August 17, 2023 • 45 mins
How can activism play out on the page, as well as on the ground? Can poetry give us a deeper understanding of the horrors of war and genocide? These thought-provoking questions rest at the core of our conversation with Choman Hardi, a respected educator, poet, and scholar hailing from the Kurdistan region of Iraq. We journey through Choman's experiences of displacement and discuss the vital role of poetry in humanizing tragic stories that are often silenced or overlooked. We also explore the struggles, triumphs, and remarkable resilience of Kurdish women navigating through a society marked by patriarchal norms. Choman's writing brings into focus the dynamic women's rights activists in the field and the ongoing legal reforms that are gradually empowering Iraqi women. We revel in the stories of these courageous women, showing us that change, though slow, is indeed possible.
You can find the full, live event with Choman here.
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Episode Transcript
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Marie Berry (00:03):
Music playing.
Welcome to what the World WillBecome, a podcast about the
humans who dedicate their livesto building a more free and just
world.
My name is Marie Berry.
(00:24):
I'm a feminist researcher andwriter, and I've spent the
better part of the past 20 yearsresearching and thinking about
how women experience war and itsaftermath.
I've done research in placeslike Rwanda, bosnia, kenya,
nepal and Colombia, and I'veinterviewed hundreds of women
whose lives have been shaped byviolence.
Along the way, I have beenrepeatedly struck by two
(00:46):
simultaneous truths the first isthat violence is devastating,
leaving those who survive itwith trauma and grief that can
last for years and evengenerations.
But the second is that even inthe most bleak and impossible of
situations, there is often agreat beauty, a way that those
who suffer from violence findlove, joy and resilience that
(01:08):
can creatively forge new pathsforward, paths that offer us
profound hope and possibilityfor building a more just and
free world.
Welcome to this episode of whatthe World Will Become, which
features a live conversationbetween me and Choman Hardy.
Choman is an educator, poet andscholar known for her pioneering
(01:30):
work on issues of gender andeducation in the Kurdistan
region of Iraq and beyond.
After 26 years of living inexile, choman returned home to
Iraq in 2014 to teach Englishand found the Center for Gender
and Development Studies at theAmerican University of Iraq.
Zulamani Choman was also thedriving force behind initiating
(01:52):
the first interdisciplinarygender studies minor in Iraq in
2017, which I think is prettycool.
I met Choman several years agoas part of our work on the
Gender Justice and Security Hub,based at the London School of
Economics, where I wasintroduced to her remarkably
powerful writing and poetry.
The conversation that you areabout to hear was recorded live
(02:13):
in January 2023 in Denver,colorado, while Choman was an
eager practitioner in residenceat the Corbell School.
We focus our conversation onhow activism happens on the page
as well as in the streets.
You can find the link to thefull video of that event in the
episode description.
We will begin the conversationwith Choman reading from one of
(02:34):
her poetry collections.
Choman Hardi (02:37):
Some of the poems I'm going to read is, in
particular, in relation to the1988 genocide.
This was called El Enfal.
It happened between Februaryand September 1988.
I think you probably heardabout the gassing of Halabja.
The gassing of Halabja was aseparate incident because
Halabja was a town of 65,000people.
(02:57):
The Enfal campaign targetedvillages on the borders of
Turkey and Iran because that'swhere the Kurdish revolution was
functioning from.
In a way, the Iraqi governmentdestroyed the base for the
revolution.
In order to defeat therevolution, it targeted six
geographical regions, destroyedmore than 2,000 villages, 281
(03:19):
locations were gassed duringthis campaign, more than 100,000
civilians ended up either inmass graves or casualties of
gassing, bombardment and so on.
The research I did, my post-docresearch about Enfal fieldwork
was done between 2005 and 2010.
(03:39):
The book came out in 2011,.
An academic book GenderedExperiences of Genocide.
Academic books are not read bymany, let's face it, especially
things that have gender orgenocide on them.
I was very keen to sort ofbecause I interviewed many
survivors, men and women, mostlywomen.
I was very keen to get thevoices out.
I decided to write a series ofpoems about them.
(04:03):
This is the second collection,considering the woman from which
I read today.
It has a sequence at the centerof the book, sequence of poems
called Enfal.
It is 13 poems.
It starts and ends with thevoice of the researcher.
My aim was to show those of uswho go and engage in dark, very
dark and tragic fieldwork.
(04:24):
Most of us think that we are upfor it and we can do it and we
can manage it, but we are notprepared for what we learn and
what we find out.
It starts naively, with thevoice of the researcher
innocently thinking she isbulletproof, and it ends with
the voice of the researchercompletely devastated.
In between the two, the storiesof 11 survivors are told.
(04:45):
I was very keen to give notgive voice.
Amplify the voices of thepeople who are telling these
stories.
Because many of these women getinterviewed regularly by
government officials, byjournalists, by researchers, but
their story gets edited andmany aspects of their stories
(05:05):
are just left out.
So when I was interviewing thewoman, many of them kept saying
to me make sure this part of mystory is in your book, Do not
cut it out.
So I tried to do that.
I tried to be as truthful aspossible.
Of course there is a differencebetween facts and poetic truth.
We know that right, it may notbe factually correct but it's
(05:26):
emotionally correct.
Of all the people who have beeninterviewed and sometimes it's
a combination of different womenwho went through the same
experiences.
So this particular one, calledthe gas survivor, is about a
woman who I interviewed who,unfortunately, few years later I
realized she had died and shehad been.
Many survivors of chemicalweapons were severely ill, those
(05:48):
who were very close to the gas,and some of them had repeated
chronic disease and some of themdied of cancer.
So this woman died of theuterus cancer.
The gas survivor.
My body is blooming every night, Leaking flowers.
I turn my mattress into a bedof roses Black, cherry, red,
(06:12):
pink and gold.
By day.
I hand wash the towels, Recallthe stillborn after the gassing.
Who would have thought thatthere were weapons which turn
every part of your body againstyou?
Every bruise, cough or nosebleed, seeming like the final
(06:33):
betrayal.
Weapons that turn you into adespised being in your own
village, no one daring to visityou, thinking you are contagious
.
Weapons that kill you yearsafter being exposed, leaving you
unable to blame anyone for yourdeath.
(06:56):
Another thing about survivorswas the search for closure.
As you know, many other placesin the world where there has
been mass graves and victims maybe returned the corpses, but
they are not identified becauseit's very expensive.
Dna testing is very expensive.
Sometimes the graves are noteven uncovered.
So this poem is about two womenarguing over the remains of a
(07:20):
15-year-old boy, Dispute over amass grave.
The one you have finishedexamining is my son.
That is the milky-coloredKurdish suit his father tailored
for him, the blue shirt hisuncle gave to him.
Your findings prove that it ishim.
He was a tall 15-year-old.
(07:43):
It was left-handed, had brokena rib.
I know she too had been lookingfor her son, but you have to
tell her that this is not him.
Yes, the two of them wereplaymates and fought the year
before, but it was my son whobroke a rib.
Hers only feigned to escapetrouble.
That one is mine.
(08:06):
Please give him back to me.
I will bury him on the verge ofmy garden.
The mulberry tree will offerhim its thick shadow, the
flowers will earnestly guard hisgrave, the hens will peck on
his gravestone and the beehivewill hum above his head.
(08:28):
I shall read one more from this,and this is called Divis Cam,
the woman's prison.
One of the things that I foundwas how political violence and
trauma like that disconnectspeople from the rest of the
community to an extent that eventheir own children cannot
relate to them.
And this powerlessness and thefact that you alone live this
(08:51):
trauma and everybody else asksyou to move on when you cannot
and you find it difficult.
