My Uncle Jamshid—excerpted from Bachtyar Ali’s novel

Translators’ Note: My Uncle Jamshid emerged out of Bachtyar Ali’s desire to write a short novel. It tells the story of Jamshid, a young Kurdish communist imprisoned and tortured by Iraq’s Baathist regime until he becomes so thin that the wind can carry him away. Unlike flight, which is an act of will, Jamshid’s journeys are beyond his control, making him a powerful symbol of displacement and instability, key forces that have shaped Kurdish history. Ali’s novels have a stunning, comprehensive spaciousnessness. With My Uncle Jamshid, he dreamt not of constructing another meandering castle on a mountaintop, but of polishing a pearl, slowly, by the ocean. Jamshid is that pearl, born of desire, “easy to read, easy to remember, and easy to see that not every great novel requires length, but some great novels do require brevity.”

— Alana Levinson-LaBrosse & Halo

As 1979 began, they arrested Jamshid Khan, just seventeen, for the first time. All over Iraq, Baathists had turned on the communists, chasing, arresting, and torturing those who had only recently been allies to the revolution and its Leader-Commander. None of us knew for sure when or how Jamshid Khan had become a communist — none among our clan had ever been one.

They say Jamshid, with his self-control, his singular prowess, withstood torture. Jamshid’s courage and discretion were legendary, forcing the torturers to artistry, time after time, to new and harsher methods. Still, Baathist Iraq’s infamous prisons got nothing.

During the long periods of torture and starvation he suffered, Jamshid weakened and grew thin. Friends of his at the time, fellow inmates, whispered of his sudden, strange, and remarkable weight loss. I barely remember his figure before his arrest. Pictures that show Jamshid’s fifteen- and sixteen-year-old self reveal a full youth, a figure not far from meaty, a boy ready to fill out, even to fatten up. In his youth, no one would have described him as weak or frail, but as a sweet-cheeked boy, one of those who hid in his smile the traces of a healthy and carefree childhood. Those who knew Jamshid at that age, before his arrest, all said, “Jamshid became a communist not for freedom or social justice, but for the women. He thought because communists argued for equality between men and women, everyone would become less prohibited, less guarded, and he’d get to go on a date.”

Whatever the cause, in prison, Jamshid lost nearly all his weight. He became fragile. The Baathists, with their casual regard for human life, thought nothing of it. In fact, they observed it as the natural effect of increasingly sophisticated methods and styles of torture, designed with foreign experts and refined throughdaily use.

No one knows for sure when the wind first carried Jamshid off, but whatever the date, that first flight took place on a cold winter night and began in one of Kirkuk’s high security prisons. It remains a clear memory for Jamshid, a singular pleasure to remember and relate. That night a guard marches him to the interrogators, under whose constant press, beatings, and threats Jamshid had lived month after month. He walks, as he has so many times, from his cell to the torture chamber. He crosses the prison yard. He crosses the yard step by step, side by side with his Arab guard. A commander in a long overcoat leans out from a room a little way off and yells to the guard, demanding keys to unlock a nearby door. The Arab guard (Jamshid describes him as fat with curly hair and freckles) warns Jamshid, “Stop right here. Don’t move.” Jamshid stops. He goes still. Then — no one understands how — a gust of wind comes and lifts Jamshid right off the ground…

No one knows for sure when the wind first carried Jamshid off.

A great fear blanketed Jamshid. He grew dizzy. He felt the wind take him up, as if he were chaff. The wind lifted him up beyond the prison walls, straight up, higher than the roof of the north guard tower, then, the wind laid him back, flattened him out, a man at rest, then flipped him over, onto his belly, then upside down, his hands facing south; it toyed with him until a headache took him, a headache and brutal dizziness; he lost track of what had happened or what was happening. Hearing gunshots from below, he shut his eyes tight, and alert to a sudden upsurge in the wind, shattered, trembling… And the wind just carried him and carried him. Later, Jamshid would remember that from above he saw the whole city: lights, headlights, streetlights on the wide, wide avenues. Fear kept him from looking any closer as a strong draft kidnapped him, carrying him up into the depths of the sky, into the heavens, the cosmos, until he lost consciousness.

Did the winds — the black winds, the whirlwinds, the tornadoes which from all four corners of the world always seem to face us — close in on him and take him straight back to our city, or did the unconscious Khan wander more extensively through the air and then fall back to earth? No one can say. What is known: after a long flight from prison, unconscious, Jamshid fell onto the roof of a village body shop and near dawn a young mechanic found him. 

So long as he was in the air, Jamshid was a communist. The minute he landed on that roof, he was a communist no more. The wind that carried Jamshid from the south to the north made him forget what he was… And from then on, whenever the wind would carry Jamshid off, time after time, with each fall, he would return to earth having experienced some vital shift — some deep, insane obsession reversed — a part of his memory lost — his memories becoming lighter and lighter, until he could barely remember who he was. The struggle to write the life of this man, I have to say, has seemed — does seem — at times, futile.

