Lavin Ousi 07:58
Right. My understanding and my experience of it has not proved that, because I think it's just, I have family in Germany, I have family in Syria, I have family in Turkey. And there is a lot of variety across all of those locations, politically, socially and culturally. But the that process, that mechanism of self determination, self legitimization, self validation is always there in one way, shape or form, and that is why I think our diaspora has that consistency and that strength, obviously, depending on the family and the history and how language and culture and everything in and around that is passed around, there's nuances, and I think I was just lucky enough to have such a steadfast and rooted exposure to to that practice.
Awa Sow 08:56
It's interesting because we live in a world in which national identities take on so much space, and as we've discussed with Luke The Nona in an earlier episode as well, it's like it takes so much space that it's difficult. You almost have to fight to legitimize your your cultural and communal identities when they're not rooted in a nation state, so within enclosed borders, and that's how diasporic experiences for a lot of us actually feel like the dilution of our cultural identities, just because we feel like any culture that expands and develops and merges with other cultures and and in different places, is naturally less legitimate than the cultures that develop and expand within the confines of the borders, because cultures naturally develop, they naturally evolve. But somehow we find them more legitimate and more genuine when they develop and expand within the borders of the nation state. And it's so interesting how like the case of the Kurds actually disrupts the idea and is a living example of how identities and like cultures can be reinforced and taken on, sometimes even more freely outside of any kind of borders or beyond those borders rather.
Lavin Ousi 10:36
I think the idea of being without borders is not new to Kurds. Again, I can't speak for every Kurd but I'm pretty confident that most of them would share that sentiment, and so I think it is an interesting sort of case study to look at how Kurds consistently have navigated what it is to be borderless, even within the homeland in which they are told, this is where your ancestral lineage is from. This is where your history took shape. This is where you know you go down, you touch the grass, and you know that grass has been, has seen generations upon generations of your tribes, etc. And yet it's that feeling that migrates, and in my family felt just as palpable, because even in that location, we knew that it was that process of saying that's what it was to us that legitimized it, not the fact that it was an established country, not the fact that, you know, if we put up our flag now, it's it's contested terrain. Everything about occurred is contested terrain, you know. So definitely, I think borderlessness, or going beyond borders, is just at this point, woven in the DNA of what it is to be occurred. And, yeah, I don't think that's that's a bold claim to be honest. I think that's just a very grounding one.
Awa Sow 12:02
I think the case of language shows the extent to which borders move so much, and I think you have such an interesting insight into it as someone that is fluent in Kurmanji, one of the Kurdish dialects, and someone that studies language and uses language so much in your creative practice and your work generally.
Lavin Ousi 12:28
I mean, if we're going to open the subject of language, you know that I'm going to have to pace myself, because I could talk about it forever in a million different ways, which is why I love it so much as an area of trying to understand our humanity and cultural identities, etc. But in the case of speaking Kurmanji, I think it's such a good example of all the different ways of combining the elements of where you are, where you're from, what you know and what you don't know as well. Language has a really... like me, speaking Kurmanji as a process is such a strong indicator to me, sometimes of things that I... that are absent, that I don't have vocabulary for or access to, and then sort of doing this process of talking to someone else who also speaks Kurmanji and filling in the gaps for each other because of how we were culturally informed and how our environment affected our ability to relation with each other. So for example, in my domestic sphere, just my family is alone amongst the millions across across our diaspora, we have so much variety in how we speak Kurmanji. So me, personally, my mom is from Bakur, so the south eastern Turkey region. And my dad is from Rojava, which is the northern, Northeastern Syrian region. So his experience of speaking Kurmanji is very mixed with sort of Arabic Dialectology and tendencies and peppers in those words. And my mom's is the same, but for Turkish. So my Kurmanji is kind of like a mixture, an amalgamation of both. And so when I would talk to my aunties, who were all from Bakur, there would be moments where I'd be saying a word that I learned from, like the Rojava side of my family, and they would be like, loving what? What are you saying? And then my grandma would fill in the gaps, because she would ask me to go into more detail. So I'd go into more detail using like, sort of, quote, unquote, broken Kurmanji from both sides. And it becomes like this jigsaw puzzle, and this process of culturally relationing within the same language, within the same dialect, even, because Kurmanji is one dialect of many, you have Zazaki, Sorani, even with different, like notations. So I just think it's such a...
