COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Since boyhood in Sulaimani, Shkar Mahdi had dreamed of flying high. That wish came true when he recently earned his pilot’s wings in Denmark. Now, he wants to one day fly for Kurdistan.
“For me it would be the biggest honor flying for the Kurdish airline ZagrosJet and to serve my country, because I am Kurdish. But my biggest dream is to become the pilot of the Kurdistan president,” Shkar told Rudaw in Copenhagen, where he has lived since his late teens.
“I am definitely going back to Kurdistan sometime because half my life is here in Denmark but the larger half is in Sulaimani. I miss my culture and family,” said Shkar, who arrived in Denmark with his family in 1999, when he was 17.
Growing up in Denmark had its pros and cons. The Kurdish boy could read, write and speak in the English he had learned in school in Sulaimani. But “without even a word of Danish” he struggled in a class of all Danish pupils.
“I felt I was far behind compared to those I was going to class with, so I did extra things to learn Danish fast,” he remembered. “I watched English movies with Danish subtitles and everyday at school we did two extra Danish lessons.”
His new school was nothing like the one he had attended before, and that came as a shock.
“There were students chewing gum, putting their feet on the tables. I soon learned how the freedom worked, and that the relationship between teacher and students was very different.”
Although he was among the top of his class in Sulaimani, he still remembers being two minutes late for class one cold morning. ”The teacher hit me with a stick for that, although I was one of the best students in class.”
His interest in flying came early.
“I remember when Iraqi fighter planes would fly over Sulaimani. I would look up to the sky and dream about one day also flying an airplane.”
He liked his pilot training at Denmark’s Center Air Pilot Academy, finishing the four-year course in two. What was more difficult was missing his home in Sulaimani, his friends and the rest of the family
What the aviator wanted most was to be a fighter pilot. He chose commercial aviation because of the extremely tough competition to join the Danish air force.
“But If my country one day needs a fighter pilot I would gladly apply,” Shkar said, adding the he worries about the war in Kurdistan against Daesh, or ISIS.
“Right now the Peshmerga are defending our country. But we cannot all be Peshmergas. I can serve my country in a different way.”
Because of the war, he worries about his family.
“But even if they didn’t live there, it affects me when I lose a Kurdish sister or brother fighting ISIS, defending our country and freedom.”
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