by Hiner Saleem
I took out some money to pay my fare. He refused to accept at first, but then he said, “Because you’re a tourist, which means you have money Otherwise …”
The young boy kept looking at me and repeating, “We’re Kurds, right? We’re brothers, right? We’ll be free, right?”
I still had my little bag on my lap with the Kurdish suit, the cassette of Kurdish music, and the book of Kurdish poetry. The driver opened the glove compartment and took out a cassette, which he slipped into the player. It was the voice of Mahmad Shekho, the tall, skinny Kurd from Syria. It was the same song I’d heard in the refugee camp in Iran in 1974. The car swung onto a road that cut far into the distance through an immense plain.
“The more time goes by, the more my heart beats slowly, my beloved …”
As for me, Azad, I was no longer a kid.
AZAD lived in Italy for many years, but couldn’t obtain a residency card because Italy did not recognize Kurds as having official refugee status. He settled in France.
SHERO SELIM MALAY, his father, died on December 18, 1996. His son couldn’t attend his funeral because it was impossible for him to return to Kurdistan.
GENERAL BARZANI died of cancer in New Jersey in 1978.
HAYBET, Azad’s mother, became blind in her left eye. She lives in Aqra in their fortress-house, alone.
ROSTAM, Azad’s brother, fled in 1997. He is presently a refugee in Germany
DILOVAN, Azad’s other brother and Zilan’s father, fought with the resistance groups in the mountains of Kurdistan. He is the father of eleven children. The parents of his wife, DIJLA, were killed by the chemicals used during the Anfal, Saddam Hussein’s campaign to exterminate the Kurds between February 1987 and September 1988.
TAMAN, Azad’s sister, lived in the concentration camps.
RAMO, Azad’s cousin, studied architecture in Baghdad and died under torture in 1982.
CHETO, the cousin with the stunt pigeons, became an agricultural engineer and looks after his orchard.
JACOB, the math teacher, was executed by firing squad in 1981 in Mosul.
SAMI, the painter, was never seen again after he was taken away by the secret police. His parents believe his body was dissolved in sulfuric acid.
SADDAM HUSSEIN was president of Iraq and lived in his palace in Baghdad until 2003.
IMAD, the musician, became an excellent violinist. He fell in love with a woman he wasn’t supposed to marry; they ran away, but were murdered by their families when they returned two years later.
GALAVEJ, Azad’s cousin who got married on the day of Azad’s departure, had a daughter. Galavej’s husband vanished in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq War.
The father of Jian, the girl who gave Azad a flashlight, was executed by firing squad. The rest of her family was deported to the concentration camps in southern Iraq.
On April 9, 2003, the coalition forces that had entered Iraq on March 19 conquered Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled.
Notes
1 Mullah Mustafa Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, who had been military leader of the Kurdish Republic in Iran in 1946.—Translator’s note
2 Literally “he who looks death straight in the face.”—Translator’s note
3 Baggy trousers.—Translator’s note
4 Cracked wheat.—Translator’s note
5 Goodbye.—Translator’s note
6 In March 1970 the Kurds obtained an agreement that accorded them partial autonomy and allowed Barzani to keep 15,000 armed Kurdish troops.
7 This assassination attempt occurred in March 1974.—Translator’s note
8 March 6, 1975, in Algiers.
9 Literally, “fallen back into line.”—Translator’s note
10 The Disappointed Female.—Transhtor’s note
11 Iraqi secret police.—Translator’s note
12 The PUK, founded in 1975 and led by Jalal Talabani, and the KDP, led by Barzani, were feuding Kurdish forces throughout this period.
13 Literally, “Live little, live hot.”—Translator’s note
Copyright © 2004 by Hiner Saleem
Translation copyright © 2005 by Catherine Temerson
All rights reserved
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Originally published in 2004 by Editions du Seuil, France, as Le Fusil de mon père
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Debbie Glasserman
eISBN 9781429930062
First eBook Edition : May 2011
First American edition, 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saleem, Hiner, 1964
[Fusil de mon père. English]
My father’s rifle : a childhood in Kurdistan / Hiner Saleem ; translated from the French by Catherine Temerson.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-21693-1
ISBN-10: 0-374-21693-2 (hc. : alk. paper)
1. Saleem, Hiner, 1964 2. Kurds—Iraq—Biography. I. Title.
DS70.8.K8S25313 2005
936.7’204’092—dc22
[B]
2004047127