it’s hard to tell what the future will be like.
Every year,
some Germans gather where the wall once stood,
drink champagne.
Other Germans stay away,
quietly reading and reflecting in their homes.
Twenty years ago the wall came down:
I wonder, what became of all the weapons left from the Cold War?
Perhaps some ended up in Tora Bora,
fighting the West’s new enemy.
The Berlin Wall is gone,
but other walls remain:
some are intended to prevent school children from being blown away;
some keep Mexicans from crossing into the US.
Walls, walls, walls:
in 1996,
near the village of Perar,
the Kurds,
divided by politics,
built their own wall.
That wall is also no more.
But I miss the thick mud walls of our old house.
I always felt safe behind them.
Together, Alone
The times we were together,
There were no forks in the road
That took us to the place we were from.
The mountain was our neighbour
And we climbed to its top.
From there, the only world we knew
Was that which reached the view.
The times we were together,
Starlings did not delay the good tidings of spring
To our room.
The times we were together,
Technology hadn’t changed our relationships:
Counting corruption money
Didn’t take up our time.
We had time to love,
Time for friendship,
Time to mourn the dead.
The times we were together,
We were not voters for hire;
We still had dignity.
Most important, God had become irrelevant.
The times we were together,
Our thoughts were like sunshine.
I know we cannot change the past.
We can’t jump toward the future either.
Maybe these are strange things to say
In a world calling itself postmodern.
The times we were together,
Our mother tongue was not small enough to fit in a pocket,
Eye contact was still the language of love.
The days we were together
Love had actually made us one.
The days we were together,
Even birds welcomed us.
The times we were together,
A child, inside, was leading us,
The mind and the heart were one.
But still we were in a hurry to grow up.
We came in the same boat—
You chose terror,
I became a poet.
Glossary
ANFAL is the name given to Saddam Hussein’s genocidal chemical attack on Kurdistan, in which 180,000 Kurdish civilians died. The name of the campaign is derived from the title of the eighth Sura of the Quran, and means “the spoils of war.”
AWAGIRD is a mountain in Iraqi Kurdistan.
HALABJA is a medium-sized city in Iraqi Kurdistan that Saddam Hussein attacked with chemical weapons in 1988.
HAWLER (or ERBIL) is the sprawling capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq.
KALACHI YASSEEN AGHA is a town in Iraqi Kurdistan, half an hour’s drive from Erbil.
KOORAN PARK was one of Erbil’s two city parks that have been swallowed up by economic development.
KOYA is a medium-sized city in Iraqi Kurdistan, an hour’s drive from Erbil.
OLS is a working-class district in Ankara, the Turkish capital.
OMAR KHAWAR and his infant son lying dead following a chemical attack in 1988 has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Saddam Hussein’s campaign against the Iraqi Kurds.
SKTAN is a small village in Iraqi Kurdistan where the poet got his first job as a schoolteacher.
SHARAZOUR is a fertile valley in Iraqi Kurdistan that was chemically attacked by Saddam Hussein in 1988.
SULEIMANIYA is one of Southern Kurdistan’s major cities.
Acknowledgements
MANY THANKS to the University of Alberta Press—Linda Cameron for publishing my book; Peter Midgley for his great work; Alan Brownoff for his amazing design; and Cathie Crooks and Monika Igali for being a wonderful marketing team. My admiration, too, for Sharon Wilson, who does the administration work. Thank you also to Sabah Salih, my translator, Professor of English at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. I would also like thank my wife Saba, my daughters Eawar and Niga, and my son Jwamer for their support.
About the author
JALAL BARZANJI is a highly respected Kurdish poet and journalist. He has published seven books of poetry and numerous critical columns. After his two-year imprisonment by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 1980s and further political repression into the 1990s, Barzanji and his family fled to Turkey. They remained there for eleven months, eventually immigrating to Edmonton, Canada.
Other Titles from The University of Alberta Press
The Man in Blue Pyjamas
A Prison Memoir
JALAL BARZANJI
SABAH A. SALIH, Translator
JOHN RALSTON SAUL, Foreword
978–0–88864–536–4 | $24.95 (T) paper
978–0–88864–611–8 | $19.99 (T) EPUB
978–0–88864–526–5 | $19.99 (T) Kindle
978–0–88864–784–9 | $19.99 (T) PDF
288 pages | 34 B&W photographs, translator’s
preface, foreword, map
Wayfarer Series
Memoir/Human Rights/Kurdistan
small things left behind
ELLA ZELTSERMAN
978–1–77212–002–8 | $19.95 (T) paper
978–1–77212–012–7 | $15.99 (T) EPUB
978–1–77212–013–4 | $15.99 (T) Kindle
978–1–77212–014–1 | $15.99 (T) PDF
128 pages
Robert Kroetsch Series
Poetry/Canadian Literature/Immigration
Dreaming of Elsewhere
Observations on Home
ESI EDUGYAN
MARINA ENDICOTT, Introduction
978–0–88864–821–1 | $10.95 (T) paper
978–0–88864–836–5 | $8.99 (T) EPUB
978–0–88864–837–2 | $8.99 (T) Kindle
978–0–88864–838–9 | $8.99 (T) PDF
56 pages | Introduction, liminaire/foreword
Copublished by Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne
Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series Canadian Literature/Essay
Trying Again to Stop Time Page 6