Authors: Hiner Saleem
My Father's Rifle (2 page)
His name was Rezgar and we became good friends. We went to fetch water. I didn't know where the well was, but Rezgar told me we would go to the river, to the banks of the Zab. We meandered through the alleyways of the village, and had just passed the last house when I stopped. I couldn't believe my eyes. Before me was another woman as tall as Rezgar's mother, with the same hair color, skin, and blue eyes. She too dressed like a Kurd, but her clothes seemed to me even more beautiful than my mother's.
Rezgar had kept walking. I ran to catch up with him, and soon we reached the banks of the Zab. It was a wide river, with a strong current. The water was clear. On the other side, there were Iraqi soldiers. It was the frontier.
Bill
was a tiny village compared to my town of Aqra, but here there was no government official and everything was under the control of General Barzani, the leader of the
Kurds. Ever since we had arrived, men had come to fetch my father, and he would disappear for several days with them. He was summoned by the general to intercept and decode Iraqi messages and send instructions in Morse code to our fighters. My father was General Barzani's Morse code operator. He often used to say to my mother, “Haybet, I'm the general's personal operator,” smoothing his mustache between his thumb and his index finger.
was a tiny village compared to my town of Aqra, but here there was no government official and everything was under the control of General Barzani, the leader of theKurds. Ever since we had arrived, men had come to fetch my father, and he would disappear for several days with them. He was summoned by the general to intercept and decode Iraqi messages and send instructions in Morse code to our fighters. My father was General Barzani's Morse code operator. He often used to say to my mother, “Haybet, I'm the general's personal operator,” smoothing his mustache between his thumb and his index finger.
We owned two partridges, a wardrobe, and an old Soviet radio that my father listened to all day long. And me, I went back to school, where the teaching was in Kurdish. For my father, my schooling was essential; he wanted me to become a judge or a lawyer. I learned our national anthem: “
Ey Raquib, her maye qeumé kurd ziman
⦠Oh my friends, be assured the Kurdish people are alive and nothing can bring down their flag ⦔
Ey Raquib, her maye qeumé kurd ziman
⦠Oh my friends, be assured the Kurdish people are alive and nothing can bring down their flag ⦔
Thanks to my teacher, Abdul Rahman, and his magic violin, I learned other songs. He was the teacher, headmaster, and janitor of the school.
Abdul Rahman was a bachelor and he came from Erbil. We students helped him with the cleaning, and in the winter we brought him firewood and cleared the snow from the roof. When there was a good meal at home, we invited him. He was a simple and discreet man.
On a day when the sun was hot, I came home from school, put down my books, took off my clothes, and ran straight down to the river completely naked with Rezgar. Intoxicated by our race, we behaved like lunatics and jumped in the river. I felt living things lightly touching my skin. All my senses were alert. I popped my head out of the water, eyes wide open. Everything around me was brown and stirring. My head, my hair, my ears, my entire body was covered with wriggling worms: I was bathing in a river of worms. Panicked, I swam for the bank with my eyes closed
and came out of the water waving my arms in every direction to get rid of the creatures. Suddenly I heard a big laugh: it was my mother. This was the first time I'd seen her smile since the day my cousin's body was dragged behind the jeep.
and came out of the water waving my arms in every direction to get rid of the creatures. Suddenly I heard a big laugh: it was my mother. This was the first time I'd seen her smile since the day my cousin's body was dragged behind the jeep.
She looked at me but didn't come to help me, and went on laughing hysterically. It was April and in the spring worms wiggled up to the topsoil. When the snow thawed, little streams of water rose, loosening clumps of earth filled with worms and carrying them down to the river.
On the way home we passed another woman with blond hair and blue eyes, and I forgot about the worms. I turned to my mother and asked, “How many are there?”
“They're Russian,” she said. She told me that in 1946, when the Kurdish Republic in Iran fell, our leader, Mustafa Barzani, who had been appointed general, had held out against the Iranians to the end, refusing to surrender. But the Iranian army, aided by the Turks and Iraqis, had broken his resistance. He and a few hundred men had no choice but to take refuge in the USSR. They stayed there for many years, and then came to Iraq when the royal family was deposed in 1958. Some of Barzani's partisans had married Russian women who had been widowed during the Second World War. And so the mystery was solved.
