A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a few friends and I read “A Hundred Years of Solitude” the famous work in magical realism by the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In part of the book, he writes about a train operated by the banana company that takes the youth of Macondo out of town and nobody sees them afterward. When we were discussing the book, one of my friends went on to say that this part taught him about the importance of cultures and historical experiences in understanding literature. Marquez’s masterpiece may be magical realism to some people in some countries, but it is realism to others. It was the beginning of what they later called “brain drain” in my home country of Iran. The majority of our classmates moved to the United States and never went back. He made a parallel that this was our banana company train. Our youth go and do not return.
Some 23 years later, I remembered those comments by reading “Jamshid Khan, My Uncle whom Wind was Always Taking” by Kurdish writer Bachtyar Ali. He tells the story of a man who can fly but this extraordinary fact does not help him at all in his life. On the contrary, what flies him around is the winds of time, which for an Iraqi Kurdish man of his time were never in his favor. He flies through the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam’s forces make him work for them as a spy. He is then captured as a POW and the opposite forces use his services. He runs away and hides in a small town through the Persian Gulf War, and even finally goes to Turkey along with smugglers but even there, his life is threatened. After Saddam’s downfall, he is stuck in the sectarian chaos that follows. He flies for some hardliners inviting people to see him as a sign of God but eventually falls from their grace. He is purchased by corrupt politicians as a circus animal and finally, he decides to leave Iraq. He moves to an unknown Western Country and there, he gains weight and does not fly anymore.
The book is profound. 50 years of history is seen through the adventures of Jamshid Khan who is the flier but has no control over the events. Even the act of flying was not due to active practice but rather, due to the tortures he experienced in Saddam’s prison that made him light as a paper. He gets rich, he marries, he fights back, he goes with the flow, but eventually, Jamshid Khan simply has to accept his fate. My hat off to Mr. Bachtyar Ali who depicted the recent history of a nation so beautifully. I will read more of his books.