by Hiner Saleem
My father began to realize he had been swindled, and for the benefit of the salesman, he screamed, “May my donkey bugger your wife!” Exasperated, he stopped to drink his glass of tea, which, having been poured long before, was cold by then. He became annoyed at my mother and threw the half-full glass against the wall. Fearing the worst, we all got up and went downstairs to the first floor to sleep. My mother muttered that he had let the devil into the house.
A little while later my father called to us: the image was in focus; we could come back. We got out of our beds and went upstairs, only to discover indistinct shadows that strained the eyes. Soon even the shadows disappeared. We went back to bed while my father continued to curse the salesman and his wife. At around two in the morning, my father got dressed to go out. All of us were awake, fearing he would take his Brno with him. Fortunately, he didn’t. Holding the television under his arm, he told me to follow him. We went back to the salesman and made him get out of bed. He understood as soon as he saw us. He said only, “Couldn’t you wait until morning?” My father cut him off with a dry, categorical “No.” “Here’s your TV, give me my money back.” Seeing my father so furious, the man didn’t argue, and we left.
There was still my uncle’s television, but he was growing weary of the constant visits from the neighbors’ children. At first, he had welcomed us with tea and fruits. We would settle down like little pashas in front of the Egyptian soap opera. Now, we had to ring the bell at least ten times before he’d open the door. I would sometimes ask my mother to come with me, so when he asked, “Who is it?” I could answer, “My mother and I.” And I’d often ask my mother to answer instead of me. As soon as I was in front of the television, I’d make myself as inconspicuous as possible, huddling in a corner. I waited for the adults to go to bed before making myself comfortable.
After Anter and Abla, they ran a documentary about the fish in the sea narrated by a tall, thin, very serious man in a red hat who spoke for at least half an hour in a strange language that frightened me. I was well aware that we spoke Kurdish, that Iraqis spoke Arabic, and that the rest of the world spoke English. What mysterious language could the man possibly be speaking? My uncle’s television also broadcast Indian films. But I was disappointed, for there was nothing in my language. I was very intrigued. Perhaps our voices couldn’t be transmitted on a screen? Or perhaps the television language was chosen in the country where the sets were manufactured? I longed to watch Kurdish television. I knew that the most important thing for my father was that I become a judge or a lawyer, but my wish was to create a television that would speak our language. I saw myself simultaneously as an inventor, as a maker of shows like Anter and Abla, as a musician and singer. And I vowed that one day I would make that machine speak Kurdish.
In those days of peace, my town, Aqra, was bursting with life. Singers came from everywhere to give concerts, theater troupes performed epics and plays, including Mem and Zim, our Romeo and Juliet. I went to the shows in the school hall, surrounded by women and children, and we danced to Kurdish folk tunes.
This was the first time I saw young girls sing and dance on a public stage. Between each number, a master of ceremonies chanted proverbs about the glory of women, exhorting them to take part in the political and social struggle. “Women are half of our society,” he said. “A lion is always a lion, whether male or female. You can’t applaud with just one hand … A bird can’t fly with just one wing …”
And we were all supposed to applaud.
Salma was one of the young girls appearing onstage. She wore a yellow jacket, the color of General Barzani’s party, dotted with red flowers. She was self-confident, and my brother was in love. He never missed any of her performances. I had no idea whether she was in love with him, but what counted was that my brother was in love with her.
My brother confided in my sisters. They spoke to my mother, who broached the subject with my father. Not a moment was wasted; my parents, along with several notables, went to request Salma’s hand. Her family accepted. Wasn’t Rostam the son of Shero, the general’s personal operator? Rostam’s wedding was celebrated with a concert of honking horns, hails of bullets from his Plimout, and shots fired from my father’s old Brno. Who said weapons were meant only for warfare? From that day on, I never again saw my young sister-in-law onstage. Though a bird can’t fly with just one wing, let others provide the wing—not my sister-in-law.
