The Keeper of Language: Serveh Pourmohammadi and the Quiet Power of Cultural Resistance
In a modest room filled with voices and vowels, children gather to learn the words their ancestors once whispered by firelight. Kurdish words.
Carried across borders, across lifetimes, and guiding them is Serveh Pourmohammadi:
An educator.
A cultural guardian.
A woman whose resistance takes the shape of language, stories, and community.
As a former board member of the Nozhin Socio-Cultural Association, Serveh has spent years defending the socio-cultural rights of Iran’s Kurdish community.
Through her leadership, she helped create and expand Kurdish language classes across cities—not just teaching a language, but stitching a people back into themselves.
She organized festivals, held forums, and celebrated a heritage too often pushed to the margins. Through poetry, through songs, through the simple act of gathering, Serveh made space for a silenced identity to breathe again.
In a country where diversity is often met with suspicion, where teaching Kurdish can be seen as a threat, Serveh’s work is a quiet act of defiance—proof that culture is not only memory, but future.
Though she has not been imprisoned like so many others, her activism exists under the weight of constant pressure. Risk is the backdrop to her daily life.
But she continues.
Because to teach your language is to say: We were here. We are still here.
What You Can Do:
Donate any amount to amplify Serveh’s efforts: Share her story. Celebrate her work.
Support cultural rights for all communities: Advocate for the freedom to learn, speak, and celebrate one's heritage.
Defend the right to education and expression: Use the hashtag #SupportServehPourmohammadi to raise awareness.
Let no woman stand alone.
