As beers, vodka, and pistachios arrived, I studied my companions more closely. One was a tall man with a big belly, bristling mustache, and thinning white hair. Another was a slight and dapper gentleman with fine features and a clipped mustache. A third was short and handsome with sparkling black eyes and black curls. In fact, each of the men around me was quite distinctive, and yet somehow, in their dark suits, in the grim room, they all seemed the same. It was partly the boxy cut of their jackets that did it, I thought, and partly something less tangible—the way they held themselves, perhaps, a shared assuredness, coupled with politeness and reserve. Neither that evening nor at virtually any other point during my travels did the Kurds I met ask me any personal questions—not even whether I was married or had children. To have done so, one Kurdish woman explained to me, would have been considered rude.
We talked about literature and writing for a while. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack London were among my companions’ favorite authors. One man was working on a history of Kurdistan structured around the life of his father, and another on a novel about a young peshmerga who “had forgotten his humanity.” A third wrote romance poems penned in a historical mode, and a fourth wrote poems about the Anfal.
The men started telling jokes in Kurdish, one of which they translated for me. One day, the peshmerga arrested some of Saddam’s men. Holding them captive for months, the peshmerga fed them nothing but soup. Negotiations took place, and the men were released. They went into a Kurdish town, entered a restaurant, and ordered soup.
At this, all the men laughed, while I looked blank.
“It’s funny because they think soup is all the Kurds eat,” someone explained.
I nodded as if I understood.
But the men saw through me, and they kindly tried again, this time with a joke that they said was very popular. A man in an airplane climbs out while in flight to fix the landing gear, which has jammed. He drops his wrench. One week later he goes back to his village. His father is dead. What happened? he asks. Oh, he was just sitting outside when a wrench fell out of the sky and killed him!
At this, all the men guffawed loudly, some slapping their knees, while I again tried to interpret what I had just heard. The jokes suddenly made the Kurdish world around me seem dense and impenetrable, and the Kurdish men, alien and remote.
The talk turned to politics, and the world became familiar again, with many men talking at once. Some cheeks, including mine, were flushed. The alcohol was taking effect.
“We want the United States to attack Saddam!”
“We don’t care what it costs. Even if he bombs us again!”
“Our situation is not secure. He must go!”
I would encounter this same basic conversation everywhere I traveled in Iraqi Kurdistan. With memories of past atrocities all too fresh in people’s minds, and an all-too-intimate understanding of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic capabilities, most Iraqi Kurds had no doubts about where they stood regarding a possible war.
More surprising was their attitude toward Americans. Because the United States has let the Iraqi Kurds down on several significant occasions, with disastrous consequences, I had expected to find a fair amount of anti-American sentiment in Kurdistan. Yet most Iraqi Kurds I met not only seemed to regard those past betrayals as water under the bridge, but also viewed the United States as by far the greatest and most honorable country in the world. More than any other nation, the United States was protecting their no-fly zone and could be their possible future savior. I heard constant praise heaped upon the States, coupled with little skepticism about the American way of life, and even met Kurdish babies dressed in snugglies with an American-flag design. “Kurdistan is a small country, so we need the help and protection of a bigger country,” Majed explained to me one day. “And who will help us? Not the Muslim states, not Europe. Only the United States.”
Such idealization of the United States can lead only to trouble in the long run, I thought. But I also recognized that given their precarious situation, the Iraqi Kurds had no patience for complexity. They needed a white knight in shining armor.
As an American, I was a prized visitor in Kurdistan. With the 2003 war then still a year away, there were only a handful of Americans of non-Iraqi origin in northern Iraq. Many Kurds viewed my visit as an indication that help would soon be on its way. Everywhere I went, people asked me not if but when I thought the United States would bomb Iraq.
The men at the Writers’ Union fell to talking in Kurdish among themselves again, and I turned to the impeccably dressed gentleman sitting next to me. A doctor with an air of gentle sadness about him, he spoke good English.
