The Forgotten Years of Kurdish Nationalism in Iran 2020 1St Ed Edition Abbas Vali Full Chapter
The Forgotten Years of Kurdish Nationalism in Iran 2020 1St Ed Edition Abbas Vali Full Chapter
The Forgotten Years of Kurdish Nationalism in Iran 2020 1St Ed Edition Abbas Vali Full Chapter
The Forgotten
Years of Kurdish
Nationalism in Iran
Abbas Vali
Minorities in West Asia and North Africa
Series Editors
Kamran Matin
University of Sussex
Department of International Relations
Brighton, UK
Paolo Maggiolini
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
Milan, Italy
This series seeks to provide a unique and dedicated outlet for the publication
of theoretically informed, historically grounded and empirically governed
research on minorities and ‘minoritization’ processes in the regions of West
Asia and North Africa (WANA). In WANA, from Morocco to Afghanistan and
from Turkey to the Sudan almost every country has substantial religious, eth-
nic or linguistic minorities. Their changing character and dynamic evolution
notwithstanding, minorities have played key roles in social, economic, political
and cultural life of WANA societies from the antiquity and been at the center
of the modern history of the region. WANA’s experience of modernity, pro-
cesses of state formation and economic development, the problems of domes-
tic and interstate conflict and security, and instances of state failure, civil war,
and secession are all closely intertwined with the history and politics of minori-
ties, and with how different socio-political categories related to the idea of
minority have informed or underpinned historical processes unfolding in the
region. WANA minorities have also played a decisive role in the rapid and crisis-
ridden transformation of the geopolitics of WANA in the aftermath of the Cold
War and the commencement of globalization. Past and contemporary histo-
ries, and the future shape and trajectory of WANA countries are therefore
intrinsically tied to the dynamics of minorities. Intellectual, political, and practi-
cal significance of minorities in WANA therefore cannot be overstated.
The overarching rationale for this series is the absence of specialized series
devoted to minorities in WANA. Books on this topic are often included in
area, country or theme-specific series that are not amenable to theoretically
more rigorous and empirically wider and multi-dimensional approaches and
therefore impose certain intellectual constraints on the books especially in
terms of geographical scope, theoretical depth, and disciplinary orientation.
This series addresses this problem by providing a dedicated space for
books on minorities in WANA. It encourages inter- and multi-disciplinary
approaches to minorities in WANA with a view to promote the combination
of analytical rigor with empirical richness. As such the series is intended to
bridge a significant gap on the subject in the academic books market,
increase the visibility of research on minorities in WANA, and meets the
demand of academics, students, and policy makers working on, or interested
in, the region alike. The editorial team of the series will adopt a proactive
and supportive approach through soliciting original and innovative works,
closer engagement with the authors, providing feedback on draft mono-
graphs prior to publication, and ensuring the high quality of the output.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the memory of women and men who died defending
Kobane against the domination of evil (September 2014–March 2015).
They will be remembered for their courage, humanity and selfless
love of freedom.
Preface
vii
viii PREFACE
In the process of researching, planning and writing this book I have had
many long conversations with numerous people; friends, acquaintances
and colleagues have shared their time, knowledge and opinions with me. I
am very grateful to them for their interest and help, which have greatly
enriched the book. They mostly wish to remain anonymous, but some
have been mentioned in the endnotes. Some too have passed away since
our conversations; I was fortunate to be able to draw on their memories,
and I remember them with gratitude. My special thanks go to my friend
Hassan Ghazi, whose extensive knowledge of the Kurdish movement in
the region, especially in Rojhelat/Iranian Kurdistan, has been a source of
reference and information in the process of the completion of the book
over the years. I am indebted to him. I also thank Katharine Hodgkin for
her unfailing editorial assistance in the process of the writing and presenta-
tion of the book. Kamran Matin suggested including this book in Palgrave’s
new series on Minorities in the MENA Region, of which he is a co-editor.
I am grateful to him.
xiii
Contents
6 The Rise of the Left and the Search for a New Identity125
xv
xvi Contents
Epilogue205
Selected Bibliography209
Index223
CHAPTER 1
of the political field were defined by Kurdish ethnicity and language, the
objects of sovereign suppression and denial, and popular democratic
opposition to sovereign power was articulated in the popular demand for
the recognition of Kurdish national identity. I shall return to this point
later in this study.
This brief account entails basic elements for the theoretical construc-
tion of the concept of the people/nation as the subject of popular politics
in Kurdistan. The concept of the people is a political construct. It is con-
structed by the discourses and practices which define the terms and condi-
tions of popular democratic opposition/resistance to sovereign power
(Laclau 2007; Ranciere 1999). The people is the subject of popular demo-
cratic politics only in so far as it is the object of sovereign domination. It
therefore owes its existence as the subject of popular politics to its opposi-
tion to sovereign power. The people as such is a counter-power, it is the
other of sovereign, the constituent power, to use Negri’s concept (Negri
1999; Vali 2017). The argument that the people is a product of popular
democratic politics is also at the same time the affirmation of its moder-
nity, its modern identity as a political force, internally differentiated by
social and economic relations but politically united by its opposition to
sovereign power. This historical connection with modernity also reveals
the identity of the sovereign power in opposition to which the identity of
the people is defined. The sovereign in question, the object of the people’s
opposition and resistance, is the juridical power historically associated with
the constitution of the nation-state in Iran. In this sense therefore the
emergence and the modality of the development of the people in Kurdistan
were defined by the turbulent relationship between the Kurdish commu-
nity and the Iranian nation-state after 1905, represented in terms of sov-
ereign domination and Kurdish resistance. This relationship was articulated
in the historical formation of modernity in Iran in its official guise: the
discourse and practice of authoritarian modernisation (Vali 1998).
