Mansfield - The Miracle of the Kurds

The Miracle of the Kurds

Also by Stephen Mansfield

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Reborn in Northern Iraq

STEPHEN MANSFIELD

Copyright 2014 by Stephen Mansfield

Published by Worthy Publishing, a division of Worthy Media, Inc., 134 Franklin Road, Suite 200, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027.

WORTHY is a registered trademark of Worthy Media, Inc.

eBook available wherever digital books are sold.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014944654

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Photo insert credits: Erbil International Airport Jeffrey Beall / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons (goo.gl/Z7VQrA). Citadel of Erbil Ask Gudmundsen / CC0 1.0 / Wikimedia Commons (goo.gl/L0FAsX). Main square in Erbil Ask Gudmundsen / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons (goo.gl/fxhzUa). The American University of Iraq Diyar se / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons (goo.gl/y2uzz2). Sofi Mall Adam Jones, Ph.D. / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons (http://goo.gl/Yi707B). City of Sulimaniya Diyar se / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons (http://goo.gl/N6Z41R). Erbil Rotana Hotel Jeffrey Beall / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons (http://goo.gl/G8w8UD). Erbil city center at night Diyar se / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons (http://goo.gl/1il0g0). White House and Department of Defense photos are in the public domain. All other photos property of Kurdistan Regional Government or Stephen Mansfield; used by permission.

Cover Design: Christopher Tobias, Tobias Outerwear for Books

Author Photo: Isaac Darnall

Cover Photo of people: Magnum Photos

Cover Photo of Grand Millennium Sulimaniya Hotel: Sabah Mustafa Muhammed

2014 The Mansfield Group

Interior Design and Typesetting: Christopher D. Hudson & Associates, Inc.

For foreign and subsidiary rights, contact rights@worthypublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-61795-376-7 (hardcover w/ jacket)

Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 SBI 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Noor, Farrah & Mejid

I will always hold your stories in my heart.

Appendix A:
The Wisdom of the Kurds: 100 Proverbs

Appendix B:
The Kurds in Film and Fiction

Appendix C:
A Word About Christopher Hitchens

From this day on

She was a flute,

And the hand of the wind

Endowed her wounds with melodies

She has been singing ever since for the world.

Kurdish Poet Sherko Bekas,
writing of Kurdistan

There is a great debt I have incurred during the years that have formed themselves into this book and it is to the Kurdish people themselves. It is the debt I owe them for changing my life.

When I first began to travel among the Kurds of Kurdistan in the early 1990s, it was as part of an international relief team. I confess the experience impressed me almost entirely as a grand adventure. I had never been in the Middle East before. To fly from the United States to Istanbul and then on to Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey before driving five hours south to Duhok, Iraq, seemed the exotic expedition of a lifetime.

In those days, Turkish troops patrolled the roads into Kurdistan. We were stopped often. Machine gun fire echoed in the distance and our vehicles wove warily around tanks strategically positioned on mountain roads. We ate in roadside villages so old and so fixed at the heart of the Fertile Crescent that the patriarch Abraham might well have dined in the same villages millennia before.

It was, I confess with regret, the journey itself that initially thrilled me most. My exaggerated sense of adventure was further inflated when the Turks closed the roads into northern Iraq. This forced our team to fly into Damascus before making a nine-hour drive across the Syrian Desert.

I thus found myself in what I ignorantly thought of as Arabia. It was intoxicating. Images from the writings of T. E. LawrenceLawrence of Arabiaplayed in my mind. Bedouin men stared at us curiously from their easy perches atop unruly camels. Black tents dotted the eternal sands and seemed in their undulations to breathe for that great living being, the desert. I touched the ancient stones at Palmyra, ate fresh naanthe round flat bread of the Middle Eastby open fires, and dragged my fingers in the waters of the Euphrates when, finally, an unsteady motorboat carried our team to the far shore of Kurdistan.

I am ashamed that the journey ever meant more to me than the people, but for a season it did. I put this down to the myopia of youth and to the overly domesticated life I was living at the time. Thankfully, when the greater meaning of my experience announced itself, it came white hot and impatient, searing itself permanently into my soul.

This happened as Kurds lovingly took me by the hand and pulled me into their world. I soon found myself in touch with something vital and ageless. So enriching and ancient were the lessons the Kurds had to teach, it often made my life in the West seem thin and meaningless. Mysteriously, the impartation from each experience among my new friends was much greater than the experience itself. Perhaps this is the way of all liturgies. The land, the embrace of a generous yet fierce people, the nobility of tribe and custom, and the always-audible echo of the Kurdish sufferings each mystically became part of me. So began a transformationof manhood, of honor, of my understanding of history, of the way I viewed my life in this worldthat continues to this moment.

Many faithful friends have contributed liberally to this book. I acknowledge most of them toward the end of these pages. I trust none of them will be offended if I offer but one expression of gratitude here at the beginning. It is this: I owe a great debtone I cannot repayto the Kurds I have known around the world. Thank you, my dear friends, for refusing to leave me as I was.

Stephen Mansfield

The story of the Kurds presented in this book is true, as is each event described in these pages. The author has used pseudonyms if requested or if security required. In addition, the author has conflated some stories for clarity.

In the area of Iraq that was liberated from Saddam Husseins control the earliestthe Kurdish provinces in the northeast part of the countryall objective observers seem to agree that an unprecedented prosperity has replaced what was once an unimaginable wasteland of misery. With their head-start of liberation beginning in 1992, the Kurds have nonetheless set an example for the rest of the region as well as of the country.