Halabja, Kurdistan Region - As Kurds intensify the fight against Islamic State militants, Kurdish writers are reminding their countrymen of the significant role of literature in confronting threats to Kurdish culture.
The Union for Kurdish Writers organized a three-day festival in the city of Halabja last week on Resistance Literature, with researchers and poets from across eastern, western and southern Kurdistan.
Participants began by debating the roots of Kurdish resistance literature.
Some traced the genre back as early as 11th century, while the majority of the researchers focused on the late 19th and early 20th century — a time of rising Kurdish nationalism against the Ottoman Empire followed by colonialism and subsequently the creation of modern nation-states.
Although the festival began as official events do with the Kurdish national anthem, called Ey reqî, the anthem itself was not above debate. Dr Abdullah Agrin gave a presentation titled “The rhythm and music of the national anthem, Ey reqîb.” He argued that the Kurdish song has all the criteria of a true anthem.
Some Kurdish Islamist politicians have refused to stand for the anthem, claiming its content is blasphemous and contradicts the principles of Islam, the majority religion of Kurdish people.
The writer’s union named the host city of Halabja as a symbol of Kurdish identity for suffering through a chemical attack in 1988 at the hands of the Saddam Hussein government. An estimated 5,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands injured.
Halabja is also familiar subject matter for artists. “Don’t Leave Her Alone,” a poem by Rafiq Sabir, a Kurdish writer, has been performed as a song by various Kurdish singers. It laments leaving the city and the Kurds all alone and at the mercy of the Saddam regime.
Mount Shingal, where tens of thousands of Yezidis took refuge from a brutal attack by ISIS in August last year, and Kobane, known for its months-long resistance against the Islamist militants, were also the subjects of poems read at the event.
Both places were compared to past tragedies such as Anfal, the genocidal campaign by the Iraqi government that reportedly killed 182,000 Kurds in the 1980s.
“The Unknown Soldier,” a masterpiece by the prominent Kurdish poet Abdulllah Pashew, received praise for its artistic depiction of resistance. The poet imagines a foreign delegation visiting Kurdistan and trying to figure out the grave of the Unknown Soldier to show respect for the sacrifices of Kurdish soldiers. The narrator suggests that not an inch of Kurdistan is without heroic sacrifice. The poem concludes:
In my country,
On any span of land,
Under any cloud in the sky,
Do not worry,
Make a slight bow,
And place your wreath of flowers.
Kurdish resistance stories and novels, especially from after the Second World War, were discussed on the third day of the festival.
Dr Karzan Muhsin argued that “Zhani Gal,” or the “Labor of a Nation,” by renowned Kurdish writer and politician Ibrahim Ahmad, the father-in-law of Jalal Talabani, the former Iraqi president, should be considered the first Kurdish novel written in southern Kurdistan.
Ahmad’s novel is set in 1950s Iraq and illustrates the plight of Juamer in a flashback structure. When Juamer's wife goes into labor, he runs to get the midwife but is caught in a clash between Kurdish protestors and Iraqi police. He is mistakenly arrested, tortured and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
After his release, Juamer sets out to find his loved ones but discovers his wife died, without medical help, on the same day that he was arrested.
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