The emergence of the people and the formation of popular democratic
politics in Iranian Kurdistan were defined by the historical specificity of the
Kurdish community, and its interrelationship with the wider society in
Iran. In this respect the decisive factor, the turning point in the relation-
ship, was the advent of modernity in Iran, which culminated in the consti-
tutional revolution, and after a lull lasting two decades re-emerged in the
form of authoritarian modernisation carried out by Pahlavi absolutism.
The historical specificity of Kurdish society, so deeply rooted in its class
structure, was also influenced in no small measure by its complex
4 A. VALI
The nascent public sphere lacked essential forms of legal protection. It was
the fragile locus of popular political dissent exposed to sovereign violence.
That the political existence of the people was expressed in opposition to
the sovereign meant that the legal and political unity of the sovereign
power depended on the containment, suppression and control of popular
opposition. The emergence of the people as an active political subject, its
eruption in life as a force conscious of its rights, was a new development in
a society in which power was seen to emanate from sovereign will. The
exclusion of the people from the political process, perpetuated by the
relentless suppression of its voice in the domain of power, was the sine qua
non of the politics of authoritarian modernisation under the Pahlavi rule.
The re-emergence of the people and the struggle to assert popular will
changed the established ‘norms’ of political conduct between the sover-
eign and the democratic opposition in the years that followed Reza Shah’s
abdication. The restructuring of Pahlavi absolutism, therefore, required
more than just a reorganisation of the power bloc grounded on the large
landlords’ regime. A substantial change in the mode of exercise of power
to ensure the continuation of sovereign domination in the face of increas-
ing popular opposition challenging the legal unity and political legitimacy
of the sovereign was required.
The continuation of sovereign domination was insured by the change
in the rationality of power which expressed itself in terms of the moderni-
sation of the state apparatuses, especially the military and security appara-
tuses of the state. The matrix of rationality informing the working of
power in the state apparatuses was closely tethered to the ‘security prob-
lematic of the state’, to use Foucault’s terms (Foucault 2003). Henceforth
the security considerations of sovereign power defined not only the con-
ceptual structure of the official discourse, but also the strategic objectives
of the state in the economic, political and cultural fields, at home and
abroad. This crucial development in the conduct of sovereign power signi-
fied above all the conservative ethos of the modernisation of the state in
the aftermath of the 1953 coup. The ‘redeployed absolutism’—a concept
used to define the character of the regime in the decade following the
coup—was the paradoxical outcome of this process. Governed by the new
security considerations, the conduct of the regime was driven by its pri-
mary aim to stop the return of the people to the political field and the
public representations of popular democratic demands.
The predominance of the security problematic and the associated order
of governmental rationality outlived redeployed absolutism, continuing to
1 INTRODUCTION: MODERNITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF POPULAR… 9
define the repressive ethos of sovereign power in the fateful years between
the ‘White Revolution’ and the ‘Islamic Revolution’ (1962–1979). The
expulsion of the people from the national political field, the destruction of
the means and conditions of popular representation, constituted the stra-
tegic objective of sovereign power from 1946 to the revolutionary rupture
of 1978–1979. The restructuring of the power bloc and the reconfigura-
tion of its forces and relations under the hegemonic sign of the sovereign
following episodes of national crisis were prompted and defined by the
conservative and defensive ethos of this strategy. The reasons of the state
had given way to the logic of sovereignty: security geared to sovereign
domination.
Kurdistan was paramount in the order of sovereign domination that
followed the consolidation of power under royal dictatorship. The decade
preceding the revolutionary rupture in 1978 witnessed the intensification
of the royal repression and further centralisation of the means and mecha-
nisms of opposition to popular democratic politics, targeting its subject
within and outside the juridical realm of power and politics. The relentless
application of this policy, compounded by unconstrained use of violence,
undermined civil society and politicised the economic and cultural fields in
the community. The contradictory effects of the royal repression in
Kurdistan were more striking than in the rest of Iran, for in Kurdistan it
resulted not only in a radical political field but also in debilitating eco-
nomic backwardness. The two continued to enforce each other within the
ethnic confines of a repressed civil society, leading to the dislocation of
nationalist politics and the strategic predominance of armed struggle in
the Kurdish resistance movement in Iran. The present study addresses this
issue, exploring its structural unity and political and cultural diversity. It is
concerned with the development and transformation of Kurdish national-
ism from the fall of the Kurdish Republic to the revolutionary rupture in
1978–1979.
CHAPTER 2
of state repression on the urban centres had another and equally important
motive: to regain full control over the state bureaucracy, which for a brief but
decisive period had been taken over and restructured by the Kurdish admin-
istration. The Kurdish administration had changed not only the direction of
the Pahlavi bureaucracy in major towns in its jurisdiction, but also its ethnic
composition, especially the higher echelons of civil administration which, as
a rule, had been occupied by non-Kurdish—Persian or Azeri—personnel
appointed by the central government in Tehran. The exclusion of the Kurdish
personnel from the higher echelons of state bureaucracy, especially from the
positions of regional policy and decision-making, in Kurdistan under the
Pahlavi rule was an added measure to the technologies of domination and
control deployed by an already over-centralised administration. It was
intended to assert the Persian identity of political power in Kurdistan and to
ensure its hegemony in the state bureaucracy in the face of the destabilising
effects of the Kurdish identity of the overwhelming majority of its employees,
the lower- and middle-rank civil and public servants, who were drawn from
the local population. The reassertion of the power of the state in the bureau-
cracy thus required a return to the previous order, in which the administrative
command ran on ethnic lines so as to ensure the subordination of the
Kurdish identity.
