From my father's rifle: a childhood in Kurdistan

Literary Review, Wntr, 2005 by Hiner Saleem

My name is Asad Shero Selim. I am Selim Malay's grandson. My grandfather had a good sense of humor. He used to say he was born a Kurd, in a free country. Then the Ottomans arrived and said to my grandfather, "You're Ottoman," so he became Ottoman. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire, he became Turkish. The Turks left and he became a Kurd again in the kingdom of Sheikh Mahmoud, king of the Kurds. Then the British arrived, so my grandfather became a subject of His Gracious Majesty and even learned a few words of English.

The British invented Iraq, so my grandfather became Iraqi, but this new word, Iraq, always remained an enigma to him, and to his dying breath he was never proud of being Iraqi; nor was his son, my father, Shero Selim Malay. But I, Azad, I was still a kid.

Seated under the big mulberry tree in the garden of our beautiful old house, my mother was seeding pomegranates. I could see only the tip of her flowery scarf. The pulp from the seeds colored her hands and her face was stained with the red juice of the autumn fruit.

Me, I was squatting on my heels, stuffing myself. My mother handed me the best seeds and kept repeating, "My son, go change your shirt," for I was wearing my white school shirt. Having eaten my fill, I stood up when I heard the fluttering of wings in the sky. It was my cousin Cheto's stunt pigeons. I went down to our orchard and slipped under the barbed wire that ran around it. I climbed up the ladder to the rooftop of my cousin's house, the rooftop where we were in the habit of sleeping during the summer. There I joined Cheto and his three cages of trained pigeons. My cousin proudly showed me the pigeon he was holding in his hands, then he tossed it toward the sky. The bird took flight, soared up into the blue sky, then plummeted like a deadweight in the void and began whirling about itself. We were fascinated and we watched the pigeon, spellbound. When the performance ended, he flew in a wide circle over our heads, then landed next to us. This was my cousin's champion stunt pigeon, and be called it Lion. Cheto took a second pigeon and tossed it toward the sky. The spectacle was just as beautiful but at the end the pigeon didn't come back and we lost sight of it. We went down into the orchard and each walked in an opposite direction to look for the pigeon. I was sure the pigeon badn't landed in a cherry tree, but I scanned the tree-tops just in case. Suddenly I heard very agitated voices, right next to our house, in back of the orchard. This was not normal.

I started running to see what was happening. I inched my way under the barbed wire and my shirt got caught. While I was trying to free myself, I heard the cries of terrified women. Perhaps someone had died? I lunged forward and my white school shirt ripped.

When I reached the back of the house, I saw my mother come out, distraught, grasping the Koran wrapped in its green cloth. She held it out toward tense armed men. In a shaken voice, she screamed at them, "For the love of the Koran, don't touch my house." Right before my eyes, she was hit with the butt of a rifle and collapsed to the ground. My mother was on her knees, trying to get to her feet. When she saw me, she shouted to me, terrified, to go hide--for a male, whether a child or a grown-up, could be killed. I rushed toward her, but she pushed me away as she stood up and I ran to the orchard to hide behind a tree. I heard gunshots everywhere in our neighborhood. People were screaming. Smoke and fire rose from our house. I was aghast and fascinated. From behind my tree, I saw other armed men arrived. They were looking for Mamou, a cousin. His house had already been reduced to ashes.

Mamou was thirty years old and a schoolteacher. Every Friday, at prayer hour, Mamou minded his father's dry-goods store while his father, a prominent Aqra shopkeeper, was at the mosque. On that day, about ten men from Omar Akha's pro government militia entered the shop. Mamou was a sympathizer of General Barzani, leader of the Kurdish patriots. (1) The militiamen began taunting my cousin, who remained calm until their leader called him a coward and a Barzanist cuckold. At that point, without saying a word, Mamou went to the back of the store and pulled out a 9 mm revolver buried under rolls of fabric; then, returning to face the militiamen, he said just one word, "djache," collaborator, and fired three shots straight into the militia leader's head. After that, he killed two other militiamen and managed to escape. It was clear they had come to kill him, and he wanted to die like a man.

When he got to the front of his house, he didn't go inside, to avoid being trapped. Keeping an eye on the street, he called out to his mother and asked her to bring him his rifle. The militiamen were getting closer while my cousin waited for his rifle and all his bullets. But my aunt, panic-stricken, had misunderstood and thought she was supposed to hide the rifle, so she didn't come out of the house. My cousin could do nothing but run away, his pistol his only weapon. In passing through our neighborhood, the militiamen had killed my uncle Rasul, Cheto's father. Mamou headed for the nearby hills with the militiamen hot on his heels. He hid behind a rock to try to bandage a wound. Then he was surrounded, and shots were fired on all sides. My cousin defended himself to the last bullet. When his magazine was empty, he was caught alive. But they didn't execute him. They came down from the hills, tied his feet to the back of a jeep with a rope, and dragged him to the town. Three times they drove him around the town center, as a warning to the other patriots. By then my cousin was a lifeless rag streaked with blood.