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Iraqi
film made after collapse of Saddam is true portrayal
of kids who find and sell mines to survive.
I wish everyone who has an opinion on the war in
Iraq could see "Turtles Can Fly." That would mean
everyone in the White House and in Congress, and the
newspaper writers, and the TV pundits, and the radio
talkers and you -- especially you, because you are
reading this and they are not.
You may assume the movie is a liberal attack on
George W. Bush's policies. Not at all. The action
takes place just before the American invasion
begins, and the characters in it look forward to the
invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. The movie
never betrays an opinion one way or the other about
the war. It is about the actual lives of refugees,
who lack the luxury of opinions because they are
preoccupied with staying alive in a world that has
no place for them.
The movie takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp
somewhere on the border between Turkey and Iraq.
That means, in theory, it takes place in
"Kurdistan," a homeland that exists in the minds of
the Kurds even though every other government in the
area insists the Kurds are stateless. The characters
in the movie are children and teenagers, all of them
orphans; there are adults in the camp, but the kids
run their own lives -- especially a bright
wheeler-dealer named Satellite (Soran Ebrahim) who
organizes work gangs of other children.
What is their work? They disarm land mines, so they
can be re-sold to arms dealers in the nearby town.
The land mines are called "American," but this is a
reflection of their value and not a criticism of the
United States; they were planted in the area by
Saddam Hussein, in one of his skirmishes with Kurds
and Turks. Early in the film, we see a character
named Henkov (Hirsh Feyssal), known to everyone as
The Boy With No Arms, who gently disarms a mine by
removing the firing pin with his lips.
Satellite pays special attention to a girl named
Agrin (Avaz Latif), who is Henkov's sister. They
have a little brother named Risa, who is carried
about with his arms wrapped around the neck of his
armless brother. We think he is their brother, that
is, until we discover he is Agrin's child, born
after she was raped by Iraqi soldiers while still
almost a child herself. The armless boy loves Risa;
his sister hates him, because of her memories.
Is this world beginning to take shape in your mind?
The refugees live in tents and huts. They raise
money by scavenging. Satellite is the most
resourceful person in the camp, making
announcements, calling meetings, assigning work and
traveling ceremonially on a bicycle festooned with
ribbons and glittering medallions. He is always
talking, shouting, hectoring, at the top of his
voice: He is too busy to reflect on the misery of
his life.
The village is desperate for information about the
coming American invasion. There is a scene of human
comedy in which every household has a member up on a
hill with a makeshift TV antenna; those below shout
instructions: "To the left! A little to the right!"
But no signal is received. Satellite announces that
he will go to town and barter for a satellite dish.
There is a sensation when he returns with one. The
elders gather as he tries to bring in a signal. The
sexy music video channels are prohibited, but the
elders wait patiently as Satellite cycles through
the sin until he finds CNN, and they can listen for
English words they understand. They hate Saddam and
eagerly await the Americans.
But what will the Americans do for them? The plight
of the Kurdish people is that no one seems to want
to do much for them. Even though a Kurd has recently
been elected to high office in Iraq, we get the
sense he was a compromise candidate -- chosen
precisely because his people are powerless. For
years the Kurds have struggled against Turkey, Iraq
and other nations in the region, to define the
borders of a homeland the other states refuse to
acknowledge.
From time to time the aims of the Kurds come into
step with the aims of others. When they were
fighting Saddam, the first Bush administration
supported them. When they were fighting our ally
Turkey, we opposed them. The New York Times Magazine
ran a cover story about Ibrahim Parlak, who for 10
years peacefully ran a Kurdish restaurant in Harbert,
Mich., only to be arrested in 2004 by the federal
government, which hopes to deport him for Kurdish
nationalist activities that at one point we
approved. Because I support Ibrahim's case, I can
read headlines on right-wing sites such as, "Roger
Ebert Gives Thumbs Up to Terrorism."
I hope Debbie Schlussel, who wrote that column, sees
"Turtles Can Fly." The movie does not agree with her
politics, or mine. It simply provides faces for
people we think of as abstractions.
It was written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi whose
"A Time for Drunken Horses" (2000) was also about
Kurds struggling to survive between the lines.
Satellite has no politics. Neither does The Boy With
No Arms, or his sister, or her child born of rape;
they have been trapped outside of history.
www.detnews.com
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