Awa Sow 14:43
Different scripts, you mean?
Awa Sow 14:44
Yeah, so Sorani looks very similar to, like Arabic script, if I'm not wrong, and Kurmanji follows more of like a Latin script, or one that looks parallelable to like other languages, like Turkish, for example. But yeah, all that to say, I think that was... That's an example of just everything we've spoken about so far in that we are all trying to figure out what it means to express meaning and ourselves, even when we have all these sort of, I don't want to call them obstacles. I think it's more just textures of experience and of the Kurdish identity, because one is not more or less legitimate than the other. They're just differently informed because of how history has played out and the imprints that's left across generations. So just seeing how I tried to talk to my own family, it gave me a lot of insight into what it would be like to even branch out of those domestic spheres, start talking to my Kurdish peers, and then adding the variety of where in Kurdistan they may have been from, or what diaspora they're a part of, like my family in Germany, and like, then they mix in German vocabulary, what I've mixed in English, and now you have, like, the sort of huge expanse of different dialectical varieties that just have their own stories. Like one inflection, one tone, can hold so many different cultures, and yet, it's all still rooted in Kurmanji. And so the question of what Kurmanji even becomes, I think, is one that I'll probably spend the rest of my life exploring and trying to understand, because it's always going to be evolving with our time and our experiences. So yeah, I could honestly it's, it's one of 1000s of millions of possible interpretations, you know.
Awa Sow 16:25
I've addressed how national identities take up so much space in our way of understanding the world right and understanding ourselves. And we spoke a lot about how, like the case of Kurds, is so interesting to think about identities and cultural identities beyond borders, right? But the other side of the coin is that these cultural identities, because they're not grounded in a nation state, and tangible nation state that is recognized in international law, is that these cultural identities tend to be violently dismissed, if not erased or silenced. So my question, I guess, to you, is, how, how does does this come up for you? Does it come up?
Lavin Ousi 17:17
Definitely. I don't think it would be honest to paint it with all these beautiful colors, and not talk about the difficulties of what it is to the fears, actually, of Kurdish people as we scatter, because I think scatter captures how like distance. And there is something to be said about physical distance as well from each other, rather more than from a place, because in the example of language, I just gave you. Kurmanji as a written form of language, and a practice like any other language has grammatical roles, has things that are and are not considered like Kurmanji terms. And so when I say, oh, like my version of Kurmanji versus, like, my families. This is in the context of like, negotiating, understanding. But if we're going to talk about formalities, like, there is this fear of like, okay, so if it keeps getting to use the word diluted again, there is that feeling still, because there is the original essence of what it was and where it started, and because it naturally is going to have to take shape in different environments, that cohesion does get lost. And I'm making a case for how, though, we are distancing ourselves from from that, not by choice, but by necessity of where we're from and how we're communicating across different histories and cultures, even within our own families, it does feel like you are struggling within your own community to keep that together. So when you then put that in context of people actually asking you outside of Kurdish culture, what occurred is it becomes even more complex and difficult to hold on to something, because naturally, people tend to try and understand one thing that they don't know through something that they do, right? And I can understand that's a process that we do through many different ways of trying to understand each other. But if I get asked what's occurred, and I explain it in its most simple, simple terms, and the answer is, okay, so it's like, you're Arab or you're Turkish at your core, right? This was something that I really, really struggled with, because it made me almost not want to bother at times, if I'm being completely honest. Because if there's no the idea of something being tangible and concrete, if there's nothing I can point to in a one, two conversation, where are you from? I'm from X, Y or Z. Then what am I pointing to? What I'm pointing to like these in between spaces of like, how I speak on Kurmanji and how it speaks to the complexity of our history. Or like, well, geographically, this is what we are, but actually, in real life, it's like this. Then you're going into like, a TED talk for your identity. And there's an exhaustion to that, and it contributes to. I feel like a fear that our community tends to have about, okay, well, we're struggling with this idea of cohesion, and I don't think cohesion necessarily needs to mean being uniform, right? I think textures and variety is what makes it what it is for all the reasons we've discussed today, but cohesion and togetherness having some sort of spine or backbone to the body of what it is to be a Kurdish people is what I fear, even still, like this sort of rupture of that the spine breaking apart too much the point where you're just like a little bit of something that used to be together. And this is the reality as well, of being part of the kind of diaspora that Kurds are part of. And so when you when you then put those two lines of thought together, well, this is how people who do not understand will perceive us, and this is us as Kurds trying to perceive ourselves. Where does that leave you? And this is a question, I think, that echoes across so many different ways of thinking about cultural identity, being with family, being with friends, and also like developing your own family as well, and the reality of Kurds marrying outside of cultures, and the sort of like stigma that's born from this fear as well, of like, but what do we have to hold on to? What do we have to hold on to? And it just becomes quite sad, and it's hard not to feel sad when you sit with that long enough. But I don't think that takes away from everything else I've said about the enriching side of being so scattered, and the part of it that speaks to the determination to always reach for cohesion and not uniformity. And I don't think I'm landing in a specific answer, because there will never really, truly be one, and I think it's just too specific to the time that we're sitting in at every moment when that question is asked, like, what is the hardest part of what you're struggling with? Because it's like, the good parts, it's always going to evolve, right? So what can you really do, other than try and make sense of it in the specific moment and see what you can carry forward and pay forward. Try identify absences or weak spots in your own self reflection and self determination, and kind of just go through this constant process of cross referencing, relationing and trying to make sense of it from moment to moment. That can be exhausting, really exhausting, but I think it's also very empowering when you learn that that is what it is to counter all the forces that come at you as occurred at least. This is how it feels for me in this moment in time.
