Yaad, the Girl With No History

By Sarwar Joanroy

It’s 1987. Namo, the politically active bookseller, is preparing to save his marriage after his wife left to stay at her mum’s after an argument. Nazdar is at home, preparing for her wedding which will be taking place in her home village the next day. Friba, the pregnant Peshmerga, is on her way to the city’s hospital, together with her husband. They don’t know one another, but destiny will bring them together.

Sarwar Joanroy follows the fates of these people from the moment their daily lives are interrupted and they end up in the desert.

The novel is a journey through the black pages of the history of the Kurds in Iraq, before the invasion of the United States. Yaad, the girl with no history makes you face the facts about what Saddam Hussein’s regime did to the country and its citizens. It makes you understand why this country is still in turmoil, even today. Sarwar Joanroy based the events in his book on true events, some of which he experienced himself.

Yaad, the girl with no history is a story that is as moving as it is fascinating and educational.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398401839

Sarwar Joanroy

Sarwar Joanroy was born in Slemani, Kurdistan (Northern-Iraq) in 1962. He’s been living in the Netherlands since 1989. He lives in Groningen, where he works as a psychiatrist. Yaad, the girl with no history is his debut.

Book preview

About the Author

Sarwar Joanroy was born in Slemani, Kurdistan (Northern-Iraq) in 1962. He’s been living in the Netherlands since 1989. He lives in Groningen, where he works as a psychiatrist. Yaad, the girl with no history is his debut.

Dedication

For the women in my life: Shamse, Sirwa, Tara.

For my boys: Gino and Mirco.

Copyright Information ©

Sarwar Joanroy 2023

The right of Sarwar Joanroy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398401815 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398401822 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398401839 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Revision: Jasmijn Bloemert

Cover illustration: Camille Museau

Cover design: Sven Schriever

Translation: Anna Brand (from Dutch to English)

Part 1

The Anfal¹ Campaign

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¹ A mass murder operation (in some countries perceived to be a genocide) by the Iraqi regime against the Kurds which lasted from 1986 to 1989. The literal meaning of Anfal is ‘the loot’. The actions were aimed at the Kurdish civilian population in the north of Iraq. Approximately, 180.000 people died during the attacks and 4.000 villages were destroyed. This mass murder is remembered on 14 April. The most noted event from this time is the poison gas attack on Halabja.↩︎

Prologue

Groningen 2010

He had to tell her today. Namo tried to avoid the crowds as he moved towards his favourite vegetable stall at the market. Whenever he did his Saturday shopping he felt like a real Stadjer, a resident of Groningen, and that still surprised him.

He had ended up here over twenty years ago, together with Nesrin and their son and daughter, and with Yaad, the baby he had taken with him when he fled. Namo had never dared to tell Yaad about her origins, but he could no longer avoid it.

Standing at the vegetable stall, he started to wonder whether he should prepare traditional Dutch mashed potato and kale or the traditional Kurdish dolmas. It was supposed to be a special meal for Rebien and Kamaran, who should have landed at Schiphol by now. He decided on the dolmas.

As soon as he arrived at the front door, Namo heard Nesrin’s shrill voice. Where had her soft voice gone? Namo cleared his throat loudly to announce his arrival and walked into the kitchen carrying the shopping. Nesrin was chopping onions at the counter and Yaad was sitting on a chair.

‘Wake up, Mum. We live in the Netherlands,’ Yaad said.

‘Think about our honour. Look at your brother and sister.’

‘My brother? He doesn’t live by himself far away from us without a reason, only you don’t seem to want to see that.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Men are allowed to do whatever they want and everyone thinks that’s OK.’

‘Shut your big mouth. You don’t talk to me like that!’ Namo, who was putting the chard away in the fridge, turned around.

‘Arguing when our friends are coming to visit us. Stop it, now!’

‘As if keeping quiet will help. I’ve warned you about this from the beginning.’

‘I promised you I’d tell her today.’

