Dimdim Castle

I was scattered in the beginning. The bits of me existed, but were not together. Piece by piece, my builders carried me up the steep cliffs on wobbly carts and the backs of those they enslaved. The decades it took to construct my high walls and deep trenches were nothing compared to the millions of years I sat fragmented in bits. I was grateful for them; the builders and the slaves that brought me together.

My builders grew old and they aged faster than my stone eroded. I pulled them into my depths to forever keep them safe with my rocky embrace.

In my walls, I shielded the fierce fighters and the forbidden lovers. My thick, cold stone contained their smoldering hearths that kept them warm when the winter storms brewed outside. I watched as the mothers jumped from the battlements in the dread of an unwinnable war, just as I had watched their babes be born in my echoing chambers. I watched as the enemy splattered blood on my tiles and reaped the bones of the unwilling. I could not shield them anymore from the enemy that was inside. 

The sun has shone on me all the same since then, knowing my incompetence. The red and yellow wildflower fields have bloomed every year on queue after the spring rains have ceased, knowing that the blood of my builders and slaves once fueled their growth. 

With each crack in my walls and collapse of my floor, I shout to them—I cannot help but let out the pain—a reminder that I am still here, waiting for my builders and slaves to return. 

Solemn in my silence, I am now a hollow tomb for the flesh of life I once knew. Waiting for my builders and slaves to come back and repair all that is now scattered.

Author's Note: I wrote this in like... 2021? If I remember correctly, Dimdim Castle was a Kurdish fortress in Iran. It was attacked and everyone was slaughtered. Women jumped with their babies and children out of the windows to escape the same fate that their husbands, brothers, and fathers suffered.

I think I first read it in Christiane Bird's book, A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan. But I could be mistaken because I read a lot of books about Kurdish history in that time.

That book is absolutely phenomenal, by the way. I highly recommend reading it if you like history stuff. I'm definitely going to re-read it when I get home this weekend. It's so packed full of historical events and Kurdish traditions. It's a book worthy of multiple read throughs. Just wonderful.