Awa Sow 22:31
It seems like across all the conversations that I've had so far with people that do consider themselves as part of a diaspora, there always is this aspect of trying to bridge things that feel like with time are torn apart, and this constant effort of trying to go back to and piece together and collage and make sense In relation to our own experiences, because obviously we cannot neglect the fact that, as a matter of fact, we are scattered. We are displaced. Even if you don't have any specific territory to think back to, you always have these roots which can be tangible, but don't necessarily have to be tangible, that you kind of try to get closer to and grow closer to.
Lavin Ousi 23:27
As you were speaking, I was thinking about place and space, and I don't know how you're going to feel about this, but having a space to go back to is what I think makes the most sense for everything I've said about Kurdistan being stateless, because there are so many spaces that we go back to. And place is the thing that I think for us, is the politicized, oppressed subject of like, okay, so you have your Kurdish village in Bitlis, for example, yeah, but Bitlis is a place in Turkey, in the country of Turkey, that's the place. But then the space of Gund of our village that is us through and through. That is ancestry. That is the echoes and the current soundings of everything that we are and the space that we crave when we are not there also. So that idea of dispersion and scattering as well is still true in that sense, right? Because as much as we produce new spaces, like we spoke about earlier, and we go to these new locations and put forward, still that same mechanism of resistance in its very core of self determination, etc, we still miss the space. And so we produce new ones. And this is something that I think echoes across all arguments of people from different diasporas and diaspora backgrounds the production of space versus the fixity of place. And sometimes the two bleed into each other naturally, depending on where you're taking the argument. But there's so many different ways to produce space too, right? So you have language is a way of producing space in London, like the Kurdish language produces spaces of art. Go. Cultural negotiations. And then in Kurdistan, like my grandma talks about the production of space through going to the mountains, going to the Zozan, being with the livestock. You know, the space is produced in the act of tending to the land.
Awa Sow 25:13
What's the Zozan?
Lavin Ousi 25:14
Oh, the zozan is the streams of the mountains. She talks about that space, which is the action of being in the land, right? That's the space. It's not so much the place. And for me, there is such a difference between the two. Now, the older I get, the more I delineate the difference, and it just feels really relevant to what you were saying, because it's space also that we tend to crave, and it's space that we try to reproduce and produce in 100 different ways. So yeah, that's also something that's true to the difficulty and the beauty, because the beauty is: we will produce new spaces in new ways. And the hard part is craving the spaces that are not near, or the places where we can go to create the spaces that we miss or that we hear so much of, or that have shaped the ones that we love and the histories and memories that we carry forward, even if we've not been able to go and produce that space in that way, in that place.
Awa Sow 26:04
That is such a beautiful insight. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode, Lavin.
Lavin Ousi 26:09
Thank you so much for having me.
Awa Sow 26:11
Thank you for listening. If you have any thoughts, any comments, we'd love to hear from you. This was Diaspora Diaries, a podcast powered by Transmission Roundhouse. You can find us on Instagram at diasporaxdiaries, and hope to hear from you soon.
Recording ends 26:30 minutes