Yaad jumped up.

‘Surely you’re going to preach at me again. Apparently, I only cause trouble. Goodbye!’. She ran out of the kitchen and slammed the front door shut behind her.

‘Wait, it’s not what you think,’ Namo called out, but Yaad couldn’t hear him anymore.

‘That’s what happens Nesrin. Her father will be here soon and we still haven’t told her.’

Namo knew of three places Yaad could be. Her best friend worked behind the bar at the Three Sisters pub; she often went to the movies and had a part-time job at Forum Images and she would often go to the park (Noorderplantsoen) to run or to sit on a bench.

As time passed, his worries increased. All the text messages he had sent remained unanswered, and Nesrin wasn’t answering her phone either. Now he had to rush to pick Rebien and Kamaran up from the station too. He kicked at the leaves in front of him and muttered, ‘Life is like a conscription; you count down from the very first day.’

Chapter 1

Namo (Beginning of 1987)

Namo carefully used a cloth to wipe the dust from the pencils, notebooks and staplers he had had to start selling in his shop a few years before due to lack of available books. The office supplies were displayed on the broad counter, the books were banned to a few old cabinets. The small erasers and pencil sharpeners attracted a lot of dust and were hard to clean.

It was his habit to dust everything off on a weekly basis, but recently he’d been too restless to do so. Instead of his trusted friends, a few strangers had come by to pick up pamphlets and medicine from the back room of the bookstore.

He had not experienced anything like this during all of his years in the resistance. All of a sudden he had lost his sense of control and his intuition had never let him down. That one time he had been arrested by the secret service they hadn’t been able to prove anything against him, but it remained uncertain whether that would be the case next time.

He’d been so irritable lately he’d even got into an argument with his wife, which had gotten out of hand. Out of frustration Nesrin had thrown a cup at the picture of Namo’s parents which had been standing on the cupboard for twenty years.

When Namo saw the broken glass, he angrily shouted, ‘I’m leaving and I’m not coming back. On my talaq²!’ as he walked away.

On his talaq, he didn’t even believe in those things! When he had arrived back at the house a couple of hours later, Nesrin had left with the kids, Mina, 7, and Lalo, 5. She had taken it seriously.

Namo walked outside to shake out the dusting cloth, causing the dust to blow away with the wind. As Namo followed the dust with his eyes as it disappeared into the quiet street he saw Resoul, who he’d opened up to after having pronounced that ridiculous talaq, emerge in the distance.

‘Resoul, come in, take a chair,’ Namo, who was standing in the doorway, said.

‘I’m hungry, shall I order something next door for you too?’

‘No thank you, Namo. Maybe later.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘Well, nothing but misery,’ Resoul answered. ‘Have you heard about Hamid Marouf yet?’

‘What should I have heard? He was here only last week.’

‘Yesterday, a group of special unit soldiers stormed his house, they were looking for Kamaran.’

‘His son, the tall one?’ Namo asked.

‘Yes, he’s been a member of the Peshmergas³ for a while now. He’s probably been betrayed by a student. The soldiers turned the entire house upside down but didn’t find anything. In the end, they decided to leave, but just before they were through the gates one of them saw a bag standing behind one of the garden doors. It was filled with banned books about Kurdistan and Darwin’s big book.’

‘What a strange place!’

‘Yes, the evening before Hamid Marouf had taken them out of Kamaran’s room to burn them,’ Resoul said.

‘Seen as Kamaran got away, I imagine the punishment to be severe. They took Hamid in their car and an hour later the entire house and everything in it had been destroyed.’

‘Poor man, falling into the hands of the wolf,’ Namo said.

Resoul continued: ‘I searched for Hamid everywhere, and eventually I found him at his brother’s house later that evening. He was broken. After an intense interrogation filled with threats they forced him to sign a number of statements before letting him go.’

An old truck with a sound so loud that it penetrated the eardrum drove past leaving behind a dismal diesel smell that left a bitter taste in the mouth. Resoul looked outside and stopped talking until the noise faded away. A black cloud hung in the air behind the truck.

