From my father's rifle: a childhood in Kurdistan

Literary Review, Wntr, 2005 by Hiner Saleem

On hearing that Jews were being hanged in Baghdad, my father became frightened in Bille, miles from Baghdad ...

His father, my grandfather Selim Malay Shero, had taken Aicha the Jewish woman as his second wife. Aicha's family had moved to Israel before I was born, but she had stayed in Aqra. She loved my grandfather and even after his death never wanted to leave the country; she wanted to be near his grave. Everyone in our town knew about this and knew my grandfather had been madly in love with Aicha the Jewish woman. People even said that he would have followed her to Israel. And that one day while his entire harvest was burning, my grandfather was in bed with Aicha, refusing to move, not wanting to shatter their bliss.

I saw fear on my father's face. He saw himself among the hanged men in Liberation Square, surrounded by crowds eating kebab, because his father had been in love with Aicha the Jewish woman, his stepmother.

I left my father to his thoughts and ran after my brother Dilovan. He took me to visit the few shops in the village. I looked around for some trinket he might buy me. The first store sold only kilims; in the back, a Brno was hanging on a wall. There was nothing there for me. The second store sold riding accessories, and horsemen were assembled in front of the door with their mounts. The next store had farming tools. Finally, in a stall a bit farther on, among dusty oil cans and sacks of sugar and tea, I noticed packages of biscuits in a corner. We looked at each other, my brother and I, and then went in. All the merchandise had been smuggled in from Iran, for Baghdad had imposed an embargo on the regions controlled by our leader, Barzani.

My brother picked up a package of biscuits and my mouth watered. They were honey and sesame biscuits. I could already feel them melting in my mouth. I kept my eye on the package while my brother turned it over this way and that. I was waiting for a sign from him to grab it. After what seemed to me an eternity, he handed the biscuits back to the salesman and told me to follow him. We walked out. I was terribly disappointed; my mouth was dry and I had a lump in my throat. He turned to me. "Azad," he said, "those are good biscuits, but the ones in that package had more bugs in them than sesame. Come on, I'll buy you something else." I knew there was no other store for me in Bille. The last shop was the meeting place of partridge enthusiasts; the partridge is a common bird in our mountains and a symbol of our people. I knew the partridge could be its own worst enemy: hunters used the birds as bait to attract their fellow creatures. But I didn't understand why my mother sometimes compared us Kurds to partridges, for I was still a kid.

We arrived at Hamadouk's tearoom. We climbed the ladder up to the balcony, the ground floor being reserved for the barber. It was a modest tearoom with small, rickety stools and dented drums as tables. A large sign said CASINO, but there was nothing to drink but tea. The customers around us were playing dominoes, their guns resting on their laps. My brother raised his hand to greet them; we sat down and he ordered tea.