Butterfly Valley (English and Kurdish Edition) - Hardcover
A powerful response to the atrocities against the Kurdish People in Iraq The late 1980s witnessed two devastating chemical attacks by the Saddam régime on Iraqi Kurdistan. The first of these, in 1988, known as the Anfal campaign, saw the destruction of 3000 Kurdish villages, over 40 chemical attacks launched, and 100,000 civilians buried in mass graces, with hundreds more dying of exposure to chemical weapons. The second attack was on the town of Halabja where over 5000 people died instantly. Thousands of people who had survived the attacks in both Anfal and Halabja but had been mildly affected by the gas later died from cancer and other diseases. Butterfly Valley is Sherko Bekes' response to these atrocities. Stunned by the world's silence in the face of this genocide, Bekes in exile in Sweden at the time longs to go home and mourn the victims. He laments the repetitive cycles of continuous oppression and suppressed revolutions in Kurdish history, and in his despair speaks to other exiled Kurdish poets (Nali, Hani and Mawlawi among them) from the sixteenth century to the present day. This long poem unfolds in beautifully-drawn images of the poet s homeland mountains and forests, rivers and villages, meadows and flowers which are juxtaposed with scenes of death, destruction and suffering. It is an immensely powerful poem, at once lyrical and heart-rending, and Choman Hardi's fine translation at last gives the English-speaking reader the most extensive example yet of his outstanding writing.
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About the Author:
Sherko Bekas was born in Iraqi Kurdistan, son of the poet Fayaq Bekas, and published his first book when he was 17. He joined the Kurdish liberation movement in 1965 and worked in the movement's radio station (the Voice of Kurdistan). In 1986, he left his homeland because of political pressure from the Iraqi regime and from 1987 to 1992, he lived in exile in Sweden where Butterfly Valley was printed in January 1991, around the time of the first Gulf War. Shortly afterwards, following the uprisings in the Kurdish and the Shiite regions in March 1991 Bekas was able to retrun to Iraqi Kurdistan. He died of cancer in Stockholm, Sweden on 4 August 2013.
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- PublisherArc Publications
- Publication date2018
- ISBN 10 1911469088
- ISBN 13 9781911469087
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages136
- Rating
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