The regional bureaucracy thus became the primary site of struggle for
the reassertion of sovereign domination, which began as a concerted effort
to suppress once again Kurdish ethnicity and language in the administra-
tive processes and practices, especially those emanating from or associated
with the ideological (juridical and educational) apparatuses of the state.
Administrative command here required more than mere compliance to
ensure domination; it also presupposed the exclusion of Kurdish ethnicity
and language from the administrative processes in the regional bureau-
cracy. This exclusion, we know, was the effect of the predominance of mili-
tary power in the structure of domination, which served to reinforce the
crucial linkage between Iranian sovereignty and Persian ethnicity and lan-
guage underpinning Iranian identity in the official discourse.
In Kurdistan, the state had largely dispensed with the need for the ideo-
logical legitimation of domination. Juridical or cultural relations, other
than those related to the justification of the uniform historical origins of
Iranian national identity and its extension to the Kurds as the ‘genuine\
authentic Iranians descending from the common ancient Aryan stock,
were seldom used to support or justify the conduct of sovereign power in
Kurdistan. These feeble attempts rarely achieved their intended objectives.
2 THE RESTORATION OF SOVEREIGN ORDER AND THE KURDISH… 13
They were drowned in the silent rage and rejection of the Kurds, who
perceived them as banal tactics/efforts to justify or gloss over the suppres-
sion of their language and denial of their identity. The political efficacy of
cultural and juridical relations and their contribution to the imposition
and exercise of political domination reached its lowest level in the period
of restoration when the already powerful effects of the suppression of
Kurdish ethnicity and language were compounded by arrests, incarcera-
tion and public executions in Mahabad and other major Kurdish cities. In
fact, the violent practices deployed by the state to restore its domination
over the Kurdish community had immediate and drastic consequences for
the working of the ideological apparatuses of the state, both juridical and
educational-cultural. The sudden disappearance of the juridical façade of
power, the collapse of the boundaries separating law from violence, meant
that violence was the only effective means for the restoration of sovereign
order and the consolidation of domination over the Kurdish community.
In Gramscian terms, the politics of restoration signified a new phase in
the turbulent relationship between the state and the Kurdish community,
marked by the prominence of force and the correlative marginalisation of
the technologies of power rooted in civil society (Gramsci 1971). The use
of force to secure domination became the strategic objective of the state in
Kurdistan in the decades to come. Sovereign power had shed its juridical-
cultural mantle. This shift in the mode of exercise of power and the result-
ing identity of sovereign power with military violence and repression, it
will be shown in the following chapters, had a decisive effect on the dis-
course and practice of Kurdish resistance to domination. The preponder-
ance of violence justified the call to arms to wage a frontal attack on the
state. Armed struggle, thus, became the most effective, if not the only,
mode of resistance to sovereign domination by a state reduced to a politi-
cal society grounded in force.
the bulk of urban population which had lived under the Republican admin-
istration. But outside the apparatuses of regional administration, the
Kurdish public sphere was the main object of state repression. The case in
point here is the nascent field of discourse and practice which emerged in
1941 soon after the collapse of Reza Shah’s rule, flourishing under the
Republic to become the primary site of critical approach to sovereign
power. Critique of sovereign power, its past history and present conduct,
was in fact the unifying element of a wide array of political, historical, cul-
tural and literary discourse operating in this field, delineating outer bound-
aries of the public sphere under the Republic. The critique of sovereign
power defined the public character of discourse and practice, and hence the
designation of their locus as the public sphere under the Republic. Public
discourse as such followed two objectives: first, exposing sovereign domina-
tion and its exclusionary effect on the Kurdish community, and, second,
defending the rights of the Kurds to self-government in their own territory.
These objectives amounted to the justification of the resistance against sov-
ereign domination to defend and protect the ethnic boundaries of the
Kurdish community. They also stood for the rejection and termination of
sovereign domination as a precondition for the realisation of the demo-
cratic rights to Kurdish self-rule. The public discourse under the Republic,
as it has been discussed elsewhere in my writings, remained ambiguous on
whether or not resistance to and removal of domination as a democratic
right also presupposed renouncing Iranian sovereignty. This ambiguity was
the hallmark of public discourse under the Republic. It reflected a main
anomaly in the official discourse of the Republic, its perennial vacillation
between the two poles of political sovereignty and regional autonomy. This
ambiguity, we know, continued to persist under the Republic, and the con-
flation of ethnic with national identity in the official discourse was repli-
cated in the public sphere. Just as in the case of official discourse, here too
it was difficult to draw a clear line between ethnic and national identities
mainly because they were both constituted by sovereign violence. The latter
was the constitutive outside of ethnic and national identities in the same
way as it defined the boundaries of the Kurdish community and the Kurdish
public sphere within it (Vali 2011).