‘If I had something to say in this town,’ Namo said, ‘I would ban all those cars with those horrible engines.’

Resoul nodded. ‘Tell me, have you heard from Nesrin? The talaq is going to be repaired the day after next, right? Hopefully you’ll be able to resume normal family life again.’

‘I hope so. I’ll be staying at home tomorrow to clean up the mess I caused during the past couple of weeks. Nesrin doesn’t need to see that and a clean house will make her happy.’

‘I’m still astonished at the fact that the talaq managed to leave your mouth, Namo. You don’t even believe in it, and you could never be without Nesrin and the two kids. You should be happy she wants the hassle of repairing the talaq. She has it all at her mum’s, you know.’

‘I don’t understand it myself. Apparently, it also happens in a good marriage. It was stupid of me and I don’t want to shift the blame, but Nesrin has changed since the miscarriages she’s endured over the past couple of years. She became increasingly sadder and she doesn’t have her emotions under control anymore.’

‘It takes time,’ Resoul said in a low tone.

Namo knew that, despite the turmoil in his head, he needed to be patient. He was especially annoyed by the family members who were interfering to try and get them back together.

His mother-in-law especially thought an Imam or Mullah should be involved in the repairing of the talaq, something Namo found to be completely ridiculous and insulting. How would he be able to explain this to his friends, who would consider it to be a big joke and would laugh at it for years to come?

In the end, Namo’s friends managed to convince him to symbolically go along with the ritual to reassure the elders in the families.

‘Will you be needing any help tomorrow? Surely you won’t manage alone,’ Resoul offered.

‘No, no, thank you, that’s not necessary, I want to do it myself.’

‘Don’t clean it too well, otherwise she’ll think she’s not needed anymore,’ Resoul said, laughing.

All of a sudden they heard the screeching sound of cars breaking. Namo looked outside and saw an army truck full of soldiers stop in front of his shop. He recognised the special unit truck. Suddenly, everything went very fast. He had to make decisions within seconds. The soldiers would also act quickly, so there was no time to deliberate.

‘Resoul, quietly leave the shop as if you were a customer,’ Namo said quietly. He took place behind the counter and gave Resoul a hole puncher and a stapler.

‘But how…?’

‘Go, there’s no time, go,’ Namo said, whilst making the Salaam gesture⁴.

Resoul walked to the door with his head bowed down, until all of a sudden there was a soldier with stars on his shoulder standing in front of him. He looked at Resoul inquisitively after which he walked past him towards the counter.

‘Good morning, can I help you?’ Namo asked the officer, whilst the soldiers poured into the shop.

‘This time things will go differently, Namo. We want to go to the back,’ the officer said in Arabic⁵. The soldiers purposefully walked down to the small door of the warehouse at the back of the store just as Namo lifted the counter’s flap.

‘Stay where you are,’ a soldier holding a gun shouted at Namo, who had taken a step towards the warehouse. Moments later, a soldier, holding an old typewriter covered in layers of dust, reappeared.

‘That’s where it was,’ the officer said in a cynical, yet triumphant tone.

‘This is what you use to help your comrades produce propaganda to popularise the party and the Peshmergas.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. This typewriter is a broken antique. Look at the letters,’ Namo said, pointing at the bent metal needles of the typewriter.

‘It’s been there for years, maybe ten years already, and is never used, just look at the layers of dust.’ The typewriter was the last of his father’s possessions he had left. He had stored it with the idea of restoring it someday.

In the meantime the officer inspected the rest of the store. After the officer nodded his head, a couple of soldiers started pulling the books off of the shelves behind Namo. Within a short period of time the store had changed into a tip filled with books and school items.

‘We’ve got enough evidence and not a lot of time to go over everything. Take the man and the typewriter,’ the officer ordered.

