Read Online My Father's Rifle by Hiner Saleem - Free Book Online Page A

the Kurdish president Qazi Mohammed had been hanged by the Iranians barely one year later, in March 1947.
    Everyone spoke Kurdish in Mahbd, but no one ever discussed politics; fear reigned. A banner read, “The shah’s orders are God’s orders.” We stopped to eat a kebab and the owner of the little restaurant wouldn’t let us pay; he understood we were refugees, defeated Kurds. My friend, who was very talkative, asked the owner, “Why don’t you fight against the shah to liberate this part of Kurdistan?” After a long, thoughtful pause, the owner answered, scratching his head, “If the shah orders us to, we shall obey.” The owner told us there was a movie theater in town, so we decided to go. They were showing an Iranian film. When I saw the image appear on the screen, I got very excited, and once again I vowed to myself that, someday, I would bring Kurds to the screen.
    Savak summoned all the Kurds in the camp to come and listen to an Iraqi minister who had arrived by helicopter to tell us that an amnesty had been granted and we could go home. We didn’t believe him; we thought it was a trap. Who could possibly trust the Baghdad putsch leaders? The Baathist minister was booed, then everything degenerated: his leg was broken and soon he was covered in blood. I was in a rage, and I punched the minister along with the others. Then the Savak men fired into the crowd and killed twelve people. Helped away by his bodyguards, the minister took off in his helicopter, in a cloud of spit and insults. After this visit, everyone did start to wonder: what indeed were we doing here, closely watched refugees, in this camp, with no future?
    Some families managed to obtain visas to the United States, others to Canada. Why wouldn’t we emigrate as well? My father held a family council to consider the question.
Each of us imagined himself already in America—my father a journalist, my mother a supermarket manager, my brother a general, and I making a great Kurdish film. Then my mother started talking about her brothers, her orchard, and her pomegranate trees; my father brought up his fortress-house, his friends, his land; and I thought about my partridges, my cousin Cheto’s pigeons, my school, and my river. Soon we were all weeping.
    That settled the matter; we would go home. And my father concluded, “It’s more honorable to die on our own land than to become American immigrants or militiamen working for the shah.” We gathered our meager belongings. I went to pick up my school certificate and we set off for the border.
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    On the road there were many families, like us, going to give themselves up to the Iraqi authorities. Our small truck came to a stop; we climbed out and, after loading our skimpy bundles on our backs and walking past the Iranian soldiers, we crossed through a no-man’s-land of about a hundred yards between the two armies. In the distance we heard the Iranians bid us farewell, but we didn’t have the courage to turn around; we were already under the watchful eye of the Iraqi army. At the frontier a large banner awaited us: “Welcome to the land of the Mother Country.” Iraqi officers and soldiers awaiting us approached and helped us carry our belongings. Behind us, our people still on the Iranian side of the border watched attentively to see how we were being welcomed, and turning around furtively, I saw several of them follow in our footsteps. Still escorted by the soldiers, we made our way down a small hill, and Iran disappeared from our view. Instantly the behavior of the soldiers changed. They threw our bundles into a military truck and ordered us to get in. Two soldiers flanked us, their weapons cocked at
us. And I thought of the image of partridges used as hunting bait to attract their fellow creatures. This is what we had become, and I felt guilty. We had served as bait; the others would follow us and suffer the same fate.