The urban middle classes, modern and traditional, formed the social
structure of the Kurdish public sphere under the Republic. The middle-
and lower-ranking bazaar merchants and traders, along with sectors of the
modern petty-bourgeoisie, mostly government employees working in the
regional bureaucracy, and middle-ranking clergy and students of religious
2 THE RESTORATION OF SOVEREIGN ORDER AND THE KURDISH… 15
There was another and more significant reason related to the capacity of
the state to secure effective domination. In the late 1940s the Iranian state
did not have a uniform and centralised apparatus of repression, with spe-
cialised knowledge and techniques of surveillance, persecution, terror and
control, to aid the process of restoration. It had to rely on the army and the
police, which performed this crucial task but without the requisite knowledge
and efficiency. Consequently, the repressive policies and practices of the state
often fell short of their aims, leaving sizeable holes in the network of terror
and control which accompanied the process of restoration in Kurdistan. The
army counter-intelligence, the infamous Rokn-e Do (Second Column), was
the main force in charge of state security before the foundation of the notori-
ous Sazman-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Melli-e Iran (SAVAK, Organisation for
the Information and Security of the Country) in 1957. The latter brought
technical knowledge and administrative efficiency to state repression, signi-
fying the emergence of a new mode of rationality in the conduct of power,
presupposing not only the centralisation of security functions of the state but
also their predominance in the civil and military apparatuses of the state.5
The dominance of the army in the state security apparatuses, and its
control over the processes of policy and decision-making, was another
reason for the inefficiency of state repression and restoration, for the
Iranian army in the late 1940s was far from being a homogeneous profes-
sional force with an undivided loyalty to the monarchy. The officer corps,
especially the lower- and middle-rank officers, had been substantially influ-
enced by the political and ideological forces and tendencies competing for
hegemony in the increasingly turbulent post-war conditions. Although
the bulk of the officer corps in the armed forces were still loyalist, holding
allegiance to the person of the monarch, the Tudeh Party, espousing
Soviet Marxism and its global strategic vision, was the chief ‘external’
political and ideological influence. It had managed to infiltrate the armed
forces on various levels and to influence the processes of decision-making
and execution, especially on issues related to intelligence, counter-
intelligence and the security of the state in general. The military organisa-
tion of the Tudeh Party proved significant in this respect, particularly in
the years preceding the nationalisation of oil and the coup d’état of August
1953, when political divisions and ideological conflicts in the armed forces
were at their clearest and sharpest. Incidents of Tudeh officers aiding and
abetting Kurdish nationalists before their arrest and during incarceration
lend credence to the view that political and ideological divisions within the
armed forces were also significant in limiting the wave of state repression
in the process of restoration.6
2 THE RESTORATION OF SOVEREIGN ORDER AND THE KURDISH… 21
ifferent countries in the former Eastern bloc. These exiled groups were
d
generally maintained by their respective host governments; the exception
was Iraqi Kurdistan, where they depended on the political and logistical
support of the local Kurdish forces, principally the Barzani-led Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP), before they established working relations with
the Iraqi regime in the mid-1960s. The relationship between the exiled
groups and their ‘hosts’ and the political and ideological conditions which
governed their cooperation were to prove decisive in the future develop-
ment of nationalist discourse and practice in the Iranian Kurdistan.
But the ‘external’ influences on the discourse and practice of the KDPI
were almost always filtered through the wider structure of the political and
ideological relations of the Cold War. The Cold War had already defined the
status of Kurdish nationalism in the post-war political and ideological spec-
trum, and within the emergent configuration of political and ideological
forces and relations in the country. The early association of the Kurdish
movement with the Soviet Union was used to represent Kurdish national-
ism as a communist-inspired movement, and the attempts to revive the
organisational structure of the KDPI after the collapse of the Republic as a
premeditated communist strategy devised and directed by the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and its Iranian branch, the Tudeh Party.
The perception of the Kurds as communist and foreign-inspired secession-
ists, often framed in the discourse of Iranian national identity and sover-
eignty, was actively encouraged by the Pahlavi state and the nationalist press.
It not only stigmatised the Kurdish nationalist movement but also helped to
isolate it in the political field, aligning it with the Tudeh, whose subservience
to the Soviet Union compromised its claims to patriotism.
The discourse and practice of the Cold War, and the constellation of
right-wing and centre-right nationalist and religious political and ideo-
logical forces and relations which aimed to exclude the Tudeh Party from
the political field, were instrumental in strengthening KDPI-Soviet rela-
tions after the collapse of the Republic. The reinforcement of this relation-
ship, which had previously been substantially weakened following the
Soviet withdrawal from the Kurdish territory in May 1946, was due mainly
to the isolation of the Kurds in the Iranian political field and their increas-
ing dependence on the political, ideological and logistic support of the
Tudeh Party.9 When it was eventually revived and reorganised, the KDPI
had a pronounced Tudeh identity, especially after the 1953 coup d’état, as
its dedicated young cadres increasingly began to see the world from a dis-
tinctly Soviet perspective. The Soviet conception of Kurdish nationalism,
2 THE RESTORATION OF SOVEREIGN ORDER AND THE KURDISH… 23
Notes
1. For the list of the KDPI and Republican activists arrested, imprisoned or
executed by the Iranian army in Kurdish towns and countryside, see
Hussami (1997) and Blurian (1997).
2. For the names of the Kurdish tribal leaders and landlords collaborating
with the government in Tehran, see Hussami (1997), Blurian (1997),
Eagleton (1963). Of the collaborators, Emer Khan Shikak, the head of the
Shikak Confederacy, and Nouri beg and Rashid beg of Herki tribes were
the most prominent.
3. After the collapse of the Republic the central government set out to punish
the disaffected landlords, especially those who had collaborated with the
Republican government. A decree was thus issued to confiscate the prop-
erty of the ‘motajaserin’, the rebellious elements, active participants in the
movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. It is however not known to what
extent the decree was put in practice in these provinces. I have seen no
evidence of concrete cases of confiscation in the Kurdish territory. The
bulk of the insider information on this issue was provided by Hassan Ghazi
(Sundsvall January 1993).
