by Ava Homa
We kissed for a long time. A hand held my waist and the other my cheek and neck. I lightly stroked his arms and closed my eyes to focus on the taste of his lips, take in his woodsy, sultry scent, the sweet aroma of his aftershave. Opened my eyes to prove this was not yet another fantasy. Closed them again so his piercing eyes wouldn’t distract me from his lips. Unlike the actors in films and the couples I’d seen on the streets, he kept his eyes open while kissing, as if he were afraid I’d disappear if he blinked. I felt the heat of his body, the warmth of his breath that kept getting shallower. This was it. The moment that we’d each thirsted for, unbeknown to the other. I broke off our kiss abruptly.
I got up, feeling dizzy and ecstatic. I was shedding skin, breaking open my cocoon.
I wriggled out of my dress. He took off his undershirt and unbuckled his belt. I sat at the edge of the bed in my underwear. After a momentary pause, Karo laid me back, crept on top of me. I was in life’s twilight, in an in-between state where I yearned for Karo in a vacuum, with nothing and no one else around him.
His warm mouth traveled from my neck to my breasts and down to my belly button. His hands ran over my thighs and between my legs. He took off my bra and kissed underneath my left breast. A pleasurable shiver ran down my spine, and heat radiated from deep within me. He lifted the edge of my panties, and his tongue darted between my legs after he gently removed them.
“Is this good, darling?” he whispered ever so tenderly.
There on the bed, the rain thrumming outside, the full moon shining, he took me in until I was gripping his hair and biting my lip to muffle my cries. I twisted to reciprocate, tugging at his briefs, but he moved up to kiss my lips, held my shoulders, and stared into my eyes as he tried to find his way inside me. My body tensed up and tightened.
“I can stop whenever you want.” He kissed my forehead and eyes, letting me feel his warm breath on my cheeks and neck, calming my nerves with his tender kisses until my body relaxed.
I reopened my eyes. He smiled at me, his eyes full of unprecedented care. My chest was filled with a very fine mist.
I felt him inside me and left teeth marks on his arm.
The tense moment of pain was eclipsed by the bottomless pleasure I felt—and not just from what Karo did to my body. Life was this: the fleeting moment of bliss between one agony and the next.
He pulled out in time and came into his undershirt. I looked at the blood droplet on the sheet, at what used to be a new bride’s badge of honor. “That was another reason I was so afraid of touching you.” He pointed.
“You didn’t bleed, so I assume you weren’t a virgin.”
He smiled. “I was in a relationship for about a year before I met you.”
“Another important thing I didn’t know about you. Ever robbed a bank? Dumped a body?”
He rolled onto his back and held me against his chest. “No. Been waiting to do those fun things with you.”
We lay like that, tangled in the sheets. His fingertips caressing my hair, my ear pressed against his thumping heart. “We’re probably the only couple to wait this long to consummate their marriage,” I said.
“Will you teach me to speak Kurdish? Our children should speak and write their mother tongue fluently,” he said.
“Children?” I raised an eyebrow.
We laughed relaxed, gratified laughter in each other’s arms.
I padded down the hallway, filled the bath with hot water, and lay down in it. When I closed my eyes, Chia nodded and smiled at me.
“Karo!”
“What, love?” He appeared at the door, his arm bearing the mark of my teeth.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. “I’ve just realized—after everything that’s happened in my life, I can finally just be. I can end at ‘I am.’ Regardless of what the rest of the sentence is. Actually, my story can end right there.”
He tilted his head, his brows drawn, his face a question mark. “Okay?”
“I mean, I don’t have to think ‘I am a Kurd’ or ‘I am Chia’s sister,’ right? I can just be. Only say ‘I am.’ Full stop. Do you know what I mean? Just be.”
An eyebrow went up, and the frown was gone. “Okay,” he agreed. “You are. I am. Full stop.” He kneeled by the tub and puffed the suds away to sneak a peek. I laughed. We kissed. He held my wet hands, touching my forehead with his. Water and foam dripped down our tight grip.