“No one knows what the future hides,” he said quietly. “And no one knows the effect of this situation now. People say that it has no effect, but I am a doctor, and I am sure that after eleven years of living this way, of not knowing the future . . . It is very hard to live your life without knowing the future. The psychological strain is very great.”
His words trailed off. Although I was quite sure that no one else in the room had heard or understood his English, I thought I felt the bravado around me drain away. Everyone, myself included, seemed to be sinking deeper into the stained sofas as the air turned a darker gray.
Hasan Slevani, the short, handsome man with sparkling eyes and black curls, drove me home to Majed’s. He worked in the governor’s finance office and stopped by the Writers’ Union every evening after work, staying until about nine P.M. He also had six children.
“Your wife must be very busy,” I said, picturing the poor woman home alone with six children every evening while her husband was out socializing.
“Yes, she is,” he said matter-of-factly, “but we have wonderful children. You must stay with us. My children are learning English and would love to practice with you.”
I nodded but didn’t commit myself. It had been a long day.
“What do you think of the life here?” Hasan asked as we turned onto a near empty street, the sky above us black crystal, the stars seemingly close enough to touch.
I struggled to respond, but before I could, he answered the question himself. “It is hard, but it is beautiful.”
“What do you think of the Writers’ Union?” he asked a moment later.
Again I struggled to respond, but again he answered the question himself. “Talk is something very small, but it is very beautiful.”
EARLY ONE EVENING, Dr. Shawkat and I finally went to meet the governor of Dohuk, Nechirvan Ahmad. Arriving at his guesthouse just as the sun was setting, orange and pink splintering over black hills, we retired to a large reception room, where the governor immediately launched into a detailed but impressively succinct history of modern Iraqi Kurdistan, translated by an able interpreter. He ended with the implementation of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 986, the so-called “oil-for-food program.”
First passed in December 1996 and aimed at relieving the suffering caused by the international economic sanctions imposed on Iraq for its refusal to disarm its nonconventional-weapons program post–Gulf War, the resolution allowed Iraq to export oil, but only in order to buy food and other humanitarian goods. The resolution further stated that 13 percent of the program’s resources had to go directly to the northern no-fly zone. Baghdad decided how goods should be distributed there, but it was the United Nations that administered the north’s program. Overall, 986 was the largest humanitarian assistance program in the world and in U.N. history.
It was the oil-for-food program, more than anything else, that had turned everyday life in the safe haven around, the governor said. Whereas before there had been hunger, now every denizen of the north automatically received a ten-item monthly rations basket that would otherwise have cost the average family its entire monthly income. Starvation had been eradicated, and child mortality rates were declining. According to a 2000 UNICEF report, the mortality rates for children under age five in northern Iraq had fallen to 72 per 1,000 in 1994 to 1999, as c
ompared to 80 per 1,000 in 1984 to 1989, while they had more than doubled in Baath-controlled Iraq, to 131 per 1,000 in 1994 to 1999 as compared to 56 per 1,000 in 1984 to 1989. So how dare Saddam Hussein claim that it was economic sanctions that were causing Iraqi children to die of starvation? the governor asked. It was a question that I was to hear often in Iraqi Kurdistan and wondered about myself, though there were mitigating circumstances. The under-agefive child mortality rates in northern Iraq in 1984 to 1989 had probably been abnormally high due to the Anfal, and, after 1991, the safe haven began receiving far more humanitarian aid than did the rest of the country.
“You wouldn’t believe the difference between 1992 and now,” our host said. “We have many thousands of new housing units and hundreds of new kilometers of road. One example: ten years ago, Dohuk had only one secondary school. Now, we have twelve secondary schools, a technical school, Dohuk University, and an Institute of Fine Arts.”
Later, I got the official statistics for all of Iraqi Kurdistan from the Ministry of Reconstruction and Development. Between 1992 and 2002, the Kurdistan Regional Government, with the support of the United Nations and other nongovernment agencies, had rebuilt an impressive 65 percent of what had been destroyed by the Baath regime. Well over half of the 4,000 or so ruined villages—out of an original 4,655—had been rebuilt, and more than 80,000 families had been resettled. However, about 140,000 displaced families, or 800,000 people, still awaited new homes.