This woman had lost her husbandto the mass grave and she lost
a daughter and a son in prisonbefore the amnesty.
The rest of her childrensurvived.
You do not die, not when youwant to.
Not when you see your stronghusband, the big brother in his
(09:13):
own family, kicked bloody by agroup of men equipped with
loaded guns and hatred.
Not when your beautiful teenagedaughter is handpicked by
soldiers and never comes back.
And for the rest of your lifeyou are left to wonder was she
sold to prostitution?
(09:33):
Does she still live?
Not when your son withers inyour lap and he cries until he
can no more, when the last thinghe asks of you is cucumber and
you give him a green slipper tosuckle on because he's beyond
knowing the difference.
(09:54):
No, not even when the rest ofyour children grow fed up with
your black garments, your secrettears, your headaches.
When you smell cucumber you donot die.
Marie Berry (10:09):
Shaman, thank you for those poems which were, I
mean, gutting and heavy, and Ithink my own.
Hearing you read them I've readyour work, but hearing you read
them out loud is giving me adifferent sense of the stories
behind the words on the page.
(10:30):
And I think just one of my quickreflections after that is so
astounded by the way that I hearthose words and feel the horror
of the violence that so manyexperienced in this region that
you're speaking to, but ofcourse that resonates in far too
(10:53):
many contexts around the world.
But also in the words and thestories that you do tell, the
deep and fierce love, theassociation with the cucumber, I
mean this deep love of a motherto a child that sings through
that horror on the page.
And I just want to perhaps askyou to start us off in this
(11:18):
conversation to talk about whatis the role of poetry and in
your writing, in bringing a morefull, complex humanity, you
know, in terms of understandingfor those of us who are
absorbing and reading this, whatis the role of poetry in
(11:40):
deepening all of ourunderstandings of what it means
to experience the horrors of warand genocide, and how do you
navigate that tension betweenthe horror and the beauty that
is clearly present in so many ofthe stories that you've
captured.
Choman Hardi (12:01):
Well, thank you for that.
I think that's a very importantquestion, because I can't
remember the name, unfortunately, but Holocaust survivor who
said poetry is dead after theHolocaust?
Because you also feel thatthese horrific events, poetry is
a beautiful construction inlanguage and, no matter how
tragic it is, we also stilldrive pleasure from the way the
(12:24):
words are aligned and thestructure of the words and the
sounds and in a way, sometimesyou feel that it's not
appropriate to tell tragedy or agenocide story through poetry,
because it's also an aestheticproduction.
I think poetry can play a veryimportant role in creating
(12:45):
empathy.
I think journalism fails to dothat, history books fail to do
that, judiciary system fails todo that.
People become desensitized tothis overload of information and
numbers and statistics.
I think that why I wrote thissort of sequence.
(13:05):
There's a very good artist, aKurdish artist, called Osman
Ahmad.
He had a series of drawingsabout the Anfal genocide in the
Imperial War Museum in London.
It's one of the best, and thedrawings were.
It was just a pencil drawing ofa figure, a few figures and a
mountain, and then in the nextdrawing the figures were further
(13:27):
away and there were more ofthem and the mountain was still
there.
And then there were more andstill further away, and more and
further away, and at the endthe last drawing was just this
black hole.
And that's what genocidevictims do.
They end up losing theirindividuality.
They become this black hole inour mind.
We forget that they lived, theyhad dreams, they had hopes,
(13:50):
they loved, they desired, theywere angry, they were
disappointed.
So I tried to, through thepoetry, in a way, bring them
back from that black hole ofanonymity, of lack of
individuality, of not having astory, of just being a number in
a genocide campaign.
I wanted to bring back thoseindividuals and give them their
life back, their stories back.
(14:11):
And I also think, you know,sometimes we shun maybe not here
because many people are here,academics working on heavy
things but generally the publicshuns bad news and tragedy and
people want to live.
I understand that people wantto be happy, but they can handle
a story like that throughpoetry.
(14:31):
A few years ago, I think threeyears ago, before the pandemic,
I had a poetry reading in thepublic library in my city.
I was accompanied by music andI decided to read some of my
toughest poems in Kurdish andyou know everybody had turned
out looking very nice and some.
You know, throughout thereading, which lasted about an
hour and a half, sort of,somewhere in the middle, quite a
(14:53):
few people, including some ofthe tough men, were crying and
later they came and said you'veruined the evening for us.
You know, we came for anevening of romantic poetry, but
I think it's our duty as artistsand writers and poets to ruin
this normality, this status quo,which seems to be everything
seems to be okay.
Whenever bad news comes on TV,we change it.
(15:13):
It's our duty to remember, tofeel, to empathize, and I think
poetry is a very good vehiclefor doing that.
Marie Berry (15:21):
I think that's beautifully put.
I, in my own, so much of my ownwork on women and war, there's
been this pattern, whichscholars have called weeping
women ringing hands, that sortof flat depiction of somebody
suffering in a refugee camp, andthat flatness reduces the
complexity, the beauty, thehumanity of these individuals
(15:43):
and of the communities that theycome from and represent, and so
I really admire and appreciatethe kind of the deepening that
happens through your work and Iwant to ask you about.
You know, so much of this isabout the stories that come out,
and I'd love to spend a fewminutes with your story.
Of course, you did mention thatyou are from the region that
(16:05):
experienced the unfalledgenocide and that you, I believe
, left Iraq during the middle ofit, but just a month before it
ended, and then spent many yearsas a refugee both in Iran and
in the United Kingdom, and I'dlove to know, I mean, how that
experience has shaped the workthat you do today and what it
(16:27):
meant to have that sort of earlyexperience of such kind of of
such difficulty and suchdisplacement.
Choman Hardi (16:36):
Thank you.
I actually arrived in my lateteens.
First we went to Iran for fouryears and then I arrived in the
UK in 93.
And you know, I lived in Iranand wore the hijab and studied
in Persian and did the wholething and we had morality
Sisters of Zainab who once toldme up very badly and gave me
(16:57):
very bad grades for my ethicsmarks, which meant that I could
never go to university if Istayed there.
But then when I came, I arrivedin London and I had lost a
couple of years of education andI was a very keen student.
You know, I had always been thetop in my class and to me it
was a disaster that I couldn'tgo to school for a couple of
years.
So when I arrived and didn'tspeak English, I wanted very
(17:21):
much to focus on learningEnglish, catching up with my
education, going to universityand so on, which is what I did.
I did my A-levels and then Iwent and studied philosophy in
Oxford and then I did an MA inphilosophy in UCL and then I got
a scholarship for my PhD genderand migration and so on.
So for those early years when Iwas trying to adapt and trying
(17:44):
to learn the language and tryingto catch up with my education
and trying to settle down.
I completely dissociated frommy background and I felt I just
couldn't cope with it.
The trauma, the tragedy, thestories, the conflicts, the
continuous division, thearguments, heated arguments and
I really just wanted to focus onmoving on.
And I did.
(18:05):
I have a sequence of poems inmy second collection called my
English Years.
Those were years where Icelebrated Christmas and Easter
and did lots of British andEnglish things.
I had an English family at thetime and probably they were the
most productive years of my life.
But you know, homeland is like abeast.
You know it sleeps and thensuddenly it wakes up and it sort
(18:29):
of besorts you, it captures youand calls you back.
And for me, this beast woke upwhen I did my postdoc research
about the genocide survivors,because between 2005 to 2010, I
spent long stretches of time inthese Kurdish villages and towns
and housing complexes where themajority of the survivors live,
(18:50):
many of them in very deprivedcommunities, isolated, living in
poverty, children workingbecause they can't go to school,
they can't afford it, and thoseengagements.