One of the soldiers walked out of the shop, typewriter in hand; another took Namo by the arms and handcuffed him. Namo saw people looking at him curiously from across the street.

Everyone started to act normally once the officer stepped outside, put on his sunglasses and looked at him with his hands on his hips. You’re my witnesses Namo said to himself. Everything looked exactly the same as on other days. He heard the door of his shop close and being sealed with a lock.

Namo was pushed into a truck full of soldiers holding guns, which sped past the sidewalk before disappearing. Before he was blindfolded, he saw Resoul standing across the street next to a concrete pole, hole puncher in one hand and the stapler in the other.

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² The Talaq connects the husband and wife in marriage according to Islamic law. The disbandment of the talaq lies in the hand of the man. If he swears upon the disbandment, this can mean a state of separation until it is repaired according to the same rules. This is very important for believers, but a lot of people take this very lightly.↩︎

³ Kurdish resistance fighters.↩︎

⁴ Greeting, Salaam means good day↩︎

⁵ Most of the secret service military and agents spoke Arabic, even in the Kurdish areas.↩︎

Chapter 2

Nazdar

One early morning, Nazdar was running down the hill. There was a cold breeze. She ran faster and faster, like a truck without brakes thundering down a hill. She raised her long white wedding dress with embroidered roses to her stomach, so as not to fall.

Was this the same hill she’d always known? An extension of her house? When she was a child she played with her cousin Serhard and other children from the village every day.

Serhard had once kissed her and told her he loved her at the bottom of the hill. She loved him too, but she had never dared tell him that. She must have run up and down that hill hundreds of times. She knew everything growing on it, she loved the daffodils and the mushrooms which rose from the ground every spring. And she had often seen her fiancé Jabar drive by on the road below.

Images and thoughts raced through her head whilst her bare feet flattened the grass that reached above her ankles. The fact that the final wedding ceremony would take place today.

The fact that Jabar was already almost forty years old, had a wife and three daughters and was marrying her to have sons. That his shop wasn’t that big of a deal. That he made his money smuggling cigarettes, zips, medicine and condoms across the borders to Iran.

Rumour had it he was in contact with the Peshmergas, the army checkpoints, with government officials and military officers to ensure his safety. Everyone agreed about one thing, bribery had made him rich. Nazdar’s dad did not want to hear any of it though, and protesting against the marriage hadn’t led to anything.

Nazdar had gone to bed early as usual last night, but she had not been able to get to sleep. She ran her hands over the familiar clay wall and counted the wooden beams of the ceiling. To avoid waking up her brothers and sisters she crept out of the house around midnight and went into the shed where a couple of thin mattresses were stored and where her wedding dress was hanging.

She shut the door and hung a blanket from it so nobody could see her. She couldn’t stop herself from putting on her new dress again and when she sat down on one of the mattresses she noticed how tired she was and fell asleep.

The first thing to strike Nazdar was the silence. That was different from what she’d been used to all life. Where was the noise of her brothers and sisters shouting and the noise her mother made when she was pottering around the courtyard? She opened the door carefully and immediately shut her eyes to the bright light.

She ran into the house. None of the beds had been made, the bedding was still spread all over the floor. She walked onto the street, looked to her left and her right and ran to the corner of the main street, where she found something strange on the street.

The closer she got, the more she understood what was lying there. She saw it was a person, stiffened and not breathing. She wanted to scream for help, but when she looked into the main street she saw more brown, red, blue and grey figures lying there on the ground.

The street of death, she thought. She turned around, ran back past their house that was at the top of the first hill of the mountainous area and continued running as if she was being followed by a pack of wolves.

The hill was steep and high, filled with big and small sharp stones, covered by the high grass. Slowly, but surely, she began to understand what could have happened. Everyone had been talking about poisonous gas bombings by Iraqi planes and what you should do to protect yourself: stay inside and keep all windows and doors shut. It had tempered the already not so festive atmosphere of the wedding preparations considerably.