2 THE RESTORATION OF SOVEREIGN ORDER AND THE KURDISH… 25
it is said, involved Kurds from Iran and Iraq who aspired to a nationalist
programme under the leadership of Barzani. ‘The Party’, as Barzani
referred to it, was to become the springboard for the formation of the
‘United Front for the Liberation of the Motherland’, a popular demo-
cratic and anti-imperialist organisation with a nationalist ideology and pro-
Soviet stance on regional and international politics. The political
programme of this party and its strategy for the realisation of its broad
objectives were set out by Barzani in some detail in a meeting in January
1948 in Baku, attended by a number of prominent Kurdish exiles from
both Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan.1
The programme entailed a plan for the liberation of Greater Kurdistan,
the first stage of which concerned Iranian Kurdistan. The initial aim of the
party, Barzani stated, was to liberate Iranian Kurdistan, reviving the Kurdish
Republic and mobilising the masses in support of the wider objective: the
gradual liberation of the remaining parts, in accordance with a popular
democratic strategy which included non-Kurdish forces on the national
and regional levels. The latter was a veiled reference to the Azerbaijan
Demokrat Firghesi, the Tudeh Party of Iran and the communist parties of
Iraq, Syria and Turkey. In Barzani’s stated programme of liberation, the
sole criterion of inclusion of non-Kurdish forces in the struggle, and hence
of the conditions of its transformation from a Kurdish nationalist party to
an Iranian or regional popular democratic liberation front, was allegiance
to the Soviet Union, its official ideology and global strategy.
Aside from this general requirement, which in effect would have placed
the proposed party in an anti-imperialist alliance led by the Soviet Union,
there is no reason to support Barzani’s argument that the immediate or
long-term interests of the Kurds and the non-Kurdish forces in the struc-
ture of the proposed united front were compatible at all. On the contrary,
the brief history of an earlier attempt to form such a front under Soviet
auspices, that is, the bitter experience of the relationship between the
KDPI and the Azerbaijan Demokrat Firghesi, clearly belied Barzani’s posi-
tion. The conflict of interest and territorial disputes with the Azeri repub-
lic, as I have shown elsewhere in my writings, had effectively prevented the
formation of a united front against the central government in Tehran (Vali
2011). The Azeri quest for regional hegemony and denial of the political
autonomy of Kurdish national rights and identity, actively supported by
the Soviet Union and the Tudeh leadership, seriously weakened the
authority of the Kurdish Republic in the course of the crucial negotiations
for regional autonomy with the Iranian government, thus hastening its
3 THE REVIVAL OF THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT 29
Our party is the defender of the interests of all social classes of the Kurdish
nation. For this reason it encompasses all classes, including landlords, peas-
ants, merchants, workers, intellectuals, small landowners and small crafts-
men [artisans?], and organises them in a united front for the liberation of
the motherland, which is the defender of the interests of all social classes.
Under the leadership of this party, struggle among social classes in Kurdistan
is not permitted. (Ibid., p. 43, my translation)
B RIGHTER and brighter shone the moon, yet it was dark in that great
wood, into which the light could hardly penetrate. Solemn as a
cathedral, too, with far above them the black roof of interlacing pine-
trees.
Only here and there the chequered moonlight streamed downwards on
the soft carpet of needled foliage that lay beneath.
Pathway it could scarce have been called, save for the blazed trees, for
the boy Chops had done his work well, albeit he had wasted the properties.
There were places where the gloom was so complete that Frank Antony had
to feel for Lotty to make sure she was still by his side. And neither seemed
inclined to break the stillness just then.
The owls and other birds of prey were in evidence here, and once when a
pigeon was scared, and flew flapping upwards from its flat nest of heather-
stalks or its perch among the pines, some night-bird struck it speedily down.
No, not an owl; for owls do feed on mice and rats.
Then they came to a glade, and once more the moon shone merrily
above them, and the black shadows of Antony and his companion pointed
northwards and west.
'More than half-way home,' said Lotty.
'A strangely impressive scene,' said Antony.
'Are you very heavy, sir?'
'For my inches I scale a good deal, Lotty.'
'Well, you must walk round by the white stones yonder. All the centre is
a moving bog, you know. It bears my weight and Wallace's easily, and we
like to swing up and down on the turf. You'll see me swing in a minute. But
you might go through, then you would sink down and down and down
among the black slime, and not be seen again, never, never, never!'
'A very pretty prospect indeed, Lotty; but I think I'll go round by the
stones. I have rather an interest in myself.'
Lotty had her swing on the green, moving turf that covered the awful
abyss, and appeared to enjoy it very much; but presently they met again on
the other side. Antony paused for a moment to gaze into the star-depths.
'How beautiful!' he murmured.
'Are you very hungry, sir?' asked matter-of-fact Lotty.
'I could do with a bit of supper, I believe.'
'Because,' said Lotty, 'the light you see up yonder comes from Crona's
cottage. Crona is a witch; but she loves me, and often, when I am hungry,
she gives me milk to drink and sometimes an egg.'
'Well, by all means let us see this witch-friend of yours. Is she very
terrible, Lotty?'
'She has such kindly eyes!' Lotty answered. Then she guided Antony up
to the long, low hut on the cliff.
The girl simply lifted the latch and entered without ceremony. A peat-
fire was burning on a rude stone hearth, and near it sat Crona, warming her
skinny hands. A tame fox by her side yapped and howled, and a huge cat
put up her back. Crona closed the big Bible she had been reading, and laid it
reverently on the window-sill, with her spectacles above it.
