"My Father's Rifle" by Hiner Saleem

Language

Azad grows up in Iraqi Kurdistan. As a boy he speaks Kurdish. But he flunks out of school because he didn’t know the language of instruction. It’s Arabic. They didn’t give a break to the Kurdish boy.

I grew up in South Kurdistan too but much later than the author. Iraq’s national language is Arabic, and learning it is part of the standard curriculum. Kurdish people grow up speaking Kurdish, but they have to start learning Arabic by around second grade. By the time someone’s in high school, if they stay in school that long, they’re fluent.

Arabization got even stronger under Saddam Hussein. But in the decades since then, it’s changed. Now young people are learning English more than Arabic in schools. There are lots of American universities around.  The next generation will be more fluent in English than in Arabic.

The blond women

Growing up, Azad notices several women who are blond. He doesn’t understand their coloring. He is told that after the collapse of the 1946 Kurdish republic in Iran, Kurds who participated had to leave. Barzani and some 500 others went to the USSR and stayed there until the 1959 revolution in Iraq. Then they came back to Kurdistan. Young men who had married Russian women brought them back to Iraqi Kurdistan with them.

Communist barber

I was struck by the Communist barber. Azad asks the barber’s son why cooperate with Saddam to bomb Kurdish villages. 

Back in the 1970s most of the Kurdish left was pro-Soviet, blindly supporting the Soviet regime. It was a dark time.  And Iraqi’s Communist Party was strongly for the Kurds. The leader of Iraqi Communist Party was even Kurdish.

But when Saddam came to power, it supported the Iraqi government, because Saddam collaborated with the USSR. For example, the Soviets trained the Iraqi Air Force.  Then by the end of 1970s, Saddam persecuted Communist Party members.

Fear and blindness

We hear about a man who frequently traveled to Mosul. His relatives thought he was a collaborator. A relative killed him for it. But it turns out he had a mistress in Mosul.

In their passion, combined with ignorance, his family was blinded. Fear was rampant—it was a tense time. People had to look over their shoulders. People were so mistrustful of each other that even family members killed each other. Blindness and fear drove people to do terrible things.

That’s what Saddam did too—when he suspected there was a mole, he didn’t bother to investigate, he just killed them all. Those around them must be moles, too, and their families. If then president wasn’t safe from moles, how could anyone else be?  Fear infiltrated every aspect of people’s lives. In a way, we reflected what was happening with the government.  For us too, a suspicion was a conviction. 

To collaborate or not

 A friend of Azad joins the Baath Party to get into music school, which he otherwise couldn’t do. But did he have to do that?  You can give up and submit and not go to art school, or you miss an opportunity.

Those who left

My Iraqi Kurdish family were desperate to leave that we left by any means possible. They thought Saddam would kill us, kill hundreds and thousands of people in an instant. So people fled. There was a huge emigration out of the country, to Jordan and to Europe. They were political asylees.

We were terrified. We’d lost our autonomy. People whose families were somehow connected with government fled. My family fled. We thought it would be better in Iran.

Then we returned to Iraq, and it still wasn’t what we thought.

Those who returned

Azad’s family decides to come back across the border, from Iran to Iraq. Iraqi soldiers pretend to welcome them, but once they’re out of sight of others, they strip them, humiliate them, search them while naked.

It indicates how the Baath Party operated. It was about dehumanizing people, letting them know they are second class citizens.

People who came back were labeled traitors for leaving. The regime told them they weren’t good enough and labeled you because you went away. The memory of that labeling runs very deep in Iraqi Kurds. It’s a generational trauma for those who experienced it, even those who weren’t born yet. We felt we didn’t belong anywhere. But we were considered traitors because we didn’t stay.

My family couldn’t get their old jobs back, as teachers or architects. They had to have new identities, and their qualifications didn’t matter. They had to start over. In terms of class, we went down a lot of notches. It was a big change in our livelihood.

Comparison with Turkey?

 In North (Turkish) Kurdistan, some Kurdish people left for Europe. Others spent time in prison. People who stayed could be critical of people who left.  I was born there. When I go back home, I sometimes have to restrain myself when I meet people have spent time in prison. I can’t really be critical because they have a different view. “You were in Europe, you didn’t go through that,” is their outlook.

