My (Brother) Mehmaná

Sfarda L. Gül

poetry ⋅ issue 2

for Κωνσταν’τίν and Αρτσάχ

A village lodged in the thicket—a trinket bouncing along a dirt path cutting trees, dropped by those who fled the sword in the west.

There stands the Պանայա Եկեղեցի (Panaya Yekeghets’i), the Panya Church of 1249-birth. Church of the Virgin Mary.

There, you’ll find ο αδελφός μου (o aḏelfós mou) in effigy because I don’t think you can find ο αδελφός μου anywhere anymore.

There, you’ll find five gallons of blood.

In 2010, the final Pontian resided in that latibule.

In 2023, the Theomítor lost all her sons. We lost all our brothers.

John Milton couldn’t write Artsakh Lost, yet here I am attempting to vocalise a loss as immense as the grief for Mlaḥsô (ܡܠܚܬܝܐ)—brother of Turoyo (ܛܘܪܝܐ).

But I know grief better than my own brother (ο αδελφός μου).

But in 2023, the sword is a bullet (I think they call it a qurşun; I think Mlaḥsô didn’t live long enough to learn that word).

And my brothers are running once more (when I’m thrown from sleep in coldsweat, my calendar tells me it’s 1915 and I better run too). West, this time.

And my brothers are screaming for no one but me to hear and what can I do but grieve(?)

I want the desert to scream back at me as I empty my lungs into it—like my ancestors’ death-march cries—and I’d feel real.

I want to find my brother(s) lost between the corpse-stuffed sea and the thicket that still reeks of white phosphorus.

I want to find that trinket dropped along a dirt path cutting trees and bring it back home west.

Bring it back home east.

Bring it back.

An artist and writer of pretentious purple prose since her early childhood brought up in a Police State, Sfarda L. Gül’s (alias) creative focus hones in on the macabre and introspective, the grotesque and juxtaposing—a deconstruction of social ideology and human suffering influenced by her upbringing, queerness, historically persecuted mixed ethnicity, and dark- sided emotional disposition.

When not engaging in art, Sfarda is enthralled in ethnography, linguistics, and social activism aiding to uplift ethnic and queer minorities of her native Eastern Europe, SWANA, and Central Asia. She is the curator of independent publication Lacrimosity and Righteous Rage Press which hosts a Substack newsletter, and a YouTube video essayist at Anarchy on Page.

About the Poet