'Oh, come your ways in, my bonny Lotty. But wha have you wi' ye? In
sooth, a bonny callant. And, oh me, Lotty, there is something tells your old
mammy this night o' nights that this callant, this bonny English callant,
will'——
She stopped suddenly.
'Forgive an old woman, sir,' she said to Antony, 'who is well-nigh in her
dotage.'
She hastily dusted a chair with her apron, and signed to Antony to sit
down.
The fire threw out a cheerful blaze, quite dimming the light of the wee
oil lamp that hung against the whitewashed wall.
Not very many miles from this same pine-wood is the 'blasted heath' of
Shakespeare; and this old woman, Crona, but for the look of kindness in her
eyes, might well have represented one of the witches in Macbeth. A witch?
Nay; but despite her high cheek-bones and wrinkled face, despite the gray
and elfin locks that escaped from beneath her white 'mutch' or cap, let us
rather call her 'wise woman,' for witches—if there be any such creatures—
never read the Book of Books.
Any age 'twixt seventy and ninety Crona might have been, or even more
than that; but Antony could not help noticing that she herself and all her
surroundings were wonderfully clean, the fireside tidy, and the delf that
stood on shelves or in cupboards shining and spotless. Her clothing,
moreover, was immaculate; and Antony, though a mere man, saw that some
of her garments were silk and almost new, so that they could not have been
cast-offs or misfits from the gentry in the neighbourhood. Indeed, old
though she was, she looked aristocratic enough to have repelled any well-
meant offers of charity.
But humble though the abode, there were several strange, richly inlaid
chests in it, and a cupboard or two in the antique that certainly would have
been valuable to the connoisseur.
Antony loved nature, but he also loved a mystery, and here surely there
was one.
The mystery was deepened when a remark that the young man made, or
a phrase used, in good French led the conversation into that language. But
when Antony made a somewhat awkward attempt to learn something of the
old lady's history she adroitly turned the conversation.
Crona's creamy milk, those new-laid eggs, and the real Scottish scones
with freshest of butter, made a supper that a prince would have enjoyed.
Crona now heaped more logs and peats on the hearth, for in these far
northern regions the early autumn evenings are apt to be chill.
The peats blazed merrily but quietly, the logs flamed and fizzed and
crackled, the jets of blazing gas therefrom lighting up every corner and
cranny of the old-fashioned hut. Fir-logs were they, that had lain buried in
moss or morass for thousands of years—had fallen, in fact, before the
wintry blast ages before painted and club-armed men roamed the forests all
around, fighting single-handed the boars and even bears in which these
woods abounded.
Frank Antony really felt very happy to-night. The scene was quite to his
taste, for he was a somewhat romantic youth, and everything strange and
poetic appealed to him. With Lotty, beaming-eyed and rosy with the fire,
sitting by Crona's knee listening to old-world tales and the crooning of old
ballads, the fox and the cat curled up together in a corner, the curling smoke
and cheerful fire, the young man was fascinated. Had London, he
wondered, with its so-called life and society, anything to beat this?
'Some one's knocking at the door,' said Lotty, whose hearing was more
acute than Crona's.
'It must be Joe,' said Crona. 'Poor Joe, he has been away in the woods all
the evening, and must be damp and cauld!'
Lotty hastened to admit a splendid specimen of the raven—or he would
have been splendid had not his wings and thigh-feathers been so draggled
with dew. He advanced along the floor with a noisy flutter.
'Joe's cold, and Joe's cross,' croaked the bird, giving one impudent glance
upwards at Antony, as much as to say, 'Who on earth are you next?' He was
evidently in a temper. 'Joe's cold, and Joe's cross—cross—cross!' he
shrieked.
Then he vented his passion on the hind-foot of the poor fox, which was
thrust well out from his body. Reynard quietly drew in that leg and showed
his teeth in an angry snarl. But the raven only held his head back, and
laughed an eldritch laugh that rang through the rafters. His next move was
to dislodge the cat and take her place on the top of Tod Lowrie, as the red
fox was called. Joe felt warm there, so he fluffed out his feathers and went
quietly to sleep.
When presently 'a wee tim'rous beastie' in the shape of a black mouse,
with wondering dark eyes nearly as large as boot-buttons, crept from a
corner and sat quietly down with its front to the fire and commenced to
wash its little mite of a face, Frank Antony thought he must be dreaming.
The cat took no notice of Tim (the mouse), and when Lotty bent down and
stroked tiny Tim with the nail of her little finger he really seemed to enjoy
it. Antony was prepared for anything that might happen after this.
When they were out again in the open moonlight, Antony said, 'Do you
often go to Crona's cottage, Lotty?'
'Oh yes, when I can spare time. Crona is a granny to me, and I love her
and Tim and Joe, Pussy, Tod Lowrie, and all.'
'A very happy little natural family.'
They were high on a hill by this time, and far beneath them, near the sea,
its long lines of breakers silvered by the moonbeams, white canvas tents
could be seen, and many moving lights.
'That is our pitch,' said Lotty. 'The big caravan is yours, sir; the little one
not very far off is mine. That long, black, wooden building in the centre is
the theatre and barracks.'
'How droll to have a theatre and barracks in a gipsy camp! I think I've
come to a strange country, Lotty.'
'Oh, you won't be sorry, I'm sure. Father can't thrash you, and Wallace
and myself will look well after you.'
'Thank you, Lotty.'
'I wonder who on earth Wallace is?' he thought.
He did not have long to wonder.
'I'm going to signal for Wallace,' said Lotty.
