Watts, Nicole, Republic of Dreams, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan, New York University Press, 2025
Republic of Dreams, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan by Nicole Watts is a fantastic book following a Kurdish family from Halabja in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan. It starts with the gas attack upon Halabja during the Iran-Iraq War and ends with the COVID pandemic. It tries to document how an average Kurdish family lived and dealt with the major events in modern Iraq.
The main characters consist of the matriarch Mahbubeh, her husband Ahmed and their son Peshawa. They represent a regular Kurdish family with the father taking on various jobs and owning an orchard, the mother holding the family together and the son going to school and trying to find a career.
The story of Peshawa takes up most of the book and is very engaging. It follows him as he finds a purpose in life leading him to be a scholar going to the American University in Sulaymaniya and then later doing graduate work at Syracuse University in New York. The most touching moment was when he decided to get married and found the perfect woman and started a family with her.
While the vast majority of Republic of Dreams deals with Peshawa there are political and economic events that he and his family had to deal with thrown in as well. The book starts with the chemical attack upon Halabja in 1988. The mother Mahbubeh was separated from her husband and found herself in a refugee camp in Iran. About a year later Ahmed showed up to re-unite the family. Peshawa was inside his mother’s belly at the time of the attack.
This became a seminal event for Kurdistan representing how the Kurds were oppressed by the Iraqi government. However young people in Halabja like Peshawa thought the Kurdish leadership just exploited the tragedy for their own gain. They would talk about Halabja once a year during the anniversary of the attack but otherwise completely neglect the district that lacked essential services.
This led Peshawa and his friends to take part in a protest in 2006 during an anniversary celebration that turned into a riot followed by a government crackdown upon the students that took part. Peshawa later joined the 2011 protests against the Kurdish government which became the biggest demonstrations in the region’s history but was met by government repression and not a single change. Through Peshawa the author expresses how many young Kurds felt alienated from the ruling parties because they didn’t seem to care about them at all. It also highlights how the Kurdish elite do not accept dissent and the limits of democracy in the region.
The plight of the Kurdish youth is brought up again towards the end of the book. The Kurdish government followed an independent oil policy which was opposed by the regional government and then held an independence referendum in 2017 which Baghdad declared illegal. In retaliation the central authorities cut off monthly budget payments which the Kurds were dependent upon. The local economy collapsed as a result. Hundreds of Kurds ended up leaving Kurdistan every month mostly heading for Europe seeking a better life. Peshawa ended up taking a job with Facebook in Ireland during this period. To Peshawa and others it seemed like the Kurdish government failed them again. He still felt his roots were in Kurdistan however and he had his children born there.
Overall Republic of Dreams is a wonderful book telling a very compelling story about Peshawa and his family. Their story draws you in and keeps your attention from start to finish. It gives you real insight into what it is like for people to grow up and live in Kurdistan from the good to the bad. It seamlessly weaves in major events that took place as well giving you a larger picture of Iraq. One doesn’t need to know anything about that country to enjoy this book.
Link to all of Musings On Iraq’s book reviews listed by topic
No comments:
Post a Comment