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Lost youth becomes seed for Kurdish dream
6.4.2006
By Aisha Eady |
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A childhood punctuated by
bombs instead of music is driving a Kurdish Iraqi's
desire to open a school for Kurds.
Serwan Sereni was in first grade when he heard his
first napalm bomb. "We grew up with the sound,"
Sereni said.
"No instrument can compare to the sound ... not even
the drum," he said.
He dreamed of being the best violinist in his
country. But his country was Iraq, and as a Kurdish
Iraqi, he spent much of his youth dodging attacks by
Saddam Hussein. At school, which stayed open only
three hours a day, he had to wait in line with the
other students for a chance to play one of a few
violins.
Sereni, 40, who lives in St. Paul, has a new dream
-- to open a school to give Kurdish children a
chance to learn music in ways he couldn't.
In January, Sereni, who plays with the volunteer
Kenwood Symphony Orchestra, went to Kurdistan and
met with Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani to try to
get funding for the school.
He doesn't know whether he will get the commitment
he needs to start his school, but he doesn't worry
about the war in Iraq. "It's very secure there [in
Kurdistan]," Sereni said.
But he's not a stranger to violence. He remembers
the airplanes dropping napalm bombs on his village.
He remembers the taste of chemical gas from an
attack near his hometown of Dolyalan in 1989. That
was the year after the attack on Halabja, a six-hour
drive from Dolyalan, which killed 5,000 civilians.
Most of all he remembers regret. "I lost all my time
in war," he said. "If I had the opportunities
American children have, I would have been the best
musician in my country," Sereni said from his home
north of the State Capitol, where he lives with his
wife and three daughters.
Still, by age 30 he established the Kurdistan
National Symphony Orchestra and taught at the
Institute of Fine Arts in Irbil, Iraq.
But violence against Kurds increased and he decided
to leave. "More than 200 of my friends were
assassinated," he said.
Sereni came to the United States in 1999, and he now
manages Kurdistan Auto World, his car dealership in
Becker, Minn. He said it is important for Americans
to know the reality of the Kurdish struggle.
Of the denial of Kurdish history, he said, "For me
personally, it was like torture."
Kurds are a people without a nation; they live where
Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the former Soviet
Union meet. There are more than 25 million Kurds in
an area the size of Texas. Kurds remain a separated
people.
"Like one family divided into parts they hope to
reunite again," Sereni said of the Kurds. "I am free
... but millions of my nation are not free."
Kenneth Freed, musical director of the Kenwood
Symphony Orchestra, said of Sereni: "Only someone
like Serwan ... can be so sincere and fearless about
making music a force for change in the world." Aisha
Eady is a University of Minnesota student on
assignment for the Star Tribune.
www.startribune.com
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