She stood on the very edge of a rocky precipice that went sheer down to
the green sea-links below, full three hundred feet and over. Close by was the
mark of a former fire.
'I always signal from here,' she said, 'and Wallace always comes. He is
never happy when I am far away, and keeps watching for me.'
It didn't take the little gipsy lass long to scrape dry grass and twigs
together. A leathern pouch hung from her girdle, and from this she
produced a flint and steel, with some touch-paper, and in less than half a
minute the signal-fire was alit.
A most romantic figure the girl presented as she stood there on the cliff,
looking straight out seawards, one hand above her brow to screen her eyes
from the red glare of the flames, her sweet, sad face a picture, with the night
wind blowing back her wealth of soft fair hair and the silken frock from off
her shapely limbs.
It was not the beauty but the sadness of Lotty's face that appealed to
Antony most.
Why sad? That was the mystifying question.
He had taken a strange and indefinable interest in this twelve-year-old
gipsy child. He had come down here to take away the caravan for which he
was to pay a solid five hundred guineas, and had made up his mind to stay
only a few days; but now on the cliff-top here he suddenly resolved that, if
he could be amused, he would remain at the camp for as many weeks. He
had no intention of travelling in the caravan during the wintry months. He
would take the great carriage south by rail, and, starting from Brighton, do a
record journey right away through England and Scotland from sea to sea,
starting when the first green buds were on the trees and the larks carolling
over the rolling downs of Sussex. So now he lay on the grass, waiting, and
wondering who Wallace would be.
Hallo! Lotty has gone bounding past Antony to meet some one, her face
transformed. No sadness now; only daft mirth and merriment, her arms
extended, her curls anyhow all over her face and neck. A scream of delight,
and next moment two very young and beautiful persons are rolling together
on the half-withered grass.
One is Lotty, the other is Wallace her Newfoundland. Jet black is he all
over, like the wings of Crona's raven—jet black, save for the glitter of his
bonny eyes, the pink of his tongue, and alabaster flash of his marvellous
teeth.
. . . . . . .
'See your room first, Mr Blake, and then come in to supper?'
The speaker was Nat Biffins Lee, master and proprietor of what he was
wont to call 'The Queerest Show on Earth,' a broad, square, round-faced,
somewhat burly man, with even teeth and a put-on smile that was seldom
unshipped. Dressed in a loose velveteen jacket, with white waistcoat
(diamond-mounted buttons), with an enormous spread of neck and upper
chest. His loose cravat of green silk was tied in a sailor-knot so far beneath
his fat chin that it seemed to belong more to the vest than to the loose shirt-
collar.
'Here, hurry up, you kinchin, Lot!—Down, Wallace; kennel, sir.' Biffins
cracked a short whip, and Lotty flew to obey.
The look of sadness had returned to her face. Her father's manner
seemed to frighten her. But she tripped like a fairy up the back steps of the
'Gipsy Queen,' and stood waiting him while he entered.
Antony stood for a few moments on the stairtop. He was dazzled,
bewildered. He had never seen so large a caravan, never could have
believed that the interior of a caravan could lend itself to such art-
decorations and beauty. This was no ordinary gipsy wagon, but a splendid
and luxurious home-upon-wheels. The curtains, the hangings, mirrors,
brackets, bookcase with pigmy editions of poetry and romance, the velvet
lounge, the art chairs, the soft carpets, the crimson-shaded electric bulbs
and the fairy lights gleaming up through beds of choice flowers above the
china-cupboard in a recess, all spoke of and breathed refinement.
But no sign of a bedroom, till smiling Lotty stepped forward and touched
a spring; then china-cupboard, with fairy lights and flowers and all, slowly
revolved and disappeared, and, in its place, gauzy silken hangers scarce
concealed the entrance to a pretty cabin bedroom, with curtained window
and white-draped couch which seemed to invite repose. A cosy wee grate in
a brass-protected corner, in which a cosy wee fire was burning, a small
mirrored overmantel—making the room look double the size—table,
looking-glass, books, pipe-rack, wine-cupboard, and a little lamp on
gimbals that was swinging even now, for the wind had commenced to blow
along the links, and the great caravan rocked and swayed like a ship in a
seaway.
There were wild-flowers in vases even here, and a blithe little rose-linnet
in a golden cage; but everything was so arranged that nothing could fall,
rocked and swayed she ever so much.
Frank Antony was more than pleased; he was astonished and delighted.
But who was, or had been, the presiding genius of all this artful beauty and
elegance? Ah! there she stands demurely now, by the saloon cabin, herself
so artless—a baby-woman. He drew her nearer to him to thank her. He
kissed her shapely brown fingers, and he kissed her on the hair.
'Good-night, Lotty. Oh, by the way, Lotty, tell Mr Biffins—tell your
father, I mean—that I am going to bed, too tired to take supper. Good-night,
child.'
Five minutes after, the little brass knocker rattled, and Lotty peeped in
again to say, 'All right about father, sir; and Chops will call for your boots
in the morning.'
Frank Antony switched off the saloon light, and, retiring to his small
cabin, helped himself to a glass of port and a biscuit, and then sat down by
the fire to read.
As he smoked his modest pipe, which soothed his nerves after his long
journey of over seven hundred miles, he felt glad he had not gone in to
supper.
Whether or not love at first sight be possible I cannot say—cannot be
sure; but no doubt we meet people in this world whom, from the very first,
we feel we cannot like. Nat Biffins Lee seemed to be one of these to Frank
Antony, at all events. There was that in his manner which was repellent,
positively or rather negatively repellent. The man was evidently on the best
of terms with himself, but his manners were too much of the circus-master
to please Antony. And the young man was discontented with himself for
feeling as he did.