I cried a lot, with everyonewho cried.
I cried and I think many peopletell us that we shouldn't do
that, but I disagree.
I think it's only human torespond to tragedy with emotion
(19:14):
and sensitivity.
But those engagements, myencounter with women activists
who were working on the groundin very difficult circumstances,
and also I delivered a fewworkshops on gender for young
people at the time and this wasa very new topic between 2007
and 2008.
I went to several towns and hadthese discussions and I realized
(19:35):
, just within the space of threehours of working with young
people, some things weredislodged.
You know, it felt like someideas that were completely
foreign were being consideredand to me, I felt that if I
really want to be more effective, I need to go home and I need
to, in particular, engage in theeducation sector and I need to
(19:58):
help develop this alternativediscourse, because one of the
major obstacles to women'srights as we have it back home
is this very conservative,cultural, religious discourse
which sort of portrays women'ssituation and roles and
everything as natural, normal,there's no problem.
If there is a problem, it'snature's fault, it's not our
(20:18):
fault.
And the idea of socialconstruction, of roles and
characteristics and so on wascompletely foreign.
So I really wanted to providethis alternative view of looking
at things.
So I'd been looking atopportunities to move back until
, fortunately, this thing cameup in the American University
and I started teaching there inthe English department.
Marie Berry (20:41):
So you've been back in Iraq now for eight years, is
that right?
So when you did return, can youtell us a little bit about what
you learned, about what womenin particular were experiencing?
I mean, we can kind of makeassumptions and guesses, but
let's hear it from you.
What were the major challengesfacing women, what were some of
the biggest barriers to theirempowerment and leadership and
(21:04):
growth, and in what ways did younotice a need for work towards
those ends?
Choman Hardi (21:11):
So the good thing about the Kurdistan region is
there's been a Kurdistanregional government and
parliament since 1992.
Because, if you remember, afterthe first Gulf War in 1991,
because of fear of chemicalattacks and the mass exodus of
the Kurds at the time I think itwas on TV, some of you may
remember the no-fly zone was setup and this provided the
(21:32):
opportunity to you know, tofound the Kurdish government.
It's a little bit like Scotland.
Within Britain, we have our ownparliament and we have purview
of some of the laws, or somelaws regarding women's rights
have been reformed.
What I saw, even when I wasdoing my research, was very
vibrant women's rights activistswho were working in the field,
(21:55):
providing services, shelters,protection, legal representation
, training for women, skillsdevelopment this kind of area
was working very well and alsocampaigning together.
Initially, the women'sorganizations were divided along
political lines, so it was verydifficult for them to work
together.
But after 10 years into it,these networks of collaboration
(22:18):
started and they pushed forlegal change and they actually
managed to achieve many things.
So we've had 2002, when theprovisions for honour killing
that if a man kills a woman forhonour then he gets a reduced
sentence that was annulled inthe Kurdistan region.
And then there were reforms inthe civil status law.
There was this quota system,you know, for women's
(22:40):
representation in the parliamentand, more importantly, the law
regarding combating violencewithin the family.
That was 2011.
So these changes were veryfantastic.
What was lacking, I thought, wasthe academic side.
So you know, feminism has twowings, right that you have the
theory and research and analysisand that, and you also have the
(23:04):
practical field work of womenhelping other women and
providing shelter and protection.
So I felt that our activistside was very strong.
Our academic side was quiteweak, so I saw it as my role to
sort of try to develop that.
Of course, there was a genderstudies center in another
(23:26):
university.
It's established in 2001, 2011.
I established mine, as youmentioned, in 2015.
But of course, we study inEnglish in the American
university, so we had access toeverything that any other
university has access to.
But I was very keen to makesure that the public
universities that may want toteach gender studies have
(23:49):
resources in Kurdish and Arabic.
So we were fortunate to securefunding from the European Union
and then we translated four UGcourses with online training for
professors who may want toteach them.
But, of course, all theseachievements come also with
risks and dangers, and one ofthe problems with this has been
the backlash that we experience.
(24:09):
So every change comes withresistance and that the backlash
has seen many forms.
So, for example, the rise inviolence against women, and many
conservative men blame thewomen's movement and they say
women in the past used to accepttheir situation, be good wives
and even if they were abused,they made the best of it and
they raised their families andthey were silent and good women.
(24:33):
You know God-fearing women.
And now, because you say thatthey have this and that right,
they want divorce and they fightand they complain to the court
and these are private matters.
That shouldn't be and divorceis not right, and so on.
So, in a way, women who havebecome more aware of their
rights and have asked for theirrights are facing more violence.
(24:55):
So that's one of the forms.
If you see the data from thedirectorates of combating
violence against women, honorkilling has decreased because of
the legal changes, but suicidehas gone up, domestic violence
has gone up, sexual harassmenthas gone up.
So sometimes people believethat men who now know that
killing a woman may end up inprison.
They make her life hell so thatshe kills herself.
(25:17):
So they find ways to deal withthat.
The other backlash is the men'srights movements.
Now we have men's rightsorganizations who claim that now
women are oppressing them andthey're the victims and they're
the providers and they have alot of pressure.
And the third backlash has beenthrough a lot of defamation
campaigns and smear campaignsagainst activists to erode
(25:40):
community trust in our work andto basically discredit us and
sometimes to intimidate us toleave and be silenced and, hand
in hand, it's a very difficultsituation.
At times.
There have been women who hadto fled because of their work.
There have been women who havegiven up working in the field
(26:01):
because their families have putpressure on them to stop and
it's not.
You know, there's alwaysmovement and sometimes pushback
and even with the legal changes,implementation has been
problematic.
So theoretically the law haschanged but in practice the
courts and the trials getinfluenced and sometimes you
(26:21):
know patriarch values in thejudiciary system.
Or even you know you have thequota system in order to
represent women.
But the political partiesusually nominate women who are
loyal to the party.
They're not necessarilyfeminists or capable of
achieving women's rights.
They mostly come fromwell-connected tribal or
political families.
Some of them have done verywell, but many have been seen as
(26:45):
ineffective.
But even you know, theyestablished gender studies.
There was a decree from theMinistry of Higher Education in
the Kurdistan region and now wehave 30 gender studies centers,
which is fantastic.
But these people who've becomedirectors of these centers do
not have a background in thearea, they do not have any
training, they do not have anyresources.
So they've sort of been giventhis title and left alone to
(27:08):
deal with a situation withoutany support.
So in a way, systems do that,don't they?
They want to appear to be openand democratic and progressive,
but in practice they don'treally provide the support to
make it a meaningful change.
Marie Berry (27:22):
I mean what you just described about the
progress that gets made and thelaws that get passed and the
powerful and strong people thatthen end up asserting those
rights, and then that kind ofmeeting that with backlash, with
violence, with new kind of aresurgence of patriarchal
backlash, as people have said,is a story that stretches so
(27:46):
much further than the contextyou're speaking about.
I mean, this is a global trendthat we're seeing in so many
ways and I'm curious if youcould think about where the
movement is that you're a partof and that you're a leader in
Iraq and in Kurdistan.
Where does that movement havesynergies and similarities with
(28:07):
similar kind of feminist andgender sensitive movements
around the world?
Choman Hardi (28:12):
So if we just even compare it with Kurdish
women's movements in othercountries, like in Iran and
Turkey and Syria, there's a hugedifference and we are worse off
than many other places, eventhough we are the only place
where we have our own parliament, a Kurdish parliament and
government.
We are in many ways worse, forexample, the Kurds in Turkey and
(28:33):
the Kurds in Syria.