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In early summer 1968, my father spent his days listening to Radio Baghdad. I couldn't understand Arabic at all, but I could sense that something was happening. In the village, all the men kept their weapons within reach. Two names kept being mentioned on the radio; I knew them by heart: Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein al-Takriti, the two putsch leaders. Word went out that the government was going to attack us. Everyone waited for instructions from our leader, General Barzani. One word, one sign from him,
and my father's Brno was ready to be fired. When the order came, he stood up immediately and grabbed the old Czech rifle. A horse was waiting for him. My father turned to my mother and said, “I'm leaving.” My mother replied, “OK.” I never heard her say any other word when he left.
and my father's Brno was ready to be fired. When the order came, he stood up immediately and grabbed the old Czech rifle. A horse was waiting for him. My father turned to my mother and said, “I'm leaving.” My mother replied, “OK.” I never heard her say any other word when he left.
Several days went by and nothing happened. Little by little, life returned to normal. As for my father, he came home on a new horse the general had given him, and he had a new Brno. He claimed that his rifle was so precise he could hit a cigarette butt from a distance of eleven hundred yards. He was very proud of his Brno and often said to my mother that with this kind of weapon, he could take on a thousand soldiers and Omar Akha's entire clan. It was the perfect gun with which to avenge the deaths of seven members of our family.
I realized that whenever my father was home, General Barzani was absent from his Raizan headquarters; he was visiting his fighters. He didn't need my father.
Having cleaned his new rifle, my father started listening to the radio again, moving around in the one room to get the best reception for the latest news. He was relieved; he heard that the new government did not intend to attack us. The radio even said that the two putsch leaders were not hostile to Kurds.
Yet one detail worried my father: the name of the new partyâthe Baath Party, the party of the Arab Socialist Resurrection.
We still couldn't go home to our town of Aqra. We were homesick for our town, our house, our relatives, our family graves. As for me, I missed my cousin Cheto and his stunt pigeons, the pomegranates from our orchard, and the bulb that lit up our evenings. When could we retrieve our memories? We believed our leader, General Barzani, when he told us that freedom was close at hand. But as we waited for freedom, a lot of time went by.
Late one night my father heard a noise behind the door. He pulled out his Brno from under the mattress, got up, and cocked the gun. All of us were awake. The door opened slowly. My father was in firing position, his finger on the trigger. A young man with a wisp of a mustache on his upper lip came through the door. It was Dilovan, my eighteen-year-old brother. The rifle fell from my father's hands and he threw himself into his son's arms, overcome with joy. My mother and the rest of us followed suit. We were all crying tears of happiness. We hadn't seen him in three years.
We turned up the flame in the oil lamp, and we all sat around him. My mother sought her son's odor on his neck. He took off his jacket; she took it and raised it to her face. If my father hadn't reminded her, she would have forgotten to prepare tea.
When she returned with the tea, she picked up my brother's jacket again and placed it on her knees. We devoured my brother with our eyes, drank in his every word. He told us about his life as a
peshmerga
. Like my father, he was convinced that after one more year of struggle and sacrifice we would obtain independence. A sweet thrill ran through our bodies. One more year, and Kurdistan would be ours.
peshmerga
. Like my father, he was convinced that after one more year of struggle and sacrifice we would obtain independence. A sweet thrill ran through our bodies. One more year, and Kurdistan would be ours.
My mother held up the oil lamp near her son to see him better, but my father pushed the lamp away; he didn't want his son bothered by the smoke. And my mother kept sniffing his jacket and saying, “It's my son's odor.” Later that night, in a tender voice, she said, “My son, you're a man now, you're eighteen, you must marry ⦠We want to see our grandson.” My brother was embarrassed. He was an adolescent; he didn't speak of women in front of his parents. He smiled vaguely and said only, “It's up to you.”
As for me, I was very happy. Like my mother, I couldn't take my eyes off him. It is marvelous to have a big brother.
Before dawn, I put my head on my mother's knees, eyes still riveted on Dilovan, and fell asleep like the kid I was.
Before dawn, I put my head on my mother's knees, eyes still riveted on Dilovan, and fell asleep like the kid I was.
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One evening in July, my father was listening to Radio Baghdad, Voice of the People, and simultaneously translating everything into Kurdish for us. The announcer from the Baath Party, the new pan-Arab party, was inviting all Iraqis in Baghdad to come eat kebab in Liberation Square, in front of the gallows where enemies of the people and the homeland had been hanged. He shouted, “Oh, Iraqi people, from now on we shall liberate your country from its enemies.” The hanged men were Baghdadis: Iraqis and Iraqi Jews.
On hearing that Jews were being hanged in Baghdad, my father became frightened in Bill
, miles from Baghdad â¦
, miles from Baghdad â¦His father, my grandfather Selim Malay Shero, had taken Aïcha the Jewish woman as his second wife. Aïcha'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 Aïcha 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 Aïcha, 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 Aïcha the Jewish woman, his stepmother.
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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.
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 Bill
. 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.
. 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.Other books
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