One day, my father came home agitated. He filled his tobacco pouch, pulled out his Brno from under the mattress, and went back to the party headquarters, followed by my brother, his Plimout in hand. The worst had just been avoided! A delegation of religious Iraqis had gone up to the mountains to meet with our general and to give him a golden Koran as a gift; without their knowledge, it had been filled with TNT by Saddam Hussein’s agents. Just as they were presenting the Koran to the general, it exploded, but miraculously he escaped unharmed, protected by the man who was serving him tea. Order was later restored.7 My father put his Brno away under the mattress and my brother’s Plimout found its niche again above the conjugal bed. As for me, I filled baskets with figs and, against my mother’s advice, went to sell them to the soldiers in the barracks to earn some pocket money.
One Thursday, Cheto and I were standing behind the barbed wire of the barracks, crying out, “Figs, apricots, blackberries,” when two soldiers walked toward us. They were not the young conscripts we were used to having as customers. They were older, stronger, and much tougher-looking. They were carrying truncheons and wearing the red armbands of the military police. We wanted to turn on our heels, but they called to us, “Children, don’t leave. Bring us your fruit.” As soon as we were near them, they pounced on us. They insulted us as they hit us. “Children of savages … You come here with your shitty fruit to spy on us!” They hit harder and harder, pummeling and kicking us. We were raw from their blows. Our fruit was trampled underfoot. When they had had enough, they let us run away, limping and stumbling, and shouted after us, “If you come back here, we’ll cut off your heads like sheep.”
When I returned to our neighborhood, I passed tearful women from our family, walking behind a coffin carried by the men, my father and my uncle in the lead. I went up to Ramo. “Who died?” “No one.” “So what’s this coffin for?” “It’s empty.” “Then why are the women crying?” “We’re going to kill cousin Mushir.” I asked why, but he made no reply.
When they arrived in front of his door, my father and my uncle Avdal Khan, tense, shouted “Mushir!” Our cousin climbed up on the roof to escape. My uncle called out to him, “Come and see, we’ve brought you your coffin.”
Mushir, panicked, was stranded on the rooftop. My father added, “You’ve dishonored the family,” and my uncle called him a collaborator and fired on him. The women were still weeping around the coffin. Avdal Khan fired a second shot. “Why do you go to Mosul so often? To meet whom? The security people? Have you become a spy, Mushir?” Mushir, terrified, tried to hide as best he could. “I’m not a collaborator!” he yelled. My uncle broke down the door, climbed up to the roof with my father tagging behind, and caught Mushir. My father looked at him sadly. “There have been rumors about you for some time … We didn’t want to believe them … But you were never willing to say what you’re up to in Mosul. You’re out of work yet you always have money. We must avenge the honor of the family …” My father was interrupted. My uncle had just fired a bullet into Mushir’s knee.
He was on the verge of firing a second time but my father pushed the gun aside with his hand and addressed Mushir again. “If it’s true that you’re not a collaborator, here, take my gun and fire a bullet into your head! Then we’ll believe you. Otherwise we’ll have to kill you.” Mushir tried to stand erect as best he could. He moaned and pleaded, “I go to Mosul for business!” “What business?” my uncle shouted. My father exhorted him, “Mushir, kill yourself … Your coffin is ready … We’ll make sure you’re buried with dignity.” As he tried to escape, Mushir was br
ought to a halt by a bullet fired by my uncle. He fell from the roof, among the women, right near his coffin.
Later it was discovered that Mushir had kept a mistress in Mosul. He had not been a traitor.
The situation was deteriorating from day to day. The number of security officers grew steadily, and the tension kept rising. Trenches were dug around our town and everyone got ready to defend their neighborhood. My father and seven other men mounted guard in a trench opposite the barracks that dominated the town on the little hill behind our orchard. They expected an imminent attack. At the slightest signal from General Barzani, they were ready to launch an assault against the Iraqi barracks. The women and children were to be grouped together in a shelter. My father immediately offered our fortress-house. “I had it built especially for a time like this.” No one questioned the sturdiness of the walls in our house, but the problem was its orientation. When it was built, my father had wanted all the windows to face away from the town in the direction of the orchard and the hill overlooking the house. It was a beautiful view. He couldn’t have foreseen that within a few months barracks would go up on that hill, a few hundred yards in front of our windows. This was why, to his great sorrow, it was decided that the women and children would go to stay at my uncle Avdal Khan’s house.