I washed off and teetered out of the bathtub. Karo hovered in the doorway, watching. Soapy water dripping from my hair streamed over my collarbones, around the mole on my left breast, and down onto the tiled floor. He kissed my clavicle and licked away the beads of bathwater on my navel. I directed the hairdryer into his face.
I wiped the mist off the mirror. The girl glimmered at me from behind the bars my fingers had drawn. “You’re free!” I whispered as I wiped the mirror. “And you are beautiful.” She shone a face-wide smile on me.
In the bedroom, Karo’s long limbs were stretched over the stained sheets, one arm dangling over the side of the bed.
I searched through my suitcase. Once the carefully folded shirts and pants were unpacked, I reached for the books at the bottom.
The folder. I held it to my chest. I was ready.
Life was a landfill. What made one humane was the ability to convert the waste into a valuable resource and to enjoy the occasional flowers that bloomed in the refuse. Or perhaps life was compost. Our experiences piled up, broke down into a rich soil, and in the heat of life, some seeds buried in the dark began to sprout.
Karo read Chia’s slanted writing on it: “From Self-Reign to Self-Immolation: The Paradoxes in Kurdish Women’s Lives.”
“Will you help?”
He held me from behind, and his breath caressed the back of my neck. “Of course.”
The future with all its blithe abundance belonged to us. The full moon of my childhood smiled.
EPILOGUE
Alan’s skinny limbs were hidden under a sky-blue blanket, and three pillows were supporting his back and neck. Folded tissues, a bottle of Scotch, ice packs, and boxes of pills had each claimed a space on the rug his mother had woven for him decades ago. Munching on a vanilla cake, Hana was rocking in a faded wooden chair, the fat on her thighs drooping down from the sides of the seat. A rotten tangerine let off a fetid odor that no one seemed to notice.
Alan and Hana were watching a Kurdish satellite TV channel based in Sweden, which announced that even though the Islamic State no longer ruled over a specific area in Syria or Iraq, their sleeper cells continued to carry out random suicide attacks.
The sun was shining over the city of Halabja. Outside their window, some of the bright red flowers hanging from the glossy, oblong leaves of a twenty-foot tree were beginning their unhurried transformation into pomegranates. Their bungalow opened onto a park with a popular playground where children with disabilities could play on handicap accessible, colorful play equipment. The children who had been exposed to helium during the genocide were now parents of children with birth defects.
A framed picture of Chia’s graduation hung on the wall across from the bed and the chair. A wreath was hanging from his neck. In a corner of the frame there was a small picture that showed him as a child holding hands with his young parents. But if one inspected the picture blurred by old dust, they would notice Chia’s sneaky look toward the right corner of the photo. A little girl’s green spotted skirt overlapped his pants, but her body had been crudely cut out with a pair of cheap scissors. In the photo, Alan’s stare was blank, Hana’s proud.
On the television, panelists in suits discussed the importance of ideological confrontations post-liberation. The screen was dominated by a video clip of the cities and villages turned into rubble, the destroyed ancient sites and artifacts, the half-burnt buildings, the walls perforated with innumerable bullet holes, a three-legged cat mewling through the dust and destruction.
“Nothing has changed.” Hana sat back in her chair and rocked a few times. The hop
eful faces of refugee kids, smiling shyly as they stared into the visitors’ cameras, sharply contrasted with the footage of devastation shown only seconds ago. “We were killed a hundred years ago; we are killed now. Homes smashed down then and now. Pulverized heads then, pulverized homes now.”
Alan wiped his sweat with a hand towel. His week-old stubble was fully white. “What are you talking about? The world itself depends on Kurds to defeat the Daesh murderers. My father and uncles predicted this day.”
Hana scanned the room and groped for her glasses on the floor, but they were out of reach of her pudgy fingers. She grabbed the wooden handle of her cane. The wall behind her was stained by the old coal heater. With her full weight on the cane, she took a step forward before she bent to pick up the glasses. She winced and cursed in her attempt to straighten up again. “When is she going to be on? You said 5:30. It’s 5:40. Maybe you have the wrong channel.” She limped back to her chair, trailing cake crumbs behind her. Alan squinted at the TV in silence.
