Qissa Reviews: Kurdish Women’s Stories

Kurdish Women’s Stories was never going to be an easy read. Kurdistan is an area that has seen conflict and oppression for many, many years. For those of you, like me, who didn’t have much knowledge of Kurdistan in advance, it is an area split between Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. As editor Houzman Mahmoud says in her introduction: ‘These four countries have imposed geographic, cultural and political borders between us.’

Covering all areas of Kurdistan and the diaspora, these stories span five generations. There are stories from women in their seventies while some of the writers are just twenty years old. Mahmoud does an excellent job of representing the diversity of the region in the stories chosen and also acknowledges her limitations, noting in particular that the majority of stories are from South Kurdistan because that is where she came from and she lacked the resources to travel further to find other voices. However, there are many voices: twenty-five in total. Twenty-five women who reflect on their encounters and experiences in politics, art, love, gender injustice, exile, loss of loved ones, imprisonment and activism.

As I said, it’s not an easy read. These women tell first-person accounts of their lives. The majority, if not imprisoned and tortured themselves, have seen this happen to loved ones. The constant exposure to the traumas of their narrative almost leads to compassion fatigue, as story after story shocks and harrows the reader, from whipped and bleeding feet to sexual assaults and bullet wounds. However, as a collection, Kurdish Women’s Voices is a powerful oral history of an entire ethnic group and the trauma serves to highlight the incredible bravery, resilience and strength of these women (and the thousands of others whose voices we don’t hear).

The oppression of the Kurdish people is highlighted from the very beginning of the book, when Mahmoud talks about the different languages and translations that went into the finished version. Some women in the book can only read and write in Farsi or Arabic because they were not allowed a Kurdish education. These stories have been translated into Kurdish Sorani and then into English for this book. Others cannot write, period. They have had to tell their stories orally and have them transcribed. Knowing that each and every word in this book is a particular moment in someone’s life is incredibly meaningful.

Of the stories themselves, there is a range of writing styles. Some, like Bayan Saeed’s ‘A Stolen Childhood’, are sad and reflective. Others feel much more like you are there, in the moment with the writer, such as in the dramatic conflict scenes of ‘Fighting an Islamic Regime’ by Nasrin Ramazanali. Some have dark humour while others are simply matter-of-fact. The range of women’s roles is also shown in the collection. Some consider themselves as wives, mothers or daughters first and foremost, visiting their relatives in prison or helping them evade detection from authorities. Others are actively fighting alongside their male counterparts, whether through protesting, distributing resistance literature, carrying a weapon or treating the wounded. However, whatever the differences, what shines through these narratives is the bravery and passion of the women. It is easy to read something and forget that this is a person’s lived experience but that should not be forgotten in this case. 

Mahmoud is an excellent editor. She has a lot of experience shining a spotlight on Kurdish writing and culture, through her work founding The Culture Project, an online and print magazine that gives a platform to Kurdish voices. She is very passionate about celebrating these women and allowing their stories to be told. I was pleasantly surprised to open the book and discover the acknowledgements at the beginning. Usually left to the end of a book, including them here felt like a clear message that this was a collaborative effort and that we need to work together in order to highlight these stories. Mahmoud speaks in her introduction about the difficulties of bringing this collection together. We can safely say that we are very pleased that she did! She is a champion of, not just Kurdish voices, but all women’s voices in general and the importance of embracing our own narrative. We’ll leave you with her own words:

‘The main reason that this was no easy task, however, is because we tend to minimise the importance of writing about ourselves as women… I believe that education and the right to tell such stories should not be a privilege afforded to only a few, but rather that all women’s experiences should be valued, told and studied.’