In Ibrahim's Garden

April 3, 2012.  Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

 We were sitting in the garden when 67-year old Ibrahim came out of his home, one hand draped through the arm of his son Mohammed, the other hand gripping his hoop-handled cane.   He wore the traditionaI Kurdish black-and-white head scarf and high-waisted loose-fitting pants, topped by a white shirt and black sports coat.  He was freshly shaved, skin radiant and without blemish; his glasses flashed the afternoon sun.  I rose from the white plastic chair and walked across the yard entering into the dance of Kurdish greetings as I heartily shook his hand.

Ibrahim Agha Bersirini

 Piawy!

“Piawy!  Piawy! (You are a man!),”  Ibrahim Agha Bersirini exclaimed through his perpetual grin returning the handshake with surprising firmness.  I still do not know why I was afforded this prolonged and exuberant welcome, but its sincerity quickly evaporated embarrassment.

The Bersirini home is tucked in the Brayaty ("Fraternity") neighborhood in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.  As is the case for all homes the high-walled garden area is a sanctuary from the charmless concrete-block urban landscape.  The patch of lawn was green; the pansies, scarlet ranunculus, and Gebera daisies bloomed in the warmth of the Mesopotamian spring.

 

Ibrahim suffered a debilitating stroke in 1987.  It struck as the family was visiting Ibrahim’s father-in-law to celebrate Eid, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.  In the night of the 4^th day of the celebration the family rushed an unconscious Ibrahim to the Erbil hospital, some 20 km distant.  A month later, after additional treatment in Mosul, Ibrahim returned home to Brayaty to complete his recovery that never would be complete.

The stroke had paralyzed Ibrahim’s right side, and he needs assistance for the simplest of tasks.  As evidenced by his clear and sparkling eyes his mind remains sharp.  His speech, however, is largely reduced to aspirated vowels from deep in his chest, a frustration endured by him and the family for 25 years.

Sadiq, Ibrahim’s second oldest son, later told me, “All that we wanted since he had the stroke was that my father would come home to live with us and not to die. For the sake of this we went through a hard time that cannot be described.”   It was obvious that this absolute devotion continues

. 

When I and Serwan Sirini (“Landslide at Mawaliyah,” October 2009), Ibrahim’s nephew and mayor of the Rawanduz District, arrived an hour earlier, Ibrahim was resting.  We sat in the garden with three of Ibrahim’s sons, Sadiq, Mohammed, and Ismail - all whom spoke English - enjoying the hospitality of tea, cold drinks, and conversation.

Sadiq, Mohammed and Ismail with Ibrahim

It was then, and in subsequent correspondence with Sadiq, that I learned some of Ibrahim’s story,  which is yet another small window into the story of the Kurds, and an intimate peek into the story of the man and his family.

In the Name

Ibrahim Agha Bersirini - so much in a name.   As used by the Kurds, agha can be roughly translated as “chieftan.”  The Kurds are traditionally a tribal society, with allegiance and tribute bestowed to its leader.  Tribal loyalty was and is superseded only by loyalty to family and clan.  As the Kurds gradually adopted more sedentary agriculture through the millennia, the relationship between aghas and tribal members also became feudal, a trait that has been consistently exploited by a parade of dominant political powers.   Ibrahim’s father Aziz Agha held the stature of a traditional agha, but modernity has eroded the economic and social fidelity .  Ibrahim has none of the duties or authority of a traditional agha, but he continues to bear the title as a sign of respect and affection.  His name in conversation is a union with this prestige  -  “Braimagha.”

Bersirin (“Heroes Arrive Unexpectedly,” October 2010) is a village deep in the Zagros Mountains, close to the Iranian border.  Up until 1975, Ibrahim lived there with his wife, owning a small restaurant and renting out farmland and pasturage to Kurdish farmers.   Ibrahim was also an early member of Mustafa Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and had been a peshmergha  (armed Kurdish fighter), wounded in a 1973 air attack in a nearby village. 

 

This known life, as tumultuous as it had been, came to an end in the spring of 1975 when Iran and Iraq signed the U.S.-brokered Algiers Agreement.   The immediate result was that with no advance notice, Iran and the U.S. abruptly ended their support for Barzani’s war for independence against Iraq’s Baathist central government, leaving the Kurds effectively defenseless against Saddam Hussein’s military onslaught.  It was a familiar situation for the Kurds.  Following Barzani's lead, Ibrahim and his family joined upwards of 250,000 Iraqi Kurds who fled as refugees to Iran.  He would remain in the Sawa refugee camp for 4 years before returning to Iraq, but not to Bersirin.