So, one afternoon, Jamshid arrived at the house of my grandfather, Hisam Khan. This skinny, fragile boy — then just charmed skin over a few thin bones — puzzled Hisam Khan. Suddenly, realizing his vanished Jamshid had returned, my grandfather’s heart lifted. At the time, the atrocities of the Baathists only grew and grew; no one bothered to hope prisoners would be freed. Those the Baathists caught — and this was certainly true for communists — rarely came out alive. When they first took Jamshid, Hisam Khan was sure they wouldn’t find anything on his precious son, that they would free him. But when Jamshid told him, “A wind carried me away,” when Jamshid detailed his journey through the air, my grandfather, a natural skeptic, a doubtful man, grew anxious. Had his son broken out of prison, escaped, or gone crazy?

Afraid to fall into Baathist hands again, Jamshid went into hiding, and our relatives gathered to consider his situation.

At the time, my cousin Ismail and I were both fifteen years old. Two years in a row, we had failed our first year of middle school. All anyone could talk about was how we were two young men without work, without futures. My uncle Adib Khan, Hisam Khan’s eldest son, was the first to put Ismail forward as the constant companion that Jamshid, his ill-fated brother, required. My father Sarfraz Khan, to show his devotion and brotherhood, agreed, adding that he would press me, his own son, Salar, into service. Watching over and protecting Jamshid demanded more than one person.

So long as he was in the air, Jamshid was a communist. The minute he landed on that roof, he was a communist no more.

Ismail and I were the deadweight of our clan, two boys with dim horizons from whom no one expected any good. Though only three years younger than Jamshid, we had outgrown him and easily outweighed the man he had become: puny, a crumpled person, a cardboard creature, a man so thin that from the side, he looked like a drawn line. A single thread. The wind brought him and could take him away. He could be borne on a breeze.

A week after Jamshid returned, Ismail Adib Khan and I became his keepers… This was our duty: to keep the wind from carrying Jamshid away. On windy days, we would tie Jamshid Khan to our waists so a stray gust didn’t kidnap him.

Our ancestral village, Baranok, was wedged between distant peaks. To avoid the Baathists, Jamshid would steal away to that free mountain place until the family could find a more permanent solution to keep him far from state hands and spying eyes. My father sat me beside him in his pick-up and said, “We are going. You and Ismail will guard your Uncle Jamshid. He broke out of prison. Always, wherever he is, your Uncle Jamshid needs you. You can’t be careless. You must help him. He has become weak, a weak man easily carried away by any wind.”

I didn’t dare ask a question. I didn’t dare say anything. But I didn’t understand a word of my father’s last sentence. As a child, I had barely spoken to Jamshid Khan. When my family went to my grandfather’s house, Uncle Jamshid wouldn’t come out of his room, not even to welcome us. His room upstairs in my grandfather’s house was a stronghold that no one but he and his friends could breach. When he was arrested, Jamshid was a student of agriculture at the local high school. I should say I didn’t love Uncle Jamshid — not because he never spoke to me, but because he kept his face hard, sharp, and serious. He always found a reason to look down on us from his great heights. Of course, things were different from his perspective. He became a communist at fifteen years old because when he looked at his brothers, his father, even his loyal relatives, with their light, small eyes, he saw tyrants and bloodsuckers. He wouldn’t let anyone address him as “Jamshid Khan.” He made everyone call him “Comrade Jamshid.” He decked out his room with huge posters of Marx and Engels. That day, traveling with my father to Baranok, I had only that old image of Jamshid in my mind: a communist who belittled us, though we were loyal.

We arrived after Ismail and my Uncle Adib Khan. Jamshid sat on a bright Persian rug in the middle of a big room next to my Grandfather Hisam Khan. A year and a half had gone by since I had seen Jamshid Khan. At a glance, it was clear: he was not the old Jamshid. I couldn’t stop thinking about it: what torture had left Uncle Jamshid so emaciated? And how had such torture not diminished his confidence, his pride? Prison hadn’t destroyed Jamshid, but made him more arrogant, as if puffed up with only hot air.

Hisam Khan, who we also called The Great Khan, faced Ismail and me and said, “The Baathists abused Jamshid so badly he weighs next to nothing. My son is nearly a bodiless soul. You two must stay with him until he gains his weight back and returns fully to earth. Whenever he goes out, tie him to your waists, and keep tight hold of him. Better yet, don’t take him out on windy days. And let nothing take Jamshid near the encampments of the Iraqi army. Look after his nutrition and health. Tomorrow, we will bring Dr. Najib Khan to examine him. And you, Jamshid, you eat whatever Dr. Najib prescribes. I have asked Salih Hindi’s household to cook for you each day. You will wait until the government announces a new round of pardons. Then, you may return to the city.”

Me and Ismail both hated school, but Ismail liked learning languages and sitting and reading. He liked the home life, the world of books, so this duty was pleasant, even easy. I just wanted to wander the city, sloppy, chasing women.