COMMUNICATION WITH MAJED and his family was difficult. Only Majed spoke English, but he was far from fluent, and my Persian didn’t extend beyond basic conversation. The women of the house and I spent much of our time communicating in gestures, often to the frustration of all involved, and to my discomfort, as I worried whether the family was regretting taking me in for such a long period. I didn’t always know how to comport myself during the long evenings when they were socializing together. Would it be better for me to join them, perhaps making them feel forced to entertain me, or stay in my room, and perhaps offend them? But if the family tired of me, they didn’t show it, as everyone took me under their wing, answering my questions, showing me around Dohuk, and introducing me to friends and neighbors.
Because of the language barrier, I spent more time talking to Majed than to anyone else in the family. A tall and reserved man in his early forties, with light brown, bristle-cut hair and the Kurdish mustache, he was the next-to-oldest son of his martyred father, Sayyed Saleh. A well-known peshmerga, Sayyed Saleh had joined the KDP in 1955, at age fifteen, only to be arrested and sentenced to death without trial a few years later. But the 1958 coup d’état of Brigadier Karim Qassem had saved him, and in 1961, he rejoined the Barzani revolution, to live and fight in the mountains, with only brief interruptions, for over thirty years, dying in battle in 1992.
Throughout Majed’s childhood, Sayyed Saleh had come home when he could, sometimes staying for a few days, sometimes for a few hours, and occasionally for a few months. But sometimes, too, years would go by between visits, and Majed didn’t always recognize his father when he arrived. How had Majed’s mother endured it? I wondered.
After the Algiers Accord, Sayyed Saleh had not been able to come home to help his family escape to Iran. Majed, then age thirteen, his mother, and four siblings had gone on their own, making an eleven-day trek over the mountains with the help of other peshmerga. Upon arrival in Iran, they were placed in a refugee camp and, a short time later, sent to a small village where they and one other family were the only Kurds in town. Joined by Sayyed Saleh, they lived there until 1978, under constant surveillance, needing a police pass to leave the village. “We had a hard time,” Majed said. “We were among strangers, and they were Shiites. In school, they would ask us, are you Muslim or are you Sunni? They didn’t understand that Sunni is Muslim.”
After the Islamic Revolution, the family was allowed to move to Iranian Kurdistan, and Sayyed Saleh returned to the mountains, while Majed and his older brother obtained scholarships to study in Europe, through the help of the KDP. Majed saw his father for the last time on January 4, 1985. Sayyed Saleh would live for another seven years, but between his peshmerga activities and Majed’s studies, the two would not meet again.
“It doesn’t matter how sad I get sometimes, remembering,” Majed said to me one rainy afternoon while playing with his oldest daughter, whom he adored, lavishing on her the attention that his father had never been able to pay him. “Still I am happy, working for my nation and for my family.”
MY COMMUNICATION WITH Majed and his family improved considerably whenever their cousins Yousif and Fatma, visiting from San Diego, were in the house. An outgoing brother and sister in their thirties, Yousif and Fatma had left the Middle East for California in 1992. As the oldest of nine siblings, Yousif had immediately gone to work and was still the family’s primary breadwinner, employed as a taxi driver. Fatma, five years younger, had completed two years of community college and worked as a clerk. Both were now American citizens.
Like Majed, Yousif had a dramatic story. His father, Sayyed Rashid, Majed’s father’s younger brother, had also been a peshmerga, as had their two other full uncles—one killed in battle—and various half uncles. What a family, I thought as I listened to the history, though neither Yousif nor Majed seemed to find it particularly unusual. How many other Kurdish families had sacrificed an entire generation to the national struggle?