Regret

A lot of people who came back regretted coming back–they wished they had just gone on to Europe and never come back. We all had a feeling of defeat, and it wasn’t just political—it was an emotional defeat too. it was a dark time for people who came back. I don’t know much about the divide between those who stayed and left, but a lot of those who came back regretted it.

Hope and disappointment

Azad’s family has a feeling of eternal hope. They were “convinced that after one more year of struggle and sacrifice, we would obtain independence … One more year, and Kurdistan would be ours.” During the revolt, whole families went to join the fighters. Not just individuals, but whole families.

But the revolt was crushed. Kurdish radio talked about “the beauty of our mountains.” But Azad thought, I was no longer a kid. I don’t believe in beautiful mountains anymore. He was not nostalgic. He was very realistic.

Gromyko and Kissinger

In 1974 Kurds didn’t know that Iran and Iraq had reached an agreement. Then “word went out that Iraq and Iran were about to conclude a treaty at our expense, with Kissinger’s consent … Kissinger abandoned us to our fate.”  (p. 49)

“How could a. people so naïve ever liberate themselves in the days of Henry Kissinger and Andrei Gromyko, the most cynical politicians of the century?” (p. 79)

Yes, So many revolts in Iraqi Kurdish history, and they all collapsed without resulting in any freedom. Every time, instead of liberation, we get a disaster and collapse. How could we liberate themselves in those circumstances, with Gromyko around, an associate of Molotov? How naïve could we have been?

Yet Azad’s naïvete was emblematic of his father and his family, and most Kurds who really thought we would get liberation.

Turkey

When I was growing up in Turkish Kurdistan, these movements were everywhere. There was organizing in every aspect of life. We thought we were going to have socialism in the mountains of Kurdistan. With help from USSR, we would have a free Kurdistan. We thought, once we start, the whole world will know about us and help us. That glorious slogan still reverberates in my mind. But considering world politics, how childish. how idiotic. We knew nothing about relations between states. You have to be off the island to see the island.

Halabja

When Halabja happened, the UN Security Council did nothing. Not even the socialist states protested. Cuba and the USSR supported Saddam. All that Marxist pro-Soviet stuff vanished. We had to be realistic.

A repeating cycle

The betrayal is not unique of us, because we’re used to it. Every few decades we get some renewed hope, new energy. But now, at least for Iraqi Kurds, that hope is dead. I don’t find that people have that same energy or dreams of an independent Kurdistan anymore. It’s not as vibrant or strong as it was in previous generations.

That’s the pattern. We’re betrayed, so we flee, looking for solace elsewhere. But then we get betrayed there too, we have to come back from where we estarted, but thre we’re punished or coming back. Pattern repeats. We have no home/

Continuing effects

My family lived in Iraqi Kurdistan, in a later time. We didn’t go through the Baath regime, but it had  effects over generations. Corruption in the Kurdish regional government affects people there on a personal level. Those who work for government have good jobs. But teachers aren’t being paid. The economy is not great. People don’t think they’ll ever have any opportunity there.  Anyone who continues their education tries to go elsewhere, to Europe or the US. They don’t see a future for themselves in Iraq.

The author

Hiner Saleem left Iraq at the age of 17, attended university in Italy, and later moved to France. After the 1991 Gulf War, he returned to Iraq to film living conditions in Kurdistan. That undercover footage was shown at the 1992 Venice Film Festival and brought him international attention. His debut feature was Kebab Connection(1998). Since then he wrote and directed Beyond Our Dreams (1999) and Vodka Lemon (2003), set in post-Soviet Armenia, which was awarded Best Film at the Venice Film Festival in 2005. His feature Kilomètre Zéro(2004), set in Iraqi Kurdistan during the 1988 Iran-Iraq War, was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. It was followed by the release of Dol ou la Vallée des Tambours (Beneath the Rooftops of Paris) (2007) and If You Die, I’ll Kill You (2011). My Sweet Pepper Land (2013) has won numerous prizes.