Hisam Khan showed us short, strong tethers and said, “Whenever you go out, tie these ropes around your Uncle Jamshid’s waist and walk beside him, holding the ropes tight. If necessary, knot the rope around your own waist as well, so the wind won’t grab my beloved son. If the wind picks up, both of you hold him to the ground. If the wind carries him off again, only God knows what will happen or where he will fall.”

Jamshid stayed quiet, but began to mock my grandfather Hisam Khan, bugging his eyes out, nodding along sagely, and silently parroting phrases. And so, the afternoon passed: long lectures from my father and Ismail’s — we mustn’t forget: Jamshid is beloved. If anything happens to him, don’t doubt it, your Grandfather Hisam will disown you, disinherit you, and damn you.

Then, Ismail and I were left alone. Jamshid commented that at least our new job was better than school. This way, we could learn out in nature. Sure, nature was great, I thought, but not leaving the city, not leaving all my girlfriends behind, not ruining the last two years of sneaky cinema-going and Bollywood movies: all my favorite pastimes that I had carefully hidden from Sarfraz Khan and the rest of our relatives. Now, I would have to let go of everything and dedicate myself to worthless, bland work, to serving someone for whom I had no love.

Our first sit down alone with Jamshid Khan was nothing big, just enough time to take in how thin and weak he was. He talked of prison: torture had been agony, but no one in this world could take anything from him by force. Mid-conversation, a private tailor came in to measure him for new clothes. From that day on, until we returned to the city, my Uncle Jamshid kept us as his daily guards, part of his private staff alongside his tailor and doctor. In that knowing voice of his, Jamshid told us: whatever he wanted, whatever his heart desired, we must get; whatever he might ask, we must do. We must keep his secrets and not let a word slip; what was private must not become public. I thought that Jamshid planned to resume his communist activities, that he didn’t want my grandfather knowing. Only later, when he outright ridiculed communists, did I understand he never imagined any such thing.

Baranok itself was a small village — no more than ten houses — but Ismail and I tightened the rope around Jamshid’s waist anyway, and with Ismail securing the rope’s opposite end, we walked out into our first evening, to the village mosque, to get some water. I realized that Jamshid wanted to walk the village, to see the world, that having said his farewells to communism, a sudden desire to understand, to take in the world had come over him. That day, there was a slight breeze, not strong enough to lift Jamshid who walked contentedly a little way ahead of us. The whole village, old and young, came to watch him: the small, thin man. Old men of the village who remembered the birth of Jamshid’s father came to welcome him home and ask about the rope, that secret, why one end was always in my hand, the other in Ismail’s. Jamshid spoke down his long nose, “The rope protects me from black winds, the rope keeps the whirlwind from carrying off this great man.” Averse to the simple, the humble, Jamshid changed our course, forcing us out of the village, into the moonlight and up a small hill. At the peak, we stopped…and I understood, right then — Jamshid missed flying. He stood still. As if, I felt sure, waiting for the wind. But nothing more than breath blew. He kept us there late into the night, not speaking, taking in the fresh air, staring up at the stars, contemplating mysteries.

He had no affection for the sticky earth, to be stuck to it forever.

The next day, Dr. Najib arrived to examine the Khan. Like a witness before a miracle, he stood, shocked. The doctor pulled us aside to say, “You must be careful. Sudden, violent hysterics could take him, depression could infect him, he might even try to commit suicide.” The doctor said, “The only real weight Jamshid has left is his head. What remains of his body is a rare aberration, beyond medical explanation and logical science.” He suggested that Jamshid eat heavy food and rich meals, stay sedentary, and see if he could gain the weight back…

As time went on, year by year, one by one, Dr. Najib’s concerns came to pass. Nothing could fix Jamshid, nothing could return the Khan to his original weight, not gorging himself on food, not gorging himself on joy.

After Dr. Najib left, Jamshid scoffed at him. He told us he had no intention to gain weight, he had no affection for the sticky earth, to be stuck to it forever. Jamshid never took the pills the doctor prescribed. Whenever he went to the village mosque, he would throw the pills into the toilet, watching them wash down into the sewer. When we told him we knew, he snapped at us not to tell tales, not to be tattletales to Grandfather Hisam, to anyone, of how he disregarded the doctor’s orders.

Ismail and I were afraid of him from the very first day… Though we were stronger and bigger than he was, with a single look, he could make us scramble.

In the beginning, I didn’t believe that the wind could kidnap Jamshid Khan. I told Ismail, “It’s all a lie. It’s all made up to get us out of the city. The Khans met in secret and decided we must be kept out of the city’s sight. We failed constantly at school, we dragged our family name through the mud, we put the reputation of all our relatives at risk. We are a shame to our clan.”

Ismail said, “There was no secret meeting. You and I are simply dead weight. They gave us this job because it’s easy. Important, but easy.” He looked at me a little sadly and continued, “I won’t feel sorry for myself even if I must work for this half-man, this man who wants nothing more from me than to hold one end of his rope until I die, but I do have a bad feeling that one of these days, because of him, we’ll come to catastrophe.” Ismail convinced me. All at once, I felt that the future wouldn’t bring ease or simplicity, that our work would try us, but that still, I couldn’t’t predict what was to come.