Do not call her a bereaved mother, said Aisha Affendi, a co-president of the Movement for a Democratic Society in Kobani, whose son Shervan was killed in an ambush at 19. “I am the mother of a martyr,” she said, a phrase habitually uttered with defiance, and one that confers instant credibility in Kurdish society.

One of the officials at the Martyrs Institute in Manbij is named Darwish Salahudin, but when people introduce him to a stranger, they won’t use his name, they’ll say, “This is the brother of the martyred Comrade Botan.”

He brightened, relating that. “We see it as an honor to be the relative of a martyr; everybody knows who we are.”

The well-funded Martyrs Institutes in every northern Syrian city hand out pensions to parents, spouses and children of fighters killed in battle, and in some cases of civilian victims as well. They also host museums with galleries of hundreds of enlarged photographs of the local fallen; finance signs and billboards with faces of groups of the dead; print off likenesses of all shapes and sizes to distribute to homes, offices and public spaces; and stage public memorial events, with marches and speeches on anniversary days. No public office in Kurdish areas is without at least one and usually many photographs of the fallen.