SCENE 1
6 April, 2017
BIRMINGHAM
“Send in the Volunteers”

My name is Daniel Newey. I’m lanky and have a disarming grin, so say the ladies. I’m just having a kid, which is to say a laugh; the ladies don’t say nothing like that. I’m British clearly, but also part a cheeky Jew. It’s not a very well thought out part to be honest. I became active in the Kurdish movement protesting Turkish arms deals and attending cultural events at the centers. My working class British city had literally hundreds of Jihadists who took off for the Middle East and joined Daesh. Fuck all mate, hundreds! They took wee kinds and wives with them. They thought it was the end of times. Well it had end of times properties, I’ll give it that.
So I was always an activist with politics of the progressive kind, but I love Kurds man! They’re so awesome. Humble, principled mountain people. Love um! Sometime in August of 2016 I made up my mind to travel to Kurdistan and join up with the People’s Protection Units; the famous and glorious Y.P.G. .
So I worked a bit, saved about 2,000 quid and there I had a chance to ask the right questions about who to contact, literally just an email address called YPGREVOLUTION, and I answered a bunch of questions for them. Then I was approved to go.
Bu life happens, you have a girlfriend you can’t bring, and you have an apartment you can’t just leave. You also have a bit of fear in you. No one wants to die! Unless you’re one of these Jihadist tossers. You make various excuses. Well not me, I don’t worry about dying. I had a pretty boring apartment. My job was bullocks.
I had become friendly with Helen Qerechow, whose British name was Ana Campbell via the protests and Kurdish events. She was far more ideological than I was. She was what we called later a ‘true believer’. Me, I just wanted to kill Daesh, and also the Turkish fascists. I wasn’t stupid to the politics mind you, but I was more of the fighterly mind set. I had set myself on a warpath. I grew up working class and I would die working class and revolution would never come home to the U.K., but if I could contribute well to the YPG and aid the Kurdish resistance then I would feel like I was a man of my word. All these years yelling about arms deals and Turkish coups all didn’t ever do much, but it was how you made friends with Hevals and aspiring Hevals. Heval in Kurdish means comrade/friend. It’s what movement people call each other affectionately and ideologically.
So I was scheduled to begin the Academy in Qerechow in August of 2017. I had booked a direct flight to Erbil from Heathrow. Ana was in the class before me for the YPJ; Women’s Protection Units, the co-gendered women’s structure.
Now my motives were pure, but they were not ideological. Apo didn’t make me do it! I just felt that Daesh was a heinous evil. I felt the Turks to be aggressors. And I wanted to avenge the fact that so many people from my city had headed over to the enemy. An enemy which throws homos off roof tops. Kidnaps and sex enslaves young women. Commits genocide! And until the operation Inherent Resolve was gradually taking over the entire Middle East into their “Caliphate”.
So I packed my bag and joined the volunteers. The proud, inglorious 500 or so who ended up with the YPG and its affiliated structures.