The song, Where Is Our Pain Mother was
originally sung in Kurdish, with the lyrics written and later translated by Soraya
Fallah, who also performs the vocals. The electronic music was composed by Omid
Rafizadeh.
In this piece, Soraya speaks
about the atrocities and injustices her people—the Kurds—have endured. Yet, she
illustrates the fear experienced by many who are unable to speak the truth. Out
of this fear, she either avoids mentioning these events directly or employs
sarcasm and irony. It is as if she is pretending these events never happened,
while the reader or listener clearly understands the painful truth. Through
this contrast, the song conveys the deep suffering of her nation beneath a
surface of denial.
The lyrics take the form of
a letter to her mother, who lives 14,000 kilometers away.
Soraya never sent this
letter to her mother, fearing it might put her in danger, even in her old age.
Instead, she transformed it into a song of resistance—a piece that is
not only her voice, but also the collective voice of a grieving nation. As an
act of resistance against all forms of injustice and genocide, she dedicated
the song to stand against genocide itself.
Dr. Soraya Fallah is a
researcher and activist. She is deeply concerned about the rights of people and
uses her voice—through writing, advocacy, and other forms of expression—to
unveil injustice, amplify silenced stories, and call for equity and human dignity.
You can listen to the song here.
Following our conversation.
You can listen to the song
here:
Letter to Mother
My dear mother,
I think only of myself.
Where should I place the pain of happiness and joy?
All the news is bright,
everyone is well.
All the photos gleam with beauty.
No images of the fallen
(refers to the fact that almost every day people are hanged or killed, and
images are revealed by local people on the internet).
No whispers of the tortured.
No broken maps (refers to the Kurdish map that is divided and broken by the
borders of different countries in the Middle East).
No shredded documents (refers to all evidence of killings, executions, torture,
and people’s memoirs—as well as books that were banned).
No shadows of the fallen,
No traces of the tortured.
No torn maps,
No shredded documents.
My dear mother,
Seriously—where is our pain?
We have no sorrow at all—
As if we never knew worry or fear (using the word “we” refers to a collective
people and the grief of a community. And “not having fear” refers to Soraya’s
nation being wrongfully encouraged that they should not give meaning to grief,
but instead sacrifice and glorify martyrs for other nations, as if they must
not fear dying or worry).
No shadows of the fallen,
No traces of the tortured.
No torn maps,
No shredded documents.
You know better than I:
Long ago, the head of Pishewa Ghazi was never hanged (she uses the name of Pishewa
Ghazi as a symbol of a leader who was executed by hanging for playing a
significant role in Kurdish history).
The massacre of our youth never happened (she refers to the massacre of Kurdish
young people and the collective grief imposed by the regimes under which they
live).
The bodies of our young girls were never scarred (refers to young underage
girls who were tortured and raped for being part of the movement for rights).