Yet how could a man like this Biffins possess so gentle and sweet a child
as Lotty for a daughter? It was puzzling. But then, Mrs Biffins Lee, the
girl's mother—well, Lotty might have taken after her.
Perhaps Antony's thoughts were running riot to-night; one's thoughts,
when very tired, are very apt to. He had read a whole page of the little
volume he held in his hand without knowing in the very least what he had
been reading. He shut his eyes now very hard as if to squeeze away
drowsiness, then opened them wide to read the passage over again. It was a
translation from the writings of some ancient Celtic bard which he had got
hold of, strangely wild, almost uncouth, but still it seemed to accord with
the situation, with the boom of the breaking waves and soft rocking of his
home-upon-wheels. It was the lament of Malvina, the daughter of Toscar,
for the death of her lover Oscar:
'It was the voice of my love! Seldom art thou in the dreams of Malvina!
Open your aerie halls, O father of Toscar of Shields! Unfold the gates of
your clouds; the steps of Malvina are near. I have heard a voice in my
dream. I feel the fluttering of my soul. Why didst thou come, O blast, from
the dark rolling face of the lake? Thy rustling wing was in the tree; the
dream of Malvina fled. But she has beheld her love when his robe of mist
flew on the wind. A sunbeam was on his skirts; they glittered like the gold
of a stranger. It was the voice of my love! Seldom comes he to my dreams.
'But thou dwellest in the soul of Malvina, son of mighty Ossian! My
sighs arise with the beam of the east, my tears descend with the drops of
night. I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar, with all my branches round
me; but thy death came like a blast from the desert, and laid my green head
low. The spring returned with its showers; no leaf of mine arose. The
virgins saw me silent in the hall; they touched the harp of joy. The tear was
on the cheek of Malvina; the virgins beheld me in my grief. "Why art thou
sad," they said, "thou first of the maids of Lutha? Was he lovely as the beam
of the morning, and stately in thy sight?"'
. . . . . . .
The 'Gipsy Queen' lay somewhat nearer to the cliffs than the barracks
and the other caravans and tents. She had been placed here probably that
Antony might have quietness.
Tall, rocky cliffs they were that frowned darkling over the northern
ocean—rocks that for thousands of years had borne the brunt of the battle
and the breeze, summer's sun and winter's storm. Hard as adamant were
they, imperishable, for ne'er a stone had they parted with, and the grass
grew up to the very foot.
The 'Gipsy Queen' was anchored fast to the greensward where the sea-
pinks grew, and many a rare little wild-flower. And this sward was hard and
firm, so that though gales might sweep along the links and level the tents it
could only rock and sway the 'Gipsy Queen.'
Silence gradually fell over the encampment. Guys had been slackened
round the tents, for the dews of night and the sea's salt spray would tauten
the canvas long ere morning. The shouting of orders ceased and gave place
to the twanging of harp-strings, the sweet strains of violin music, and voices
raised in song. But these also ceased at last, and after this nothing could be
heard save the occasional sonorous baying of some great hound on watch
and the drowsy roar of the outgoing tide. But soon
The tide
Would sigh farther off,
As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
It occurred to Antony to look out just once before retiring for the night.
So he passed through the saloon and gently opened the door. The white
tents moving in the moonlight, the big black barn of a theatre, the gray,
uncertain sea touched here and there with the sheen of moon and silver
stars. Was that all? No; for not far from his own great caravan was a cosy,
broad-wheeled gipsy-cart, from the wee curtained window of which a
crimson light streamed over the yellow sand.
It must be Lotty's and Wallace's he believed. And there was a sense of
companionship in the very thought that they were so near to him. So
Antony locked his door and retired.
. . . . . . .
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
It is next morning now.
Rat-tat.
H AD Frank Antony Blake not been one of the least inquisitive young
fellows in the world several things connected with Biffins Lee's
Queerest Show on Earth might have struck him as curious. He might
have asked himself why the show should have settled down here, in this
comparatively out-of-the-way part of a wild north coast. He might have
wanted to find out the secret of the merman which Lee advertised so freely
as the only creature of its kind ever captured. Why didn't this business-like
showman journey south with it, or rather him or her, whichever sex the
animal may have represented?
If such questions did present themselves to Antony's mind they were
very speedily dismissed again.
'It is no business of mine,' he told himself. 'I like a little mystery so long
as there is poetry and romance in it, and so long as I am not asked to solve
it. Elucidation is a hateful thing. Let me see now. I used to be good at
transposing letters and turning words into something else. "Elucidation?"
The first two syllables easily make "Euclid," and the last four letters "not I."
There it is: "Elucidation—Euclid. Not I." Suits me all to pieces, for I never
could stand old Euclid, and I was just as determined as any mule not to
cross the pons asinorum' (the bridge of asses).
There was a quiet but heavy footstep on the back stairs, and when
Antony opened the door the beautiful Newfoundland walked solemnly in
and lay down on the saloon carpet.
'Hallo! Wallace, old man, aren't you at rehearsal?'
Wallace never moved, nor did he wag even the tip of his tail; but not for
one moment did he take his wise brown eyes off Antony. The dog was
watching him, studying him, and without doubt trying to get a little insight
into his character. The scrutiny grew almost painful at last, and Antony, to
relieve the intensity of it, went and fetched a milk-biscuit from his little
cupboard.
'Wallace hungry, eh? Poor dog then!'