I didn’t want the happiness of this recent period—the joy in the freedom, the concerts, the painting—to disappear. But it was obvious the putsch leaders no longer respected Kurdish rights and Kurdish autonomy. This being the case, I wanted a gun and I wanted to join the men in the trenches. But since there weren’t enough weapons to go around, I was put in charge of supplying the fighters. My father and his men were very confident. Their morale was boosted by Voice of America, which referred to us as heroes and freedom fighters. It was truly reassuring to have an ally as important as America. My father kept repeating, “We’re Indo-Europeans, like the Americans!” And to reassure himself even more, he added, as his father had, “We’re British.” Radio Moscow was now treating us as rebels, but we couldn’t have cared less: let them “march to socialism” with the Baath Party! Even kids younger than I knew the names Nixon and Kissinger, and we loved them. We stayed in our trenches for several days without anything happening. Then we were given orders to move out of the town because our tanks and airplanes were going to rid the town of all the Iraqi forces and allow us very shortly to return, victorious. When my mother asked, “Where are the tanks and planes the Americans gave us?” my father said with conviction, “They’re hidden in our mountains, and the planes are sheltered in clandestine airports.” All of us waited for a sign from the general to march on Kurdistan and liberate it.
That was how we left for the north, for the mountains, convinced we would return, victorious, a month later. It was as though we were leaving on vacation. The roads were congested with vehicles heading north. We stopped for a picnic along the way and arrived in Bijil in the afternoon. Perched on top of our possessions, in the back of the pickup my father had rented, I saw Iraqi policemen captured by our men. As he passed them, my father honked his horn to greet his friend Rajab, from Bill, among the fighters. Rajab returned his greeting, raising his gun in the air. I heard my father, radiant, say to my mother, “You see, we’re going to capture all of them, without even firing a shot.” Our friend Rajab ran after the pickup and called out to my father, “Shero, we need you desperately. We’ve retrieved a Morse transmitter at the police station, but those sons of bitches sabotaged it. Come help us repair it!” My father climbed out of the truck and told the driver to continue on with us. I saw him disappear, his old Brno on his shoulder, with his friend. It began to rain.
There was unimaginable chaos in the village of Bijil. The peasants, returning from their pastures with sheep, goats, cows, horses, mingled with countless cars crammed with passengers on their way to the great revolutionary picnic. People and animals were wading through mud, and the rain kept coming down. We were somehow privileged, so my mother, my sisters, my two sisters-in-law—Dijla the villager and Salma the dancer—their children, and I were put up in a room in the house of an acquaintance of my father. My two brothers had gone to join the fighters in the mountains. In spite of all the commotion around me, I felt lonely. The village made me sad. I decided to join my father at the police station, where I found him surrounded by armed men. Facing them were six Iraqi policemen, unarmed and wearing no belts. My father was trying to repair the Morse transmitter; it was connected to a battery, but there were none of the characteristic beeps coming out of the machine. This was the first time I’d seen a transmitter. My father rolled a cigarette and offered it to one of the Iraqis. I was surprised. Then he rolled another one, for himself. He lit it and, looking the policeman straight in the eye, asked, “Tell me … What did you do to the machine so that I can’t fix it?” The policeman held his head up high. “How could you possibly imagine I sabotaged it?”
