A new Kurdish novel has put the last two decades of Iraqi Kurdistan’s political and social life on the literary map. Ghazalnus w Baghakani Khayal (Ghazalnus and the Gardens of Imagination) by Bakhtyar Ali is an account of the growing conflict between the Kurdish authorities and the intellectual elite which also includes scenes of fantasy and meditation on the power of the human imagination. The main narrative follows a group of disparate people, led by a poet, on a journey to find the bodies of two lovers who have been killed by the Kurdish authorities. The group includes a Hollywood film buff, who is leading some blind children on an imaginary sea voyage, a woman fleeing domestic violence, who weaves a beautiful carpet at a women’s shelter, and a former peshmerga (Kurdish guerrilla fighter), an assassin turned pacifist.

Most of the events in the novel take place between 1991 and 2006 in the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq, where the current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, are in power. The period is that following the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein’s weakened regime and after the imposition of the US–British no-fly zone over the region. This is a novel about post-revolution failure and the transformation of once committed freedom-seekers into business moguls and power freaks. The ruling political elite live in an upmarket district sectioned off from the rest of the town; they are in control of the economy and personally corrupt; Ali describes their relationships with prostitutes and their role in so-called honour killings of women. The Kurdish region we are shown is in complete contrast to the optimistic picture painted by some international media reports.

An up-and-coming political leader, nicknamed the Baron of Imagination, becomes interested in the poet’s followers when he finds they are recording the stories of all post-uprising deaths for a project to be called “The Book of the Dead”. The Baron has his own scheme, to construct a beautiful district, “a mini-paradise”, and he approaches the town’s poets and intellectuals to help him with the design of the project. This is a satirical reference to the Kurdish authorities’ liking for extravagant schemes, such as parks, hotels and amusement arcades, on which they spend public money, while failing to address essential political and social problems.

But it would be wrong to reduce the richness of this novel to its depiction of a particular time and place. Its main theme is the power of imagination and its 600 pages are full of discussions about love and revolution, and the power of literature and art in the face of political force. Ghazalnus, the poet, believes that the conflict between intellectuals and politicians can be attributed to their different understanding of imagination. He thinks that it is through imagination that humans reach truth, while his adversary, the Baron, thinks imagination exists to create beauty and to help humans forget their suffering. When the Baron approaches Ghazalnus for help on his project, the poet tells the politician:

Humans are not given imagination so that they can make filth, disasters and destruction appear beautiful. The gardens of imagination are beautiful because they do not become decorations to conceal the truth.

Bakhtyar Ali, a prolific poet and critic, likes to give his characters significant names; he has done this in all of the five novels he has published so far, and it has become his signature. Here, the cast includes “the real Magellan”, a well-travelled immigrant who returns to Kurdistan after twenty-four years to look for his missing niece, and “the imaginary Magellan”, the cinéaste who has never left his home town. The main character’s name is “Ghazalnus”, one who writes Ghazal, the ancient Middle Eastern verse form. The transformation of the ex-assassin is expressed through the change of his name. After the 1991 uprising, Hasani Tofan, Hasan the Storm, goes into complete seclusion for six years, helping his old mother, Pizo, make rose water at home. When his mother dies and he comes out of seclusion, he is referred to as Hasani Pizo. Of this transformation he says:

I knew from my limited experience that those who tear down and destroy an era can’t build another one. Just as weapons can’t suddenly become flowers, he who kills humans can’t suddenly become a gardener. I needed over six years of solitude to go out of history.

The story is largely told by the main characters, with flashbacks to the 1970s and scenes set in 2006. The novel abounds in magical scenes: the poet discovers a land that turns into an infinite garden at night; children are born with a line of poetry written on their chests; a child with a powerful sense of smell can find buried bodies; and a murdered man leaves stars behind on the bodies of his lovers. The novel also reflects two different forms of love through its retelling of the Sufi-style love story of the poet and the real Magellan’s sensual love story.

Ali has been given an unprecedented $25,000 advance by his Sulaymaniyah-based publisher which has so far printed 10,000 copies of the novel. This must be considered in the light of the fact that there are 4 or 5 million Kurds in Iraq, a country with a low literacy rate. Ali’s novels are highly praised by critics and the general public alike. While the former admire his ability to tell a story rich in ideas with well-drawn characters, the latter can relate to the frustrations, hopes and ambitions of his characters and the depictions of contemporary Kurdistan.

Bakhtyar Ali
GHAZALNUS W BAGHAKANI KHAYAL
618pp. Sulaymaniyah: Ranj Press. 11,900 Iraqi dinars.

Kareem Abdulrahman is a London-based Kurdish translator and journalist, currently working for the BBC. He studied English language and literature at the University of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, and holds a Masters in Journalism from the University of Westminster.

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