You've heard about the womenfighters in Rojava, northeast
Syria the Kurdish women.
The army was established in2012 to fight ISIS.
A third of the army is women,so there are women's battalions
and women's units.
It's called women's protectionunits, sharvan in Kurdish, and
(28:54):
how it's worked in the Kurdishcommunity in Syria, in Rojava,
is the women's struggle, or thestruggle for women's rights, is
very closely integrated into theright of ethnic rights and
class issues.
All of it is integratedtogether and I think, because
(29:15):
the revolution or the uprisinghas integrated social justice
and, in particular, women'srights, it has become more
vibrant.
It has become much stronger,because imagine if half of the
population are not part of it.
You know their creativity andpower and energy is missing, but
they have also been able tomake big strides, take big
strides in achieving, like youknow, the cantons that were
(29:38):
established in northeast Syria,the Kurdish cantons.
They had a constitution.
They had the institutions to gowith it.
It was direct democracy.
So, for example, the Kurds inIraq still see an independent
state for Kurdistan as thesolution, whereas the Kurds in
Syria and Kurds in Turkey thinkthat nation state is part of the
problem because it's thebackbone of patriarchy and
(30:00):
capitalism.
What they have tried toestablish is direct democracy.
You know democraticconfederalism and what they do
is you have these councils andneighborhoods who are sort of
they are managing themselves,they are making decisions
together.
It's they call it democracywithout a state, and it has been
probably one of the few placesin the world where this has been
(30:21):
tried out and it's been anamazing experiment.
Unfortunately threatened byTurkish attacks from 2019.
And we worry that it may besnubbed at all together.
That's an example of how.
What is a revolutionary?
I mean, I kept asking myselfthis when I was researching
about the Kurdish Revolution inIraq, because what they did was
(30:43):
our leaders, who were all men.
They were fighting againstdictatorship, right, but they
did not integrate women's rightsor other groups, minorities,
rights into it Because theyactually, for their survival,
they depended on the tribalstructure and village community
and religious leaders, andbecause of that they were
(31:05):
continuously trying to pleasethem and in that process,
sacrificing women's rights.
And women who were part of therevolution were regularly told
let us gain independence or letus obtain freedom and liberation
, and then men and women will beequal.
But we know from history thisis from Algeria, all the other
countries in the region If youdo not integrate women's rights
(31:28):
into a revolution, you cannot doit later.
So in Iran we see a similarthing, where women are leading.
In fact, there was a fantasticslogan a couple of months ago.
A young man had written on thewall if you are a man, be a
woman.
So generally when in Kurdish wesay to each other be a man,
similar to English right.
(31:49):
So be decisive, be powerful, bestep up to responsibility.
But because women are leading,be brave like women, be leader
like women, be strong like women.
So many of these stereotypesare changing through the
revolution with the integrationof women's rights, whereas I
think that Iraqi Kurdishleadership was much more
conservative and, as a result ofthat, the steps we have taken
(32:12):
have been jeopardized on everyof the ground.
Marie Berry (32:17):
What has been the effect, then, of this uprising
in Iran and the kind ofresurgence of this appreciation
for women's leadership in thisway?
What has that meant in yourarea, in your region?
Has it changed things?
Choman Hardi (32:31):
So for us in the women's movement it has created
a lot of hope and, of course, wehave a lot of solidarity and we
were campaigning.
We created a group immediately.
We organized a couple ofdemonstrations, individuals
Facebook page quickly to sharethe stories and give it voice
and amplify the voices.
And the problem is, just aswe're excited about these
(32:52):
changes and how it will affectour region, the conservative
sides are panicking about thesechanges and they have become
quite aggressive in fightingwomen back.
So at this moment, actually inIraqi Kurdistan, we're
experiencing a major backlashfrom the very conservative
religious groups and radicalizedgroups that see if Iran
(33:16):
collapses, they see that as athreat to their power in the
region and they are very firmlytrying to establish their power
by attacking women and otherminorities' rights.
And unfortunately, becauseelections are close in eight
months' time, the Kurdishauthorities are trying to please
them because they don't want tolose votes and so on.
(33:38):
So it's a very complexsituation.
Again, we as women in theregion feel that we're being
compromised, but it's a veryinteresting place, this place.
It's full of radical changesthat happen overnight and we try
to remind each other.
This is not the end, but it is,at this moment, a very
depressing moment, because wefeel that once again, very
(33:59):
conservative voices are risingand the political parties are
trying to please them, and againbypassing women's rights and
ignoring the achievements.
Marie Berry (34:08):
So it strikes me that this is the moment, then,
in which a multifaceted,multi-pronged approach to
thinking about social change isnot only a good idea, but is
just desperately important.
And I'm curious, then, for youpersonally, how do you go about
your work and your activism in acontext in which the stakes are
(34:30):
high, the backlash is real, theconditions are difficult, and
you have been pushing forward avery brave, a very important, a
very powerful agenda now for along time.
What is, how do you do thatwork and what is your strategy?
Choman Hardi (34:45):
Well, thank you.
I think the word that youmentioned, multifaceted, is
essential.
I think we cannot just fightpatriarchy through academia and
activism.
It's not gonna happen.
We really need to engage allthe tools that we have, and I
think arts have been a very goodtool.
I think what the arts can do isbecause, I mean, feminists have
long argued, haven't they?
(35:05):
We cannot be what we cannot see.
Right, if you don't see a womanin power, you don't think woman
can be in power.
But arts can imagine adifferent reality, challenge the
status quo, make the inequalityand injustice visible, create
empathy for the oppressions thatwe usually just shy away from,
(35:27):
but also to imagine a differentworld, an alternative world
where things would be different.
And I think, if we can justimagine that, yeah.
We can also work for it.
So one of the things I havebeen trying to do is maybe
working in an Americanuniversity and pushing for
gender studies and providingtraining and doing research and
(35:49):
getting funding isconfrontational.
Maybe alongside that, we alsoneed to engage.
Artists and activists are alsobeing attacked a lot, so how can
we find new ways of?
Sometimes a song plays a veryimportant role, right?
A poem can do that, a novel, aninstallation, any of these
(36:09):
things.
So one of my own projectsrecently I have just I'm working
on establishing well, I've gotlicense for it spectra for
creativity and development.
So we're hoping to have anartist in residence space and a
space for a woman's rest andarchive, because in our
community in particular,housewives never have a day off.
So men go on holiday, men go toparks, men go to swimming pool,
(36:31):
to the tea house, to the mosque, they go to private gardens,
they drink, but women, even whenthey go visit someone else,
they end up washing the dishesand they always have childcare.
So the idea was it also camefrom.
You know, with research, youknow we go and interview people,
we go to them, we disrupt theirlife, we interview them and we
(36:52):
leave and it sort of sometimesfeels like theft right, and I've
had women telling me I'd rathernot talk.
I'm planting cucumbers.
Can you leave me alone please?
I'd rather not retraumatizemyself.
You're gonna leave, you'regonna turn off your recorder and
I'm left alone to deal withthese feelings.
Who's gonna help me?
And I have struggled with theseideas.
(37:12):
Yes, we need to have thesestories documented, but at what
cost?
So the idea is if we can bringsmall groups of women, in
particular housewives.
I think one of the problems ofthe woman's movement in our area
is that it's very middle class.
It's usually graduates.
Their life is very differentfrom the ordinary woman on the
ground who are, you know, maybedidn't complete their education
(37:36):
housewives and their experienceof patriarchy, how they cope,
what are their strategies, howthey have they survived, what
networks have they formed it'ssomething that we don't really
understand well and I think ifwe really need to, if we want to
understand patriarchy, we needto understand those groups
experiences.