Nazdar saw the first daffodils of the season, whose heads were moving in the wind, spread out over the grass. Just before she reached the old, muddy street at the bottom of the hill she trod on a shard of glass.

When she took the next step she felt the glass go deeper into her foot and she felt a strong pain tear through her leg. She lost her balance, fell and somersaulted a couple of times until she came to a halt in the muddy ditch. She tried to roll onto her back, but at that moment everything went black.

When Nazdar opened her eyes, she had lost all notion of time. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious. She finished her failed backwards roll and looked up into the sky. She tried to lift her head, whilst leaning on her elbow. She heard an engine humming and saw an old truck coming down the hill.

Chapter 3

Friba

The path swayed along the mountainsides and through the valleys of the impassable mountain chains forming the borders between Iran and Iraq. It cut the white tara⁶ of the landscape in two.

The mountainside was covered in a thick layer of snow which continued for hundreds of metres into the valley. It made Friba feel dizzy when she looked at it for too long. That, and the fact they were travelling on mules, was the reason the guide strongly recommended that they didn’t look down.

‘The animal could feel your distress and that’s dangerous.’ She watched how everyone sat on their heavily packed mules, silent, barely breathing and staring.

In some places, the path was so narrow only one-way traffic was possible. If one convoy was moving, the other convoy had to wait. The path had been created by donkeys, mules, horses, guides, traders, Peshmergas such as Friba and Kamaran, and refugees who’d ended up there through fate.

She’d seen all sorts pass, women and children, fathers with kids strapped to their backs or chests, grandfathers and grandmothers on mules, singing Peshmergas who could be recognised by the guns hanging at their sides.

This was the place where everyone, young or old, illiterate or intellectual, surrendered their fate to a mule’s sense of balance.

‘The story goes,’ the guide had said at the beginning, ‘that a mule, and everything he has strapped to his back, slides down the hill once every season.’

Whilst Friba followed the path into the infinite, she imagined she was part of a painting: a couple of blue strokes at the top, followed by a long, brown trail, and trees covered in snow. The canvas breathed a silence which was regularly disturbed by the sound of canon fire, often blindly fired back and forth between Iraq and Iran. Everyone moving through these mountains was a target.

Occasionally she felt the mule’s steps in her abdomen, where the baby kicked in her stomach. The first four months of the pregnancy had been fine, but recently she’d been losing blood daily.

That was the reason she was currently travelling from Iran into Iraq, to visit the hospital in Slemani. Most people here were fleeing in the opposite direction. Kamaran originally came from Slemani, he’d joined the Peshmergas in Iran, where he had met Friba.

Sometimes, Kamaran would come and walk besides her to help her sit straight on the two full bags hanging on both sides of the mule. She could hardly move due to the amount of clothes she was wearing: A rank u choga⁷ covered by a woollen jacket and a blanket around her shoulders. Her husband constantly whispered to ask whether she was still coping and would pinch one of the thick gloves her sister had knitted for her.

Friba found comfort in the voice of the guide behind her, it helped her stay awake. According to him no army could conquer these mountains: ‘They have offered protection to those in need throughout history.’

‘But nowadays the army can reach any hamlet effortlessly,’ she heard Kamaran say.

‘You mean through the use of chemical gas?’ the guide asked.

‘Is it far still?’ Friba asked, anxiously.

‘We’re past the most dangerous part, we’ve been in Iraq for a couple of hours already, we should be arriving late afternoon,’ the guide answered. ‘I can’t believe you need to make this difficult journey, rather than being helped in Iran.’

Friba didn’t answer.

‘Actually, it has always been that way. You turn to Iraq for help and the Peshmergas from Iraqi Kurdistan turn to Iran for help,’ the guide continued.

‘The enemy of your enemy is your friend. The Kurds are one nation, we live in different countries and if we need help we look for it with each other’s enemies,’ Kamaran said.

The guide led them in good spirits. He was a fifty-year-old man who spent most of his days walking, except for when they reached one of the more difficult parts of the paths, then he would sit on a mule’s back.

