NISANE: The LIFE of A MESOPOTAMIAN PEASANT

Abstract

Nisane Ergün was born in 1933 in Beqŭsyone (Turk. Alagöz). She is a native and fluent speaker of Turoyo, a contemporary form of Eastern Aramaic. Although never formally educated, she is a gifted storyteller. Throughout her entire life, she has been engaged in subsistence farming and animal husbandry, in much the same manner as her Kurdish neighbours and other rural populations throughout northern Mesopotamia. Her life story, here related in her own words, is thus an exercise in narrating history ‘from below’. She is an eyewitness to various dramatic periods in the recent history of Tur Abdin.