BARCELONA, Spain – An international bookshop, a Spanish-Kurdish writer and two translators of famous Kurdish poet Ahmed Arif came together on Wednesday in the Spanish capital for a literary evening, a rarity for Madrid, where the Kurdish community is small and the knowledge of Spaniards about the Kurds is as sparse.
But Kurdish-Turk Fatma Kayhan and husband Mark Nessfield, owners of Madrid’s Offside Books store, were able to create the right atmosphere for the event, which featured author Yashmina Shawki speaking about her novel, written in Spanish but with a deep look into the recent realities of her paternal Iraqi Kurdistan.
“The event drew many people. One important reason is that there was a community of Kurds in Madrid, and indeed in Spain, that appreciated the chance to access books on their culture in Spanish, and we were able to get the help of Kurdish people and friends in spreading the word about the event,” said Nessfield.
“Yashmina Shawki is an established writer, historian and analyst on Kurdish and also Middle East affairs, and it was illuminating listening to the background behind her novel ‘Kurdos, destino libertad’ (Kurds, destined for freedom),” he added.
“Equally, it was fascinating listening to the two translators -- Pepa Baamonde and Irfan Guler -- explain the importance and background of the influential Kurdish poet Ahmed Arif, whose book ‘Desgasté cadenas añorándote’ (Fetters Worn Out by Longing) they presented.”
Offside Books opened only six months ago, with the aim of being an international bookshop, a perfect place where Kayhan was able to fit in books in the Kurdish language and about the Kurds and Kurdistan.
“I don’t want our culture to stay in isolation,” Kayhan told Rudaw.
“As Kurds, we don’t write too many novels, because politics take over. Hopefully we’ll do something about it,” said Kayhan, who is from the Kurdish city of Mardin.
Shawki has definitely done something about it, with a narrative drawn from imagination, but at the same time without ignoring the realities of her people and their recent, tragic history.
“I published the novel I presented in Offside Books in 2007. I was inspired by a Kurdish cousin who came to live with us in Spain and told us about all his adventures to flee Iraq,” she said.
Shawki, who was born in Vigo (in the region of Galicia) to a Spanish mother and a father from Sulaimani, lived between Spain and Iraq until the age of 18.
“Living in Iraq was a vital experience for me… the people I met, the cultural effervescence. I feel as much Kurdish as I feel Spanish,” said Shawki, who also writes in Galician, the local language of the region she comes from in Spain.
“With my novel I would like Spanish people to have more knowledge about the Kurds, because many times they assimilate them with Arabs, Turks or Persians. I also wanted to tell about the difficulties of living under (former Iraqi dictator) Saddam Hussein,” said Shawki, who noted that hers is the first Spanish novel about the Kurds.
The literary night was enlivened with the poems of Ahmed Arif.
The translation of his poetry into Spanish began through a curious chance.
When former primary teacher Pepa Baamonde visited Turkish Kurdistan some years ago, she became curiously interested in a book received as a present from a young man.
“This young man gave me the book of Ahmed Arif and told me that this book represents what the Kurds are,” Baamonde said, explaining that she could not understand it because of the language.
“If somebody gives you a book and you cannot understand it, you translate it,” she said with great conviction, explaining that she enlisted the help of Irfan Guler, a lawyer, human rights activist and translator from the Kurdish city of Varto-Mus in Turkey for help in the translation.
“Ahmed Arif is a very important poet for the Kurds. The only book he published, Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim or ‘Fetters Worn Out by Longing in English, has had 60 editions,” said Guler, who is fluent in Spanish.
“Arif, who was born in Turkish Kurdistan, expresses in his poems the suffering of the Kurds. He has a very good writing technique, very different from the other poets of the same period. He used the language of Diyarbakir and Kurdish worlds in between his verses in the Turkish language, giving them strength and musicality,” Guler explained.
“All the Kurds know his poems by heart,” said Guler, who noted that Arif was a visionary who in the 1950s wrote that the only hope of the Kurds were the mountains, and 30 years later the Kurds went to the mountains to fight as guerrillas.
Arif, who died in 1991, had studied philosophy at Ankara University. During his life he was put in jail for political reasons, something that marked all his poems.
The event at Offside Books was promoted by the Kurdistan Regional Government representation in Spain.
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