Sayyed Rashid, too, had fought in the mountains for years but, in 1985, had been imprisoned. Yousif, then eighteen and knowing that he would be next, went underground, keeping on the move, staying only with families he could trust. One time, while he was still at home, soldiers knocked on the door, but his mother told them that he had just left, and they believed her. Another time, he was at an aunt’s house when a friend called to say that the soldiers were on their way. Yousif started out the door and was only partway down the block when they appeared. But they didn’t know what he looked like, and he passed by unnoticed, eventually to escape to Iran. Then in 1988, his father was released, and the whole family fled to Turkey during the Anfal. For one year, Yousif had no idea whether they were dead or alive. Finally, he located them in a refugee camp, but he was arrested several times by the Turks before being allowed to join them. In 1992, after four years in the camp, the family was offered asylum in the United States.
Yousif and Fatma were now in Kurdistan for a two-month visit. I found it a little curious that they could afford to take off so much time from work, but I didn’t give it too much thought until one afternoon while I was socializing with other women in the family room. Neighbors had stopped by for tea and sweets and, in the course of conversation, I was startled to hear Fatma say that she hated Connecticut, the state in which I’d grown up.
“Why?” I asked, surprised. Connecticut isn’t the sort of place to which people usually have visceral reactions.
“My husband was killed there,” she said. “We were married on February 7, and twenty days later, he was killed in Bridgeport. He just went into a store, and two kids asked him for money. He had sixty-four dollars, but it wasn’t enough. They shot him in the back. So I don’t like Connecticut. San Diego is my favorite city.”
She spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone that Kurds everywhere use when talking about personal tragedy. The kind of tone that doesn’t allow for prolonged grieving or sentimentality, the kind of tone that says we have to be practical, be strong, move on.
Only twenty days, I thought. That would be tragic enough for an American woman, but I imagined it to be worse for a Kurdish one, as Kurdish culture holds virginity in high esteem. And how unfair it seemed that Fatma had lost her husband to violence in the United States, the country to which she’d fled for refuge.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
Fatma sighed, and toyed with her hands.
“But maybe I will find a new husband here,” she said, with a glancing sparkle to her eye that disappeared again so quickly that I wasn’t completely sure I’d seen
it.
But I had seen it! So Fatma was in Kurdistan to find a husband. And Yousif was undoubtedly along to act as her protector and approve any prospective groom.
Many Kurds living in the diaspora return to Kurdistan when it comes time for them to marry. Most are men, who have often left the country illegally, established themselves abroad economically, and obtained a green card or its equivalent. Their mothers then line up a few marriage prospects, the men come home to look them over, and, after extensive negotiations and wedding ceremonies, take their new brides home—or, occasionally, have them shipped, sight unseen. And more than a few Kurdish women are quite willing to go along with this arrangement, if only to escape the economic and physical insecurity of life in Kurdistan.
Besides, the process isn’t as cold as it sounds. In the close-knit Kurdish communities, families have usually known one another for generations, and the bride and groom often know of each other, even if they haven’t actually met. As elsewhere in the Middle East, marriage between first cousins is preferred, followed by marriage between second cousins.
Fatma’s case was unusual because she was a woman and a widow, come back to find a husband. But as a U.S. citizen and an attractive thirty-year-old, she had much to offer. So much so, I now realized, that in her case widowhood wouldn’t be the slightest issue.
So I wasn’t surprised to come home one day to find the house in a tizzy. A young man had asked for Fatma’s hand. He had seen her at a family gathering where, as usual, men and women had scarcely mingled. But he’d nonetheless found a moment to speak to her privately, to say that he liked her and wanted to pay a visit. Why? she’d asked—surely disingenuously. Because I want to marry you, he’d said.
And so began a series of visits between the two families. Like many other Muslims, the Kurds have an elaborate marriage negotiation process. The week after the woman agrees to marry the man, his family comes to formally ask for her hand. Next comes a legal visit, in which the families agree on the conditions of the marriage and the bride-price, which the groom’s family pays to the bride, usually in the form of gold, money, or property. Theoretically, the bride-price is for the woman to use in case of divorce, but it doesn’t always work that way, as sometimes the estranged husband keeps the bride-price for himself.
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