My Father's Rifle by Hiner Saleem

an Iraqi invasion intensified. Bijil was only a stopping point; we were to continue climbing—higher, farther north. We set off again in the direction of Nauperdan, where our leader, Mustafa Barzani, had his headquarters. We were three families traveling on foot. At nightfall, we reached the bank of a wide river. “Is it the Tigris?” I asked my father. “No, my son, it’s a tributary, the Zab. Remember? The river where we caught fish in Bill.”
    At this spot, you could cross the river without swimming, and we first had the women and children go, huddled together on our little group’s horse. I was scared of the water, particularly at night. Yet I swam like a fish. Then came my
father’s turn. With his rifle safe and dry on his shoulders, he clutched the horse’s mane and headed into the river. But he was so tense that he hampered the horse, and we saw the current carry them away. We heard my father’s cries as the horse thrashed the water furiously with his hoofs. The owner of the horse yelled out, “Let go of his head … Hang on to the belongings.” We were very frightened. Finally, the men and beasts managed to come out of the river about a hundred yards downstream. And my father, dripping wet, came to dry himself off by the fire.
    We parted from the two other families in a village on the riverbank and continued our journey on foot, on horseback, or by car, depending on the opportunities that arose. At long last we arrived in Nauperdan, headquarters of the Kurdish resistance. This was the most protected village in Kurdistan. My brother Rostam was waiting for us there with a house. We felt very important; we were with the families of the top leaders. Our new house, perched on a hill, had only one room. It was a replica of our Billhouse. My father was convinced that it had been put at our disposal by the general himself. My brother Rostam set him right and showed him the antiaircraft equipment hidden behind the house. “I’m responsible for the antiaircraft defense, I’ve got to be operational twenty-four hours a day. That’s why I was given this house on the hill.” My father went down to headquarters, where the general’s secretary warmly welcomed him and my father explained he was at the general’s disposal.
    There was much activity in the village, with peshmergas coming and going incessantly. Iraq had just launched a large-scale offensive. Our town of Aqra and all the other towns in Kurdistan had fallen into the hands of the Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands of people had taken to the roads and were converging northward. But our faith was unshakable. America was behind us, and so was Iran, its ally. Our radio station, Voice of Kurdistan, kept us informed of events hour by
hour. The newscaster spoke in an impassioned voice of the heroic resistance of our troops. My father then listened very attentively to Voice of America, which called us “freedom fighters.” And then it was the turn of Radio Moscow, which called us vulgar rebels, acting against Saddam Hussein, “champion of socialism!” But my father wasn’t worried. America and Henry Kissinger were on our side.
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    War or no war, life continued, and I had to go back to school. I was very happy because classes were once again in Kurdish, and I became an active member of the Kurdish Youth Association. A young officer from the resistance gave us political education classes after school. He always wore an impeccable Kurdish suit, and on his hip he sported a gun with a white-plated butt. He began his classes by writing on the blackboard: “1946: creation of the Kurdish Democratic Party, birth of the Kurdish Republic. Capital: Mahbd.” Then he wrote the word democracy , separating each syllable. “DE-MO-CRA-CY” He always repeated, “This is a Greek word which means government by the people.” He would draw a large map for us, with Turkey in the