La Corda Roja

Alan Ward (1937-2014), also known as Alan Mac an Bhaird, held an MA degree from Oxford and a PhD degree from Trinity College, Dublin. Over the years he published several articles on Irish language and literature. After some time as a placenames officer in the Ordnance Survey Dublin and in Hong Kong dedicated to studying Chinese language and literature, he relocated to Andorra. From then until his retirement he acted as an official sworn translator in the Principality. La còrda roja is a work of his youth when, fresh out of University, he spent a semester teaching English at a secondary school in Diyarbakir, in western Kurdistan. Unfortunately, having learned to speak Kurdish -the mother tongue of his students- rather too well led to tense relations with the local authorities, and a hasty retreat out of the country. This poem is a remembrance of his experience and the friends he made in Diyarbakir, and of their plight.