I Am Sam Kurdish Best

It means laughing harder than anywhere else. Kurdish humor is sharp, self-deprecating, and often involves someone’s uncle doing something ridiculous. We’ve survived so much that we’ve learned not to take ourselves too seriously.

And I’m Kurdish. I come from a people without a state but with an unshakable soul. A people whose anthem is called “Ey Reqîb” — “O, Enemy” — because even our love songs have a little defiance in them. i am sam kurdish

But I am too Kurdish for the West. At work, I don’t drink beer at the pub because my Muslim grandmother would roll in her grave. I explain for the 100th time that no, I am not Arab, and no, I am not a terrorist—I am from the only people in the Middle East that has never launched a 9/11-style attack on civilians. (We fight our wars in the mountains, not in skyscrapers). It means laughing harder than anywhere else

When I cook Kurdish food for my non-Kurdish friends, I do not just feed them. I colonize their taste buds. I watch them close their eyes and sigh. And I think: You see? We are real. We are delicious. How can you erase a people who invented this joy? And I’m Kurdish

It means Newroz. The fire. The dancing. The feeling that spring is not just a season but a political act — a celebration of resistance, of new beginnings, of a people who refused to disappear.