So the idea is to bring smallgroups of women for a few days
(37:57):
for rest.
Their children will be safe andlooked after and, if they agree
at the end of their stay, maybewe can record their story.
So in a way, they get somethingback and they give by choice.
So this is the idea, and I amthinking this is less
confrontational, but it alsogives us the grounds, the
knowledge and the data that weneed in order to really
(38:19):
understand what patriarchy doesto women and how we can
challenge it.
Marie Berry (38:23):
I love that and my students will have heard me, you
know, herald the Adron MarieBrown's phrase that small is all
as kind of the real bedrock ofsocial change, and what you just
described to me sounds likethat, right, it's not a
revolution that topplessomething, but it's in a home
(38:45):
and it's in a place, and it's inpeople and it's in a
relationship that one builds andit's in a prioritization of
rest, right, which is a radicalidea in a world consumed with
exhaustion and productivity andall of that all the time, right.
So I think that's such abeautiful component of your
activism and I wanna just whatis your lesson, what walks and
(39:11):
travels from what you justshared with us, right, what is?
How do we, as people that careabout building a world that is
more free for more people, howdo we go about doing that?
And what is your experiencekind of in your context and in
your place?
What lessons perhaps would youoffer those of us who are
invested in this work whereveroppression exists around the
(39:34):
globe?
Choman Hardi (39:36):
First of all, I think you, you know, sometimes
we tend to research communitiesthat we don't know very well and
sometimes we don't know thenuanced.
You know where the borders are,where the red lines are, where
I think it's very important toknow the community we work in
and work very sensitively, and Ihad for a long time, you know
(39:57):
they have been there, have beenmany people who sort of closely
have been watching my work andtrying to find faults with it,
trying.
You know, feminists are usuallyportrayed as anti-religion,
anti-god, anti-family, anti-men,all these things despite the
fact that many of us are married, right, and many of us actually
(40:18):
have children and we love ourfamilies and quite a few of the
women, for example, who work inthe field, are religious.
But these ideas of You'reradical, radical, radical.
So it is sometimes about bitingyour tongue, hanging in there,
continuing the conversation withthose who are willing to talk,
(40:38):
those who obviously their mindsare made up.
But sometimes I've found that,even in class, with students who
say the most clumsy things, Ijust need to bite my tongue,
have more patience, provide moreexamples for the next class,
continue the conversation,continue pursuing that and I
think for us, I find that veryconservative people and radical
(41:01):
people are very good at workingtogether.
We're not very good at workingtogether.
I don't know why women aredivided along lines of class and
education and ethnicity andrace and religion and politics
and all of that.
If we could just work together.
I know we've said that manytimes before, but I see it, I
see in our surrounding.
(41:22):
Every time something hashappened it's because the women
from the different sides havecome together and pushed
together the different leadersfrom the different sides.
But I really don't know.
I think I feel that I'mcontinuously learning still,
that I'm still a student here.
I do feel like an impostersometimes.
I sometimes walk into aminefield, I think I know
(41:46):
something and suddenly somebodysays something and I'm
completely like whoof.
I've never thought about that.
Give me a few days and let methink about it.
And to be open to be challenged, to be open to learn, to be
open to be corrected.
Even if your pride doesn'tallow you at that moment, maybe
think about it later.
And I do that a lot.
I do a lot of self-reflection,a lot of self-criticism.
(42:09):
Many times when somethingexplodes, I always ask what
could I have done differently?
Of course, there are times whenit's not about you.
You haven't done anything, butit's a good process to do anyway
.
To just say, if I was to dothis again, how could I do it?
And I also have this habit ofalways, before I publish
(42:30):
anything or before I make adecision about anything, I talk
to many people, many people whothink very differently from me,
and I want to understand it fromas many dimensions as possible,
then finish this article ormake that decision or whatever.
Sometimes that means beingindecisive, but I'd rather that
than making decisions quicklyand then making huge mistakes.
(42:51):
I don't know if that's helpful.
These are things that I amdoing myself.
Marie Berry (42:57):
No, I think it's helpful for all of us and a lot
of that resonates very much.
Music playing.
Welcome to what the World WillBecome, a podcast about the
humans who dedicate their livesto building a more free and just
world.
My name is Marie Berry.
(00:24):
I'm a feminist researcher andwriter, and I've spent the
better part of the past 20 yearsresearching and thinking about
how women experience war and itsaftermath.
I've done research in placeslike Rwanda, bosnia, kenya,
nepal and Colombia, and I'veinterviewed hundreds of women
whose lives have been shaped byviolence.
Along the way, I have beenrepeatedly struck by two
(00:46):
simultaneous truths the first isthat violence is devastating,
leaving those who survive itwith trauma and grief that can
last for years and evengenerations.
But the second is that even inthe most bleak and impossible of
situations, there is often agreat beauty, a way that those
who suffer from violence findlove, joy and resilience that
(01:08):
can creatively forge new pathsforward, paths that offer us
profound hope and possibilityfor building a more just and
free world.
Welcome to this episode of whatthe World Will Become, which
features a live conversationbetween me and Choman Hardy.
Choman is an educator, poet andscholar known for her pioneering
(01:30):
work on issues of gender andeducation in the Kurdistan
region of Iraq and beyond.
After 26 years of living inexile, choman returned home to
Iraq in 2014 to teach Englishand found the Center for Gender
and Development Studies at theAmerican University of Iraq.
Zulamani Choman was also thedriving force behind initiating
(01:52):
the first interdisciplinarygender studies minor in Iraq in
2017, which I think is prettycool.
I met Choman several years agoas part of our work on the
Gender Justice and Security Hub,based at the London School of
Economics, where I wasintroduced to her remarkably
powerful writing and poetry.
The conversation that you areabout to hear was recorded live
(02:13):
in January 2023 in Denver,colorado, while Choman was an
eager practitioner in residenceat the Corbell School.
We focus our conversation onhow activism happens on the page
as well as in the streets.
You can find the link to thefull video of that event in the
episode description.
We will begin the conversationwith Choman reading from one of
(02:34):
her poetry collections.
Choman Hardi (02:37):
Some of the poems I'm going to read is, in
particular, in relation to the1988 genocide.
This was called El Enfal.
It happened between Februaryand September 1988.
I think you probably heardabout the gassing of Halabja.
The gassing of Halabja was aseparate incident because
Halabja was a town of 65,000people.
(02:57):
The Enfal campaign targetedvillages on the borders of
Turkey and Iran because that'swhere the Kurdish revolution was
functioning from.
In a way, the Iraqi governmentdestroyed the base for the
revolution.
In order to defeat therevolution, it targeted six
geographical regions, destroyedmore than 2,000 villages, 281
(03:19):
locations were gassed duringthis campaign, more than 100,000
civilians ended up either inmass graves or casualties of
gassing, bombardment and so on.
The research I did, my post-docresearch about Enfal fieldwork
was done between 2005 and 2010.
(03:39):
The book came out in 2011,.
An academic book GenderedExperiences of Genocide.
Academic books are not read bymany, let's face it, especially
things that have gender orgenocide on them.
I was very keen to sort ofbecause I interviewed many
survivors, men and women, mostlywomen.
I was very keen to get thevoices out.
I decided to write a series ofpoems about them.
(04:03):
This is the second collection,considering the woman from which
I read today.
It has a sequence at the centerof the book, sequence of poems
called Enfal.
It is 13 poems.
It starts and ends with thevoice of the researcher.
My aim was to show those of uswho go and engage in dark, very
dark and tragic fieldwork.
(04:24):
Most of us think that we are upfor it and we can do it and we
can manage it, but we are notprepared for what we learn and
what we find out.