A group of young boys was getting ready to play football in the park, showing off new shoes and boasting about kicking butts while the coach urged them to warm up properly.
Hana ran a hand through her hair, a messy tapestry of gray, henna-orange, and black. She then reached for the remote on the corner of Alan’s bed and flipped through more Kurdish channels broadcasting dance, music clips, and politics from Europe.
“So what inspired you to make this very powerful movie?” asked the bright-faced, bespectacled presenter. The camera then turned toward the smiling face of the guest on the program. Hana gaped, and her finger twitched against the button of the remote control. The channels began to automatically scan, losing the interview.
Alan and Hana looked at each other for a few seconds, the longest in years, searching for confirmation. Alan didn’t notice Hana’s trembling hands when he snatched the remote, pressed and repressed the buttons of a tool only half-responsive because of its dying batteries.
“This is it! This one,” Hana called out when she saw the face of the interviewer for a brief moment. “Go back! Go back! Give it to me!”
“Be quiet for a second.” Alan focused on the remote and found the program again. His face had grown craggy with age.
“Warrior Butterflies is the story of three Kurdish women, people like you and me; one is a school dropout, one’s a university student, and one’s a mother . . . but when a barbarous group attacks their hometowns in Rojava, despite the fact that the majority of the population flees the war zone, including these women’s immediate families . . . they stay.” The interviewer’s glasses had slid to the tip of her nose, giving the impression that they might fall off any second. “With no military training. Knowing that if they are captured by the enemy, they will be raped and trafficked as sex slaves, these women join a merciless fight . . .”
“Let your guest talk, you stupid woman.” Hana white-knuckled the arms of her chair, impatient for the camera to pan back to the show’s guest.
Outside, the crescendo of cheers from the football players reached its peak as one team scored a goal. A bride and groom by the splendid fountain were posing for their photographer.
“So these three women . . . for political and personal reasons, these women who could not kill a mouse if it marched into their kitchen . . . they become fighters.” The interviewer reached out with her hand as if to grab the right words. “Their purses and backpacks that used to carry books and makeup are now filled with grenades and bullets. This is a movie about war and demolition, corpses and illnesses, and yet . . .”
The camera showed a glimpse of the guest, looking down, blushing. She had bangs, and her ponytail was tied with a green spotted ribbon. A butterfly brooch was pinned to her lapel.
The interviewer scratched her cheek and moved forward on her chair, still hogging the camera. “When the war ends and they rescue the kidnapped Ezidi women, they establish Jinwar, this women-only village where they build their houses brick by brick, plant crops, learn medicinal uses of herbs, swim in open pools, cook together, and heal together. This is the most poetic movie I’ve ever seen. How can I describe it? It was dreamlike, it was beautiful, even sensual . . .
“The fighters, the songs they sing—one of them, the homemaker mother, is a closeted poet, eh?—and the friendships and competitions between these women who wouldn’t have found common ground outside of a battlefield is inspiring. These characters—they have such distinct and charming personalities. I guess my question is, how did you manage to balance these contradictions?” Before the director could answer, she rambled on. “It’s such a subtle production, so moving. It received the longest standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, and now it’s been nominated for Best Director . . . tell us about it! Go ahead.”
The entire screen filled with a close-up of a woman in her thirties, her dimples deep when she smiled, a glimmer in her eyes. “The film is based on the true adventures of my childhood friend Shiler. And in making this movie, I’m following my brother’s path.”
Hana and Alan clasped hands in pride and excitement, watching the close-up of their daughter, whom they hadn’t seen in years. Ever since they’d read in Kurdish papers about her successful film, they had been monitoring the television schedule to catch an interview with her.
“Yes, Chia Saman. Al Jazeera named him one of the most influential persons of 2010.”
