The Mountains We Carry: Book review

“Will we be able to play marbles where we are going?” - Raqeeb, Kurdish teen, on his way to the killing fields of Iraq

Adlai Stevenson, two-time candidate for president of the United States, was fond of quipping that for the Americans, every question must have an answer and every story a happy ending.

In his first novel, The Mountains We Carry, Zaid Brifkani may not have an answer to the question that is on every Kurd’s mind - “When will we be free?” - but his novel does have a happy ending. A note to Americans: you will like his book!

Reading The Mountains We Carry, published in September 2021, you may think Azad is his protagonist. Others may consider, Juwan, his hapless fiancée, as the candidate for the role. My hand immediately would shoot up for Helan Barwari - Juwan’s daughter whose rise to success warms your heart and puts a grin (from ear to ear) on your face.

Azad and Juwan have predictable Kurdish lives - one becomes a refugee in America; the other dies in Iran. Helan Barwari, given the odds that were stacked against her at conception, incredibly, one might add, blooms and blossoms into a Juris Doctor, a lawyer, in the United States.

For those who know the Kurds’ national tale, The Mountains We Carry is a familiar story. Unelected Kurdish men with big guns and bigger dreams have taken on successive governments in Baghdad - and other capitals, too - for the emancipation of Kurds and the liberation of Kurdistan.

They have fought well - they call themselves “death facers” (Peshmerga) in southern and eastern Kurdistan. But do they have the tools, the means, to fight the governments that have tanks and fighter planes in their arsenals? 

The answer, sadly, is no. No one has succeeded in freeing the Kurds or liberating Kurdistan.

Maybe that is why Brifkani’s protagonist, Azad, as the novel begins, is hellbent on acquiring an education. The real freedom, he seems to imply, is not territorial, but in the mind.

The novel itself tackles what happens to the Kurds when their gunmen poke foes a thousand times stronger than themselves. They get clobbered for it. 

It has fallen on Mr. Brifkani to pick up the pieces, as it were.

Picasso showed through the use of his brush that Guernica is hell on earth. Brifkani is trying to tell us that al-Anfal, the name of a military operation in Iraq that aimed to cripple the Kurdish nation, is no different - actually worse.

He does that through the tale of Azad and his relations. Azad’s father, Wahid Barwari, is a Peshmerga. He is recruited to fight in Saddam’s army against Iran in 1981. Baghdad and Tehran torment the Kurds. He will be no part of such obscenity.

Instead, he seeks refuge in the proverbial Kurdish mountains. Arab Iraq calls him a “traitor.” He is arrested and executed before Azad’s eyes. He leaves behind a widow, two daughters and Azad, as well as another son.

Seven years later, the war between the warring nations is coming to an inconclusive end. In the meantime, Baghdad is rife with rumors that Kurds are in cahoots with Tehran. 

That is enough to brand the Kurds as Farsi Majoos - Persian fire worshippers. The butcher of Baghdad likes them as much as he likes venomous snakes. Bullets and chemicals will be used to send them on a one-way ticket to hell.

Southern Kurdistan is not that big - three times the size of tiny Connecticut - but even in this small space, Kurds know little of Saddam Hussein’s plans. 

Unbeknown to the narrator of the novel, in Halabja, Omari Khawar (the hapless Kurd that has come to symbolize al-Anfal) falls dead, face down with his twin sons, Ahmed and Mohammed, but no one stops to bury them or offer a prayer for their souls.

The Kurdish struggle turns into a run for dear life. The women in Azad’s family, including his fiancée, are stranded. A Kurdish smuggler comes to their aid. But his help comes with a steep price: he takes advantage of them.

A quote for fellow Kurds from Tolstoy: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

The first part of the book is primarily about Azad and his brother. They think they can run from Saddam Hussein and his thugs but are caught and brought to Nizarki Fort in Dohuk - in the Kurdish heartland. 

The still intact prison acts as a clearinghouse for Kurds - they are processed and sent to the killing fields of Iraq to be executed at dusk, with accompanying music, by the thousands.

On the way, in one of the buses, the brothers meet a 13-year-old boy, Raqeeb. He wants to know if he will be able to play marbles at their next destination. No games but death awaits him. He manages to become one of the lucky survivors together with Azad and his brother.

We should all be grateful when one’s killers are inept or tired.

Azad’s mom is a pious Muslim. She prays often and recites the verses of Quran for the safety of her children and those of the Kurds. When she turns on the radio broadcasting Iraqi news, verses from Quran are recited there as well. 

The reader is left with the sinking feeling that this holy book acts as an inspiration for the salvation as well as destruction of human lives.

The second part of The Mountains We Carry recounts what happens to the women in Azad’s family. It is the most riveting part of the book. With their men dead or behind bars, is the Middle East safe for the female Barwaris?

Alas, it isn’t.

Suffice it to note that Juwan gives birth to Helan in Iran, but doesn’t get to see her grow up. An orphan, Azad then adopts her as his daughter. The duo qualify as refugees and are resettled in the United States.

25 years later, the girl whose first sights were of refugee camp graduates from the Vanderbilt Law School with the most pro bono hours under her belt.

A note to the lovers of literature: Oscar Wilde is right, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Juwan may go through hell on earth, but she outlasts death and in her daughter walks tall and stoops to help others as well.

Thank you Zaid Brifkani for giving the Kurdish youth a role model like Helan Barwari, Esq. In doing so, you have turned coal into diamond, freedom into miracle, depravity into grace and shown a way out for the Kurds to rise above their less than savory predicaments.

As the Greek poet Aeschylus put it, “Wisdom comes alone through suffering.” Your work is a beautiful example of it. Kurds and their friends would do well to invest in it and heed Oscar Wilde by emulating its better characters.

By Kani Xulam