It starts naively, with thevoice of the researcher
innocently thinking she isbulletproof, and it ends with
the voice of the researchercompletely devastated.
In between the two, the storiesof 11 survivors are told.
(04:45):
I was very keen to give notgive voice.
Amplify the voices of thepeople who are telling these
stories.
Because many of these women getinterviewed regularly by
government officials, byjournalists, by researchers, but
their story gets edited andmany aspects of their stories
(05:05):
are just left out.
So when I was interviewing thewoman, many of them kept saying
to me make sure this part of mystory is in your book, Do not
cut it out.
So I tried to do that.
I tried to be as truthful aspossible.
Of course there is a differencebetween facts and poetic truth.
We know that right, it may notbe factually correct but it's
(05:26):
emotionally correct.
Of all the people who have beeninterviewed and sometimes it's
a combination of different womenwho went through the same
experiences.
So this particular one, calledthe gas survivor, is about a
woman who I interviewed who,unfortunately, few years later I
realized she had died and shehad been.
Many survivors of chemicalweapons were severely ill, those
(05:48):
who were very close to the gas,and some of them had repeated
chronic disease and some of themdied of cancer.
So this woman died of theuterus cancer.
The gas survivor.
My body is blooming every night, Leaking flowers.
I turn my mattress into a bedof roses Black, cherry, red,
(06:12):
pink and gold.
By day.
I hand wash the towels, Recallthe stillborn after the gassing.
Who would have thought thatthere were weapons which turn
every part of your body againstyou?
Every bruise, cough or nosebleed, seeming like the final
(06:33):
betrayal.
Weapons that turn you into adespised being in your own
village, no one daring to visityou, thinking you are contagious
.
Weapons that kill you yearsafter being exposed, leaving you
unable to blame anyone for yourdeath.
(06:56):
Another thing about survivorswas the search for closure.
As you know, many other placesin the world where there has
been mass graves and victims maybe returned the corpses, but
they are not identified becauseit's very expensive.
Dna testing is very expensive.
Sometimes the graves are noteven uncovered.
So this poem is about two womenarguing over the remains of a
(07:20):
15-year-old boy, Dispute over amass grave.
The one you have finishedexamining is my son.
That is the milky-coloredKurdish suit his father tailored
for him, the blue shirt hisuncle gave to him.
Your findings prove that it ishim.
He was a tall 15-year-old.
(07:43):
It was left-handed, had brokena rib.
I know she too had been lookingfor her son, but you have to
tell her that this is not him.
Yes, the two of them wereplaymates and fought the year
before, but it was my son whobroke a rib.
Hers only feigned to escapetrouble.
That one is mine.
(08:06):
Please give him back to me.
I will bury him on the verge ofmy garden.
The mulberry tree will offerhim its thick shadow, the
flowers will earnestly guard hisgrave, the hens will peck on
his gravestone and the beehivewill hum above his head.
(08:28):
I shall read one more from this,and this is called Divis Cam,
the woman's prison.
One of the things that I foundwas how political violence and
trauma like that disconnectspeople from the rest of the
community to an extent that eventheir own children cannot
relate to them.
And this powerlessness and thefact that you alone live this
(08:51):
trauma and everybody else asksyou to move on when you cannot
and you find it difficult.
This woman had lost her husbandto the mass grave and she lost
a daughter and a son in prisonbefore the amnesty.
The rest of her childrensurvived.
You do not die, not when youwant to.
Not when you see your stronghusband, the big brother in his
(09:13):
own family, kicked bloody by agroup of men equipped with
loaded guns and hatred.
Not when your beautiful teenagedaughter is handpicked by
soldiers and never comes back.
And for the rest of your lifeyou are left to wonder was she
sold to prostitution?
(09:33):
Does she still live?
Not when your son withers inyour lap and he cries until he
can no more, when the last thinghe asks of you is cucumber and
you give him a green slipper tosuckle on because he's beyond
knowing the difference.
(09:54):
No, not even when the rest ofyour children grow fed up with
your black garments, your secrettears, your headaches.
When you smell cucumber you donot die.
Marie Berry (10:09):
Shaman, thank you for those poems which were, I
mean, gutting and heavy, and Ithink my own.
Hearing you read them I've readyour work, but hearing you read
them out loud is giving me adifferent sense of the stories
behind the words on the page.
(10:30):
And I think just one of my quickreflections after that is so
astounded by the way that I hearthose words and feel the horror
of the violence that so manyexperienced in this region that
you're speaking to, but ofcourse that resonates in far too
(10:53):
many contexts around the world.
But also in the words and thestories that you do tell, the
deep and fierce love, theassociation with the cucumber, I
mean this deep love of a motherto a child that sings through
that horror on the page.
And I just want to perhaps askyou to start us off in this
(11:18):
conversation to talk about whatis the role of poetry and in
your writing, in bringing a morefull, complex humanity, you
know, in terms of understandingfor those of us who are
absorbing and reading this, whatis the role of poetry in
(11:40):
deepening all of ourunderstandings of what it means
to experience the horrors of warand genocide, and how do you
navigate that tension betweenthe horror and the beauty that
is clearly present in so many ofthe stories that you've
captured.
Choman Hardi (12:01):
Well, thank you for that.
I think that's a very importantquestion, because I can't
remember the name, unfortunately, but Holocaust survivor who
said poetry is dead after theHolocaust?
Because you also feel thatthese horrific events, poetry is
a beautiful construction inlanguage and, no matter how
tragic it is, we also stilldrive pleasure from the way the
(12:24):
words are aligned and thestructure of the words and the
sounds and in a way, sometimesyou feel that it's not
appropriate to tell tragedy or agenocide story through poetry,
because it's also an aestheticproduction.
I think poetry can play a veryimportant role in creating
(12:45):
empathy.
I think journalism fails to dothat, history books fail to do
that, judiciary system fails todo that.
People become desensitized tothis overload of information and
numbers and statistics.
I think that why I wrote thissort of sequence.
(13:05):
There's a very good artist, aKurdish artist, called Osman
Ahmad.
He had a series of drawingsabout the Anfal genocide in the
Imperial War Museum in London.
It's one of the best, and thedrawings were.
It was just a pencil drawing ofa figure, a few figures and a
mountain, and then in the nextdrawing the figures were further
(13:27):
away and there were more ofthem and the mountain was still
there.
And then there were more andstill further away, and more and
further away, and at the endthe last drawing was just this
black hole.
And that's what genocidevictims do.
They end up losing theirindividuality.
They become this black hole inour mind.
We forget that they lived, theyhad dreams, they had hopes,
(13:50):
they loved, they desired, theywere angry, they were
disappointed.
So I tried to, through thepoetry, in a way, bring them
back from that black hole ofanonymity, of lack of
individuality, of not having astory, of just being a number in
a genocide campaign.
I wanted to bring back thoseindividuals and give them their
life back, their stories back.
(14:11):
And I also think, you know,sometimes we shun maybe not here
because many people are here,academics working on heavy
things but generally the publicshuns bad news and tragedy and
people want to live.
I understand that people wantto be happy, but they can handle
a story like that throughpoetry.
(14:31):
A few years ago, I think threeyears ago, before the pandemic,
I had a poetry reading in thepublic library in my city.
I was accompanied by music andI decided to read some of my
toughest poems in Kurdish andyou know everybody had turned
out looking very nice and some.
You know, throughout thereading, which lasted about an
hour and a half, sort of,somewhere in the middle, quite a
(14:53):
few people, including some ofthe tough men, were crying and
later they came and said you'veruined the evening for us.
