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Kurdish widows' lives frozen in time
9.9.2007
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In 1983, the men of Barzan were taken by Hussein's
troops, never to be seen again. But the women still
wait.
September 9, 2007
Barzan, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Patience, the mothers begged their children. Saddam
Hussein will fall. Liberty will come. Your father
will
return.
Years went by. The regime fell. Prison doors were
opened. Mass graves were unearthed.
Still, the women wait.
"We still have not given up hope. We expect our
husbands to return," says Bahar Suleiman, one of the
thousands of black-draped women of this valley of
widows.
She sits on a red plastic chair in the courtyard of
a one-story cinder-block home she shares with six
other women who have lost their husbands.
A mountain breeze tempers the August sun. Her
reddish locks tumble from the black head scarf
wrapping a face frozen in a grimace.
"I still believe that someday my husband will walk
through that gate there," she says.
Barzan is the ancestral homeland of the Barzani
family, which dominates politics here in the
semiautonomous region known as Iraqi Kurdistan. It
is the birthplace of Mustafa Barzani, the Kurdish
guerrilla leader who fought for decades against the
Baghdad government and is now buried here. His son,
Massoud, is president of the Kurdistan region and a
major power broker in Iraqi politics. A grandson,
Nechirvan Barzani, Massoud's nephew, is the prime
minister.
Barzan is a totem of Kurdish nationalism and
grievances, and each year thousands of Kurds descend
upon the burial site of the man they lovingly call
Mulla Mustafa to pay their respects.
This year, the simple stone grave site is being
surrounded by a shiny glass-and-steel convention
center, museum and hotel complex called the Barzani
Memorial Center.
The widows, however, say that they have little money
and not enough cooking oil. Over tea, they recount
the tragedies that have shrouded their lives.
The heartache began in 1975, when the shah of Iran,
in a deal with Hussein, withdrew support for Kurdish
guerrillas fighting Baghdad for autonomy. Thousands,
including the elder Barzani and his family, took the
long, dreary march into exile to Iran, Europe or the
United States in what was called the Great Collapse.
Hussein's government dealt harshly with those who
stayed behind. First, they were herded south to the
desert near the border with Saudi Arabia. Then,
after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, Hussein
ordered them to a camp back in the Kurdish region,
fearing that they would join rebellious Shiite
Muslims in the south.
Trucks full of soldiers came to the camp early on
the morning of July 31, 1983. They separated women
from men, young from old. The soldiers told the
women the men were going to work as laborers for a
day. They never came back.
For the women of Barzan, life became a nonstop
backbreaking chore. They had to do everything --
earn a living, perform household tasks, feed the
children -- without their men.
They eventually returned to Barzan after Hussein,
defeated in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was forced to
accept the Kurdish semiautonomous region in the
north. But custom forbade them from remarrying until
the fate of their husbands became clear.
So they waited.
In the months before the U.S.-led invasion, they
told a visiting reporter that their husbands would
be coming home as soon as Hussein was gone. They
watched the collapse of the dictator's regime on
television and waited for a joyful reunion. The men
never came back, but they continue to hope, putting
their lives on hold.
"Even now I get questions about him from our sons
and daughter," says Gohar Zubair Abdul-Rahman, 67,
who lost her husband.
"We kept telling our kids that with Saddam gone,
they'll be back," says Fahima Rashid Mohammed, a
plump, silver-haired woman in her 60s. Her husband
and two brothers disappeared that day in 1983.
"We've run out of excuses," she says.
Omar Babak, a Kurdish party official, sits with them
in the courtyard. He crosses his arms and looks
away, frowning. He checks in on the Barzan women
from time to time. He says that few of their
children have married or moved on to lead normal
lives.
"I tell them all the time that the pain that was
inflicted on you, you're inflicting on your
children," he says.
"The reality is there's a shortage of men in our
tribe," Abdul-Rahman says.
Suleiman's 25-year-old daughter, Leila, has not
married. She never will, her mother predicts. "She
won't marry because she doesn't want to leave me
alone," she says.
Babak will have none of it. "The truth is, she won't
let her go," he says.
Last year, authorities brought the remains of Barzan
residents found in a mass grave in southern Iraq.
Sabria Ahmed, whose father was taken in 1983, warily
went to examine the remains.
She faintly recognized a set of clothes that might
have been her father's. But it was his long hair,
still preserved, that gave him away. "I was 100%
sure it was my father," she says.
The bloodstains made her faint. She was carried
home, and when she came to, she fell into a deep
despair.
"I felt it was the saddest moment of my life," she
says. "Because I really loved my father very much;
he was very special to me. Despite all the sad
things that happened to us, I always hoped things
would get better once he came back."
But weeks later, a surprise. Her spirits began to
revive. She felt better than she had in years,
unburdened.
"At least I knew he was dead after all those years,"
she says. "To know his destiny is something of a
relief. I was really suffering."
Decades-old wounds healed rapidly. She fell in love,
and in February, at 38, she married Haji Yassin,
another child of Barzan who lost his father in 1983.
She wanted to be with someone who understood her
pain.
"Until now, there was no happiness in my heart," she
says. "If you are waiting for something, you cannot
move on to something else."
latimes com
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