“He still is influential, what he stands for. The authorities thought—or they hoped—that Chia’s cause would die if they placed the noose . . .” Leila swallowed. “But in death, Chia and people like him are invincible. Assassinations don’t help dictators because . . . because the pain that is aroused in the victims’ society can become a strong source of artistic creation or activism, resistance in so many different shapes.”
The TV presenter nodded. “And in this . . .”
“The effect is not always the same.” This time Leila spoke over her. “It’s not only our nishtman, our homeland, that is colonized. Our self-worth is hijacked too. Tyranny can stimulate unwitting self-sabotage. Pain needs to be managed—perhaps, in a sense, outsourced.” Leila placed one hand over the other, a ring glinting on her left hand. “I’m indebted to my brother and others who taught us to rise above oppression and not be swallowed by it. I was about to . . . At one point I gave up, but I owed this to him, not only for his awareness and courage, but for his sincere and indiscriminate compassion.”
“To my brother, who . . .” The interviewer shuffled a few pages on her lap as the camera zoomed out to capture them both in the frame. “Yes, the dedication is right here. ‘To my brother, Chia Saman, whose love breathed purpose into my life long after his physical presence was removed.’”
Leila’s face glimmered, and she placed her hand on top of her stomach. Her forest-green dress fit snugly across her abdomen.
“She’s pregnant!” Hana cried.
“So the women of your film are heroines and fighters who are brave, and at the same time they have plenty of fears. Why is that? Why aren’t they larger than life, so to speak?”
“It all paid off. All the sacrifices . . .” Alan whispered, his calloused hands gripping the blanket firmly.
“Because I’m weary of superhuman representations as much as victimized portrayals. I think we Kurds have a long history of being talked down to. And then came the Islamic State, causing a lot of harm but making the rest of the world reevaluate its attitude toward us, seeing us as its shields, if not outright saviors. We no longer feel so neglected. There is respect out there, admiration for the Kurds’ fearlessness and their gender-egalitarian, environmental, democratic values. In the nineties, Western media portrayed us as victims. Gassed and displaced. And now we are presented as champions. From being labeled ‘terrorists’ for resisting the politics of annihilation, we are now the peacekeepers. I look forward to a time when we are not talked down to or talked up to. I want to be talked to. The world needs to accept us as people with strengths and weaknesses. For gene
rations of Kurds, life has begun and ended in violence. I hope that time has passed.”
Leila rested her hand on top of her stomach again, sanguine and self-assured.
In the park a high-pitched ululation announced the arrival of the wedding guests, who then played music and danced in a circle, waving colorful handkerchiefs.
“Ms. Saman. Tell us. How do you feel about being a Kurd? Are you proud?”
“Am I proud?” Leila squinted into the studio lights. Silence. She shook her head. “‘Proud’ is not the right word.”
The interviewer straightened in her armchair and frowned.
“I’m not proud to be a woman either. Nor to be human. I didn’t work hard to be any of those.”
The presenter removed her eyeglasses and pursed her lips.
“But I am happy to be one. It was awfully tough, and it took a while, a long while, but I learned to appreciate being a human, a woman, and a Kurd.”
A tear streaked down Alan’s face. He didn’t reach to dry it. Instead he composed his first email with the subject line “My daughter.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The United Nations and several human rights organizations have reported* that, as an ethnic minority in Iran, Kurds are often the majority among political prisoners and suffer the most vicious torture. Kurdish regions have been intentionally kept underdeveloped, resulting in entrenched poverty and all the trauma and trouble that follow the plague of poverty. Kurdistan also has alarming rates of female suicide. All the mistreatments and attacks against the Kurds mentioned in this novel, whether through snippets of television and radio broadcasts or Baba’s impassioned speeches and childhood flashbacks, are historically factual.
Farzad Kamangar, the person who inspired this novel, is my teacher. We never met and he never knew of me, but he shifted something fundamental within me.
He was an elementary school teacher in an impoverished village in Kurdistan when Iran imprisoned him, accusing him of belonging to a Kurdish opposition party and therefore being an “enemy of God.” Since Iran’s supreme leader is officially the “representative of God on earth,” opposing the state is blasphemy, a crime punishable by death.