You know, we came for anevening of romantic poetry, but
I think it's our duty as artistsand writers and poets to ruin
this normality, this status quo,which seems to be everything
seems to be okay.
Whenever bad news comes on TV,we change it.
(15:13):
It's our duty to remember, tofeel, to empathize, and I think
poetry is a very good vehiclefor doing that.
Marie Berry (15:21):
I think that's beautifully put.
I, in my own, so much of my ownwork on women and war, there's
been this pattern, whichscholars have called weeping
women ringing hands, that sortof flat depiction of somebody
suffering in a refugee camp, andthat flatness reduces the
complexity, the beauty, thehumanity of these individuals
(15:43):
and of the communities that theycome from and represent, and so
I really admire and appreciatethe kind of the deepening that
happens through your work and Iwant to ask you about.
You know, so much of this isabout the stories that come out,
and I'd love to spend a fewminutes with your story.
Of course, you did mention thatyou are from the region that
(16:05):
experienced the unfalledgenocide and that you, I believe
, left Iraq during the middle ofit, but just a month before it
ended, and then spent many yearsas a refugee both in Iran and
in the United Kingdom, and I'dlove to know, I mean, how that
experience has shaped the workthat you do today and what it
(16:27):
meant to have that sort of earlyexperience of such kind of of
such difficulty and suchdisplacement.
Choman Hardi (16:36):
Thank you.
I actually arrived in my lateteens.
First we went to Iran for fouryears and then I arrived in the
UK in 93.
And you know, I lived in Iranand wore the hijab and studied
in Persian and did the wholething and we had morality
Sisters of Zainab who once toldme up very badly and gave me
(16:57):
very bad grades for my ethicsmarks, which meant that I could
never go to university if Istayed there.
But then when I came, I arrivedin London and I had lost a
couple of years of education andI was a very keen student.
You know, I had always been thetop in my class and to me it
was a disaster that I couldn'tgo to school for a couple of
years.
So when I arrived and didn'tspeak English, I wanted very
(17:21):
much to focus on learningEnglish, catching up with my
education, going to universityand so on, which is what I did.
I did my A-levels and then Iwent and studied philosophy in
Oxford and then I did an MA inphilosophy in UCL and then I got
a scholarship for my PhD genderand migration and so on.
So for those early years when Iwas trying to adapt and trying
(17:44):
to learn the language and tryingto catch up with my education
and trying to settle down.
I completely dissociated frommy background and I felt I just
couldn't cope with it.
The trauma, the tragedy, thestories, the conflicts, the
continuous division, thearguments, heated arguments and
I really just wanted to focus onmoving on.
And I did.
(18:05):
I have a sequence of poems inmy second collection called my
English Years.
Those were years where Icelebrated Christmas and Easter
and did lots of British andEnglish things.
I had an English family at thetime and probably they were the
most productive years of my life.
But you know, homeland is like abeast.
You know it sleeps and thensuddenly it wakes up and it sort
(18:29):
of besorts you, it captures youand calls you back.
And for me, this beast woke upwhen I did my postdoc research
about the genocide survivors,because between 2005 to 2010, I
spent long stretches of time inthese Kurdish villages and towns
and housing complexes where themajority of the survivors live,
(18:50):
many of them in very deprivedcommunities, isolated, living in
poverty, children workingbecause they can't go to school,
they can't afford it, and thoseengagements.
I cried a lot, with everyonewho cried.
I cried and I think many peopletell us that we shouldn't do
that, but I disagree.
I think it's only human torespond to tragedy with emotion
(19:14):
and sensitivity.
But those engagements, myencounter with women activists
who were working on the groundin very difficult circumstances,
and also I delivered a fewworkshops on gender for young
people at the time and this wasa very new topic between 2007
and 2008.
I went to several towns and hadthese discussions and I realized
(19:35):
, just within the space of threehours of working with young
people, some things weredislodged.
You know, it felt like someideas that were completely
foreign were being consideredand to me, I felt that if I
really want to be more effective, I need to go home and I need
to, in particular, engage in theeducation sector and I need to
(19:58):
help develop this alternativediscourse, because one of the
major obstacles to women'srights as we have it back home
is this very conservative,cultural, religious discourse
which sort of portrays women'ssituation and roles and
everything as natural, normal,there's no problem.
If there is a problem, it'snature's fault, it's not our
(20:18):
fault.
And the idea of socialconstruction, of roles and
characteristics and so on wascompletely foreign.
So I really wanted to providethis alternative view of looking
at things.
So I'd been looking atopportunities to move back until
, fortunately, this thing cameup in the American University
and I started teaching there inthe English department.
Marie Berry (20:41):
So you've been back in Iraq now for eight years, is
that right?
So when you did return, can youtell us a little bit about what
you learned, about what womenin particular were experiencing?
I mean, we can kind of makeassumptions and guesses, but
let's hear it from you.
What were the major challengesfacing women, what were some of
the biggest barriers to theirempowerment and leadership and
(21:04):
growth, and in what ways did younotice a need for work towards
those ends?
Choman Hardi (21:11):
So the good thing about the Kurdistan region is
there's been a Kurdistanregional government and
parliament since 1992.
Because, if you remember, afterthe first Gulf War in 1991,
because of fear of chemicalattacks and the mass exodus of
the Kurds at the time I think itwas on TV, some of you may
remember the no-fly zone was setup and this provided the
(21:32):
opportunity to you know, tofound the Kurdish government.
It's a little bit like Scotland.
Within Britain, we have our ownparliament and we have purview
of some of the laws, or somelaws regarding women's rights
have been reformed.
What I saw, even when I wasdoing my research, was very
vibrant women's rights activistswho were working in the field,
(21:55):
providing services, shelters,protection, legal representation
, training for women, skillsdevelopment this kind of area
was working very well and alsocampaigning together.
Initially, the women'sorganizations were divided along
political lines, so it was verydifficult for them to work
together.
But after 10 years into it,these networks of collaboration
(22:18):
started and they pushed forlegal change and they actually
managed to achieve many things.
So we've had 2002, when theprovisions for honour killing
that if a man kills a woman forhonour then he gets a reduced
sentence that was annulled inthe Kurdistan region.
And then there were reforms inthe civil status law.
There was this quota system,you know, for women's
(22:40):
representation in the parliamentand, more importantly, the law
regarding combating violencewithin the family.
That was 2011.
So these changes were veryfantastic.
What was lacking, I thought, wasthe academic side.
So you know, feminism has twowings, right that you have the
theory and research and analysisand that, and you also have the
(23:04):
practical field work of womenhelping other women and
providing shelter and protection.
So I felt that our activistside was very strong.
Our academic side was quiteweak, so I saw it as my role to
sort of try to develop that.
Of course, there was a genderstudies center in another
(23:26):
university.
It's established in 2001, 2011.
I established mine, as youmentioned, in 2015.
But of course, we study inEnglish in the American
university, so we had access toeverything that any other
university has access to.
But I was very keen to makesure that the public
universities that may want toteach gender studies have
(23:49):
resources in Kurdish and Arabic.
So we were fortunate to securefunding from the European Union
and then we translated four UGcourses with online training for
professors who may want toteach them.
But, of course, all theseachievements come also with
risks and dangers, and one ofthe problems with this has been
the backlash that we experience.
(24:09):
So every change comes withresistance and that the backlash
has seen many forms.
So, for example, the rise inviolence against women, and many
conservative men blame thewomen's movement and they say
women in the past used to accepttheir situation, be good wives
and even if they were abused,they made the best of it and
they raised their families andthey were silent and good women.
(24:33):
You know God-fearing women.
And now, because you say thatthey have this and that right,
they want divorce and they fightand they complain to the court
and these are private matters.