I saw my father as a judge. He went on, “If you tell me what you did to this machine, I’ll let you and your friends go, unharmed.” The policeman shrugged his shoulders and said, “I swear by Allah I didn’t touch that machine. I don’t know why it doesn’t want to work …” And to show his goodwill, he tried to help my father repair it. Standing around them, we followed their every gesture very attentively. Rajab, who greatly mistrusted the Iraqis, asked, “What are we going to do with the prisoners if the machine doesn’t work?” My father didn’t reply; he went outside to smoke a cigarette and calm his nerves, and Rajab followed him. Back inside, my father bent down over the machine again, helped by the policeman, but with no greater success. Rajab marched back into the room like a madman and, aiming his rifle at the policeman’s chest, made it clear to him, in broken Arabic, that he was giving him one hour to repair the transmitter, or else he and his companions would be buried along with it. Panicked, the policeman turned to my father and pleaded with him. My father calmed down Rajab, who stepped away, cursing the devil. My father returned to the policeman. “Listen, my brother, I know you sabotaged the machine. Either you repair it immediately or we execute you right away.”
The policeman went back to work on the machine, invoking Allah. I saw him tinker with a part. When my father saw that the policeman had started the transmitter going again, he pushed him aside and made a show of repairing the apparatus himself. It started sending out the Morse code again, and my father straightened up, puffing out his chest. “We’re proud of you, Shero, the general’s operator,” Rajab said to him. Then they picked up the secret codes transmitted by the Iraqis and let the policemen go unharmed, advising them to tell our Arab “brothers” that the Kurds weren’t enemies of the Iraqis but were simply struggling for their freedom. Our fighters would have liked to keep my father there as their operator, but he declined, declaring, “The general is waiting for me …”
When we were back with our family, my father described in great detail how he had fixed the transmitter. I said nothing.
We spent three nights in Bijil, whose population swelled with each new day. Fear of an Iraqi invasion intensified. Bijil was only a stopping point; we were to continue climbing—higher, farther north. We set off again in the direction of Nauperdan, where our leader, Mustafa Barzani, had his headquarters. We were three families traveling on foot. At nightfall, we reached the bank of a wide river. “Is it the Tigris?” I asked my father. “No, my son, it’s a tributary, the Zab. Remember? The river where we caught fish in Bill.”
At this spot, you could cross the river without swimming, and we first had the women and children go, huddled together on our little group’s horse. I was scared of the water, particularly at night. Yet I swam like a fish. Then came my father’s turn. With his rifle safe and dry on his shoulders, he clutched the horse’s mane and headed into the river. But he was so tense that he hampered the horse, and we saw the current carry them away. We heard my father’s cries as the horse thrashed the water furiously with his hoofs. The owner of the horse yelled out, “Let go of his head … Hang on to the b
elongings.” We were very frightened. Finally, the men and beasts managed to come out of the river about a hundred yards downstream. And my father, dripping wet, came to dry himself off by the fire.
We parted from the two other families in a village on the riverbank and continued our journey on foot, on horseback, or by car, depending on the opportunities that arose. At long last we arrived in Nauperdan, headquarters of the Kurdish resistance. This was the most protected village in Kurdistan. My brother Rostam was waiting for us there with a house. We felt very important; we were with the families of the top leaders. Our new house, perched on a hill, had only one room. It was a replica of our Bill house. My father was convinced that it had been put at our disposal by the general himself. My brother Rostam set him right and showed him the antiaircraft equipment hidden behind the house. “I’m responsible for the antiaircraft defense, I’ve got to be operational twenty-four hours a day. That’s why I was given this house on the hill.” My father went down to headquarters, where the general’s secretary warmly welcomed him and my father explained he was at the general’s disposal.
There was much activity in the village, with peshmergas coming and going incessantly. Iraq had just launched a large-scale offensive. Our town of Aqra and all the other towns in Kurdistan had fallen into the hands of the Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands of people had taken to the roads and were converging northward. But our faith was unshakable. America was behind us, and so was Iran, its ally. Our radio station, Voice of Kurdistan, kept us informed of events hour by hour. The newscaster spoke in an impassioned voice of the heroic resistance of our troops. My father then listened very attentively to Voice of America, which called us “freedom fighters.” And then it was the turn of Radio Moscow, which called us vulgar rebels, acting against Saddam Hussein, “champion of socialism!” But my father wasn’t worried. America and Henry Kissinger were on our side.