Not for too long though; that could tire out the animals, which were carrying a metre high mountain of luggage on their backs. When a young Peshmerga he knew passed, he would stop him to ask whether there was news from the lower side of the mountain, as they called it.

‘Do you really want to know?’ the man asked whilst he blew warm air into his black woollen gloves.

‘I know good news is scarce. God seems to have forgotten about us. I myself am not afraid of anything but there’s a double souled⁸ woman travelling with me and I have promised to take her to an old friend’s home safely,’ the guide said.

‘Well, what should I say, people and their livestock are fleeing like ants. The jets follow them and spray them with Kimiawi⁹. Everything is white for a short period of time and when the skies clear nothing and nobody moves.’

‘They were still in the south last week, and now they’re here already?’

‘Yes, they started down at the bottom three of four days ago but they aren’t close yet. You can still pass through, but keep your eyes and ears wide open.’ The Peshmerga made the Salaam gesture whilst holding a cigarette, signalling the fact that he wanted to continue.

‘Stay calm,’ the guide told Kamaran.

‘I’ve travelled this route many times over the years and it’s never gone wrong. Let’s pray for God to keep a watchful eye over us.’ He pointed to the edge of a steep mountain, towering near them. It seemed like it was waiting for them.

‘Behind this is the village. Once we pass this edge you will see the valley positioned against the other side of the mountain. It really isn’t all that far anymore.’

‘Did you hear the guide, Friba?’ Kamaran asked. ‘We’re almost there.’

The guide encouraged everyone to walk faster, before the wind became scissors, cutting at your nose and ears. The soft noise of the snow was slowly turning into a crisp, sharp sound due to the fact that the top layer was starting to freeze.

Friba quietly sat on the mule, one hand on her belly to feel the baby. Now and again her eyes shut, and whilst she was nodding away she thought back to how she opened her heart to Kamaran, during their harsh life as Peshmergas in the mountains.

‘I long to see our child, the sweetest of the sweetest,’ she heard him whisper into her ear. A smile crossed her face for the first time today. She put her hands underneath the blanket, took off her gloves and felt the warm moisture between her legs.

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⁶ White veil, here: snow↩︎

⁷ Kurdish male clothing worn by the Peshmerga’s: wide trousers with tapered legs and a simple jacket, tucked into the trousers.↩︎

⁸ A woman with two souls in her body, a pregnant lady↩︎

⁹ Chemical gas↩︎

Chapter 4

Namo

The pain was killing him. Breathing, listening, moving, everything hurt. All he really wanted to do was fill his lungs with air, but the pain made it impossible. He could barely open his eyes and he wasn’t sure whether the murmur he heard came from inside his head or was caused by something in his surroundings.

Slowly he started to realise that he was lying down in his cell. Namo wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying on his small mattress for as he had lost all sense of time.

The cell was small, bare and only dimly lit by a small light. The darkness was so overpowering that it felt as if the dark was pushing away the little bit of light in the cell.

The first time Namo was trapped in a cell he had felt fear, but this time he wasn’t afraid. He had become an ‘experienced’ prisoner since then and had acted that way in front of the younger members of the party.

He told them about his tricks as he knew that everyone choosing the same path as him risked ending up in between these awful walls. It didn’t matter whether they would end up in this prison or a different one, the air would smell equally stale, filled with fear, blood, death and with the echo of screams.

He wanted to study the walls, just like he had done the last time he was in this situation. The walls were filled with the emotions of the prisoners who had been here before him, expressed in either words or drawings. It reminded him of the first cavemen, who had drawn in the same way, expressing their fears and desires.The difference was that while language was lacking in the caves, here it was freedom.He turned towards the wall to read one of the sentences, but he couldn’t decipher the message without his glasses. He tried to find the strength to get up. Despite the pain he was in he finally managed to get up.

Moving around seemed to have made him pass a pain barrier, making Namo