YTAMF and the Kurds
I am in Iraqi Kurdistan now, hearing stories of aspirations and hardship that illustrate the scope of YTAMF’s universal themes. Dreams and disasters, cunning and cruelty, bravery and brutality, fear and fortitude, define the history of the Kurds, as they do the lives of the characters in YTAMF.
Actually, it is politically incorrect to call it this place “Kurdistan.” Turkey and the central government of Iraq insist that it be referred to as “The Kurdistan Regional Government,” or “KRG,” and they are uneasy even with that label.
The reason for their unease is that the Kurds, 26 million of them, have long wanted—and occasionally been promised—their own state, but are forced by great-power politics to live divided, straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. In this regard, they are like the Albanians, long straddling the borders of Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro.
For centuries, the Kurds, like the Albanians, have been restive under what they considered foreign domination, imprisoned, beaten, and tortured for speaking their language, singing their songs, and studying their national history. They, like the Albanians, have tried to fight back. But their armed resistance movements always have collapsed, confronted by superior military might, and riven by factionalism. Their own political leaders, benefiting from cooperating with the regimes centered in Baghdad, Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran, have ridiculed the aspirations of rural upstarts starry eyed with youthful dreams of autonomy or independence.
The dynamics of great-power politics determine the shape of people’s lives, blocking love, abrading patriotic fervor, frustrating ambitions of succeeding in public life or in business through “legitimate” channels, and spawning corruption and betrayal.
The parallels between Kurds and Albanians illustrate the universality of the human stories told and sung in You Took Away My Flag: a Musical About Kosovo.
Like Vjosa, modern, educated Kurdish women declare, “I’ll not be a [traditional] wife, serving men and out of sight.” They argue with their fathers: “Father, I respect and honor your role, but tied to the past, your advice takes its toll.” Some of them rebel and become engaged in forbidden romance, forced to lament with their lovers, “When they see the two of us together, we’ll have to leave and hide forever. Vjosas and Dragans in Kurdistan regularly are killed.
Others, like Arian and Fahri, must be careful about how their relationships are perceived. Singing “we will always be like brothers,” too loudly will get them ostracized or worse. The wrong interpretation of these words would get both of them snuffed out in Kurdistan—by their own families. Too often they hide who they are and then realize, “I never sang you the song in my heart for so long,” when violence puts an end to “We made so many plans; side by side we would stand.”
Eager young men and women say to admired leaders of resistance movements, “Fahri and I are ready to resist; we'll link up with you; it’s time to enlist,” only to be met with skepticism, as they plead their capabilities.
When the Vjosas, Arians, Fahris and Dritons of Kurdistan try to break free, superior forces are always ready to shout, “Shoot them all; shoot them all; it matters not where they fall; shoot them one and all.”
Tensions proliferate between sons who say, “Stay right here and suffer your shame; Fahri and I will light the flame,” and fathers who respond, “You can’t fight battalions and tanks; you’ll just get killed with your silly pranks; there’s no one out there, no band; just other boys with hopes built on sand.”
They are tempted to accept help from beasts that will ultimately devour them: “Your war is already lost; think of the human misery and cost . . . Just a few hundred mujahedeen.” But the Kurds, like the Albanians, resist the help and wait to be rescued by America. They fear that they cannot count on America and know that others are ready to fill the gap. In the end American delivers, for both groups.
The struggle continues, decade after decade. “Too many brave kids had to fight and die,” energized by their declarations, “Even if they shoot me, I’ll never stop; point out a hill and I’ll be at the top.”
The Kurds’ tormenters, like Dragan, sometimes have doubts: “I sometimes wonder what I have become.”
And when the political straitjackets occasionally relax, providing some space for Kurdish identity, the Kurds, like the Kosovar Albanians in TYAMF, quarrel over who is entitled to the credit: “You sat in your conference rooms, huddled with fear; we were in front and you in the rear.”
Some journalists, analysts, and human rights workers, like the American Reporter in YTAMF, “chronicle their deeds to witness a quest, for respect and to hold up their heads—even make their own mess, only to be confronted by worldly diplomats who declare, “The people here are savages, Muslim threats.”
Some Kurdish lives, like Albanian lives, are snuffed out. Afterwards, their friends—and sometimes their killers—confess, “He was braver than I, his honor more than mine.” Their sisters wonder, “What have you won, with your place as Kosova’s [Kurdistan’s] son?”
The future beckons, but it is clouded by “efforts to escape past misdeeds. Everyone wants to be able to sing, one day: “We’ve dreamed this dream for centuries, to be free and to have our own country,” and they hope, “Surely new Arians will help us see, like America, Kosova (Kurdistan) to be truly free.”
Each of us—in Kosovo, Kurdistan, or Cook County—struggles to discover the path for becoming who we are, only to find it blocked many times. The test of our character is having the courage to remove the obstacles we can and the wisdom to find new pathways around those that exceed our strength.
Some are crushed by the challenge. They run away, or hide behind complaints of their fate and their powerlessness. Others reach their destinations and celebrate their accomplishments, but scarred by their efforts and their setbacks and their compromises along the way, are now tested by the values they act on in their leadership. A few spill their blood and lose their lives in the effort; their souls are the symbols for future pathfinders—new Arians to help all of us live free.