Ibrahim with children, Iran 1979

Even before 1975, among the Kurds in his own village, Ibrahim had not been safe.  During this period of the evolution of Kurdish political parties, Ibrahim was the sole member of the KDP in Bersirin.  His  efforts to recruit others to join the KDP resulted in three Kurdish assassination attempts by rival political interests. 

 

His return to Iraq offered little relief from fraternal enmity.  Kurdish politics in northern Iraq were ruthless, especially after the 1992 establishment of the “no-fly” zone in the wake of the first Gulf War.   The rivalry between Barzani’s KDP and Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) resulted in a savage 4-year internecine civil war and unholy alliances with erstwhile enemies such as Saddam Hussein.  A result was that homes and lands of many early loyalists were confiscated by others within the political structure, including Ibrahim’s holdings in Bersirin.  His petitions for reparation remain unanswered to this day.

In the Garden

As Serwan and Sadiq were engaged in a private conversation, I sat next to Ibrahim answering his questions divined by Mohammed.  Leleekhan, Ibrahim’s wife, quietly joined us in the garden wearing a black chador and beatific smile. We all rose to in greetings, and I vacated my seat for her.  Her face carried the patience and endurance of caring for her husband and raising a family.

Leleekhan

Leleekhan bore Ibrahim seven children – an oldest daughter and six boys.  All have pursued higher education ranging from biology to engineering to Sharia law.  One was studying in Australia at the time of my visit.
 

Serwan stood up, signaling that it was time to leave.  He still had several visits to make in Erbil before we drove to Rawanduz later that evening.   Ismail helped his father to his feet.  Ibrahim took my hand in the two of his, the left still loosely holding plastic prayer beads.  I promised I would try to return.  I was once again being humbled by the graceful tenacity and loyalty of the Kurds who have routinely endured hardships that would defeat others.

In the Heart

“We never let [my father] feel weak because he is paralyzed.  That is why he always acted with us in normal way. We share jokes and he often smiles and laughs when we remind him of his past life as often we try to bring joy to him. We serve him not as a task but as fun. We love him. We always feel our father has a particular charm [that] made him lucky and make us feel happy and proud to have such father. “  Sadiq Bersirin

[I give special thanks to Sadiq Bersirini  for his kindnesses and patience in responding to my many emailed questions, and to Serwan Sirini for his years of friendship.]

 

Serwan & Sadiq

       

A Phoenix Rises, but Embers Still Glow

April 14, 2012 – Bakhtmy, Iraqi Kurdistan

For 3 years in the late-1980’s, Saddam Houssein honed his despotic talents by executing his al Anfal campaign in northern Iraq. Although the Kurds numerically bore the brunt of al Anfal, all minorities, including the Assyrians, Yezidi Kurds, Shabaks, Jews, and others, felt the wrath of another tyrant gone mad. Through his infamous cousin, unfortunately dubbed in comic book fashion “Chemical Ali”, Saddam created a devil’s stew of horror which still leaves a toxic aftertaste: Chemical attacks on civilian populations; brutal military operations against the Kurdish peshmergha; the destruction of at least 4,000 villages with forced resettlement of populations to collectives; the relabeling of ethnicities; the involuntary wholesale relocations of other ethnic groups into unfamiliar terrains; and, mass disappearances and executions.

Younan stood by a pile of concrete-and-rebar rubble, the remains of the Assyrian village of Bakhtmy’s once largest church, St. George (Aita Mar Guargis).

“On May first, 1987, the Iraqi army destroyed our village of Bakhtmy. I was 25 years old. I will never forget it. They came to the village in the morning and gave us 3 hours to gather what we could and leave. They blew up the church with TNT.” “Did you watch?” “Yes, the entire village watched from over there,” Younan said pointing to a knoll a short distance away. “And they also blew-up the smaller church, St. Maria right over there. And over here is where our family home was. Like all of the other homes, they destroyed ours with a bulldozer. Bakhtmy was gone in one day.”

With the help of Younan and his brother I was able to imagine that what they still saw so vividly 25 years ago. Without them it would have been difficult, for Bakhtmy was rebuilt by the Kurdish Regional Government in 2007. Many many other villages wait in the queue..

It was Holy Saturday, the day before Orthodox Easter, which was to be celebrated that night at the new St. George church. Younan, visiting from Germany where he now lives, had returned to northern Iraq as he does every year. He invited me to spend the afternoon in the village with him and his brother, Yusef.


Ten minutes outside of the city of Dohuk, just past a heavily armed checkpoint, a prematurely weathered sign announcing the village, written in Arabic, Kurdish, and Assyrian, pointed west. We turned onto a narrow asphalt road casually draped over the rolling countryside and passed an area punctuated by mounds of rubble patiently being reclaimed by spring-green grass. “This was a Kurdish village,” said Younan.  Ahead lay the new Bakhtmy. A new St. George church stood at the entryway to the village, and a white Assyrian flag with its red and blue lines rippling from its center lazed against a brushed blue sky.

Younan continued as two of his young nephews scampered nearby among the piles.  Although he too experienced it all, Yusef was content to listen. “We took only what we could carry and began to walk to the north towards the town of Semel, where we lived in tents for 2 months before we could start building new homes. It was very hard.”

Eventually Bakhtmy and 9 other Assyrian villages became the collective village of Monsoria on the outskirts of Semel. The history of Semel itself is like holding up a small vanity mirror to the history of the upper Mesopotamian region over the past two millennia: Christian, competing Christian, Yezidi, Arab, Kurdish – each era wheeling about the other, each having its own intrigue, tragedy, violence, and death, and sometimes, resurrection. 

Upon our arrival to the 150-home village, we wended through brightly colored houses on orderly unpaved streets. Passing through the lavender gate, Yusef’s wife and manicured garden welcomed us. Soon we were sitting at the kitchen table having lunch as Yusef’s wife continued to work in the kitchen, chatting with us all the while. This all had a sense of the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes.

(Having just returned from spending time with the Yezidi Kurds in the Sinjar region several days prior, I could not help but think that their Phoenix remained buried in cold ashes.)

We finished our leisurely tour on a low hill a kilometer from the village - the site the St. Daniel chapel, also destroyed 25 years ago. Atop a tidy pile of rock rested a stone with a cross with “Aita Mar Daniel” in Assyrian script chiseled in. While lighting a devotional candle retrieved from a can secreted away in the rubble, Younan explained, “When we came back to St. Daniel’s, everything was destroyed except for this stone that stood over the doorway. We believe it was a miracle.”

 
Nearby was the grave of their grandfather who was the caretaker of the chapel. Yusef and Younan shared a wordless moment.

On December 2, 2011, Yusef’s liquor store in Semel was looted and burned. He lost everything and is still awaiting financial restitution from the government.

On that day a flash of religious tensions dimmed the skies in Iraqi Kurdistan. In several cities, including Semel, mobs of young Muslim Kurds targeted Christian and Yezidi establishments – primarily liquor stores, but homes and social clubs as well – burning and looting them, ostensibly for being in violation of Qoranic law. Other explanations are offered, but the result is the same: The embers of religious and ethnic strife continue to glow.

Yezidi Faqirs and Sheikhs in Sinjar (Shingal)

But for Sinjar Mountain there is no topographic relief in the region of northwestern Iraq or northeastern Syria. The 75 kilometer-long mountain runs on an east-west axis; its narrow ridge seems lonely.. Its history is as radical as itself, and has been home to Yezidian people as long as can be remembered.

Today the Yezidis are still there, but the world has changed. In the 1980s Saddam Hussein, in the time-honored strategies of despotic rulers, sought to lessen the threats of enemies (real or perceived) through ethnic dilution. In this case he moved Kurdish and Arab Muslims into the Sinjar region. Additionally, he forcibly relocated the Yezidis from their villages to desolate concrete collective villages (mujamabaats) on the plains at the foot of both the north and south sides of the mountain.

Tentatively a few Yezidis are moving back to some of the villages. But all sense danger and realize neglect. The Sinjar is not officially in quasi-independant Iraqi Kurdistan where conditions of safety for the Yezidis, although not perfect, are relatively secure.  Additionally the Sinjar is a poor brother to Iraqi Kurdistan when it comes to the sharing of the Kurdistan Regional Government's largess.

The comforts of modernity erode tradition. There are few such comforts in the Sinjar.

These are portraits of Sinjari Yezidis – primarily sheikhs and faqirs - both religious designations within Yezidi'ism. The younger and more educated generation prefers Western-styled clothes; and, mustaches, if at all, are modest, as is the dress for all women.