That shouldn't be and divorceis not right, and so on.
So, in a way, women who havebecome more aware of their
rights and have asked for theirrights are facing more violence.
(24:55):
So that's one of the forms.
If you see the data from thedirectorates of combating
violence against women, honorkilling has decreased because of
the legal changes, but suicidehas gone up, domestic violence
has gone up, sexual harassmenthas gone up.
So sometimes people believethat men who now know that
killing a woman may end up inprison.
They make her life hell so thatshe kills herself.
(25:17):
So they find ways to deal withthat.
The other backlash is the men'srights movements.
Now we have men's rightsorganizations who claim that now
women are oppressing them andthey're the victims and they're
the providers and they have alot of pressure.
And the third backlash has beenthrough a lot of defamation
campaigns and smear campaignsagainst activists to erode
(25:40):
community trust in our work andto basically discredit us and
sometimes to intimidate us toleave and be silenced and, hand
in hand, it's a very difficultsituation.
At times.
There have been women who hadto fled because of their work.
There have been women who havegiven up working in the field
(26:01):
because their families have putpressure on them to stop and
it's not.
You know, there's alwaysmovement and sometimes pushback
and even with the legal changes,implementation has been
problematic.
So theoretically the law haschanged but in practice the
courts and the trials getinfluenced and sometimes you
(26:21):
know patriarch values in thejudiciary system.
Or even you know you have thequota system in order to
represent women.
But the political partiesusually nominate women who are
loyal to the party.
They're not necessarilyfeminists or capable of
achieving women's rights.
They mostly come fromwell-connected tribal or
political families.
Some of them have done verywell, but many have been seen as
(26:45):
ineffective.
But even you know, theyestablished gender studies.
There was a decree from theMinistry of Higher Education in
the Kurdistan region and now wehave 30 gender studies centers,
which is fantastic.
But these people who've becomedirectors of these centers do
not have a background in thearea, they do not have any
training, they do not have anyresources.
So they've sort of been giventhis title and left alone to
(27:08):
deal with a situation withoutany support.
So in a way, systems do that,don't they?
They want to appear to be openand democratic and progressive,
but in practice they don'treally provide the support to
make it a meaningful change.
Marie Berry (27:22):
I mean what you just described about the
progress that gets made and thelaws that get passed and the
powerful and strong people thatthen end up asserting those
rights, and then that kind ofmeeting that with backlash, with
violence, with new kind of aresurgence of patriarchal
backlash, as people have said,is a story that stretches so
(27:46):
much further than the contextyou're speaking about.
I mean, this is a global trendthat we're seeing in so many
ways and I'm curious if youcould think about where the
movement is that you're a partof and that you're a leader in
Iraq and in Kurdistan.
Where does that movement havesynergies and similarities with
(28:07):
similar kind of feminist andgender sensitive movements
around the world?
Choman Hardi (28:12):
So if we just even compare it with Kurdish
women's movements in othercountries, like in Iran and
Turkey and Syria, there's a hugedifference and we are worse off
than many other places, eventhough we are the only place
where we have our own parliament, a Kurdish parliament and
government.
We are in many ways worse, forexample, the Kurds in Turkey and
(28:33):
the Kurds in Syria.
You've heard about the womenfighters in Rojava, northeast
Syria the Kurdish women.
The army was established in2012 to fight ISIS.
A third of the army is women,so there are women's battalions
and women's units.
It's called women's protectionunits, sharvan in Kurdish, and
(28:54):
how it's worked in the Kurdishcommunity in Syria, in Rojava,
is the women's struggle, or thestruggle for women's rights, is
very closely integrated into theright of ethnic rights and
class issues.
All of it is integratedtogether and I think, because
(29:15):
the revolution or the uprisinghas integrated social justice
and, in particular, women'srights, it has become more
vibrant.
It has become much stronger,because imagine if half of the
population are not part of it.
You know their creativity andpower and energy is missing, but
they have also been able tomake big strides, take big
strides in achieving, like youknow, the cantons that were
(29:38):
established in northeast Syria,the Kurdish cantons.
They had a constitution.
They had the institutions to gowith it.
It was direct democracy.
So, for example, the Kurds inIraq still see an independent
state for Kurdistan as thesolution, whereas the Kurds in
Syria and Kurds in Turkey thinkthat nation state is part of the
problem because it's thebackbone of patriarchy and
(30:00):
capitalism.
What they have tried toestablish is direct democracy.
You know democraticconfederalism and what they do
is you have these councils andneighborhoods who are sort of
they are managing themselves,they are making decisions
together.
It's they call it democracywithout a state, and it has been
probably one of the few placesin the world where this has been
(30:21):
tried out and it's been anamazing experiment.
Unfortunately threatened byTurkish attacks from 2019.
And we worry that it may besnubbed at all together.
That's an example of how.
What is a revolutionary?
I mean, I kept asking myselfthis when I was researching
about the Kurdish Revolution inIraq, because what they did was
(30:43):
our leaders, who were all men.
They were fighting againstdictatorship, right, but they
did not integrate women's rightsor other groups, minorities,
rights into it Because theyactually, for their survival,
they depended on the tribalstructure and village community
and religious leaders, andbecause of that they were
(31:05):
continuously trying to pleasethem and in that process,
sacrificing women's rights.
And women who were part of therevolution were regularly told
let us gain independence or letus obtain freedom and liberation
, and then men and women will beequal.
But we know from history thisis from Algeria, all the other
countries in the region If youdo not integrate women's rights
(31:28):
into a revolution, you cannot doit later.
So in Iran we see a similarthing, where women are leading.
In fact, there was a fantasticslogan a couple of months ago.
A young man had written on thewall if you are a man, be a
woman.
So generally when in Kurdish wesay to each other be a man,
similar to English right.
(31:49):
So be decisive, be powerful, bestep up to responsibility.
But because women are leading,be brave like women, be leader
like women, be strong like women.
So many of these stereotypesare changing through the
revolution with the integrationof women's rights, whereas I
think that Iraqi Kurdishleadership was much more
conservative and, as a result ofthat, the steps we have taken
(32:12):
have been jeopardized on everyof the ground.
Marie Berry (32:17):
What has been the effect, then, of this uprising
in Iran and the kind ofresurgence of this appreciation
for women's leadership in thisway?
What has that meant in yourarea, in your region?
Has it changed things?
Choman Hardi (32:31):
So for us in the women's movement it has created
a lot of hope and, of course, wehave a lot of solidarity and we
were campaigning.
We created a group immediately.
We organized a couple ofdemonstrations, individuals
Facebook page quickly to sharethe stories and give it voice
and amplify the voices.
And the problem is, just aswe're excited about these
(32:52):
changes and how it will affectour region, the conservative
sides are panicking about thesechanges and they have become
quite aggressive in fightingwomen back.
So at this moment, actually inIraqi Kurdistan, we're
experiencing a major backlashfrom the very conservative
religious groups and radicalizedgroups that see if Iran
(33:16):
collapses, they see that as athreat to their power in the
region and they are very firmlytrying to establish their power
by attacking women and otherminorities' rights.
And unfortunately, becauseelections are close in eight
months' time, the Kurdishauthorities are trying to please
them because they don't want tolose votes and so on.
(33:38):
So it's a very complexsituation.
Again, we as women in theregion feel that we're being
compromised, but it's a veryinteresting place, this place.
It's full of radical changesthat happen overnight and we try
to remind each other.
This is not the end, but it is,at this moment, a very
depressing moment, because wefeel that once again, very
(33:59):
conservative voices are risingand the political parties are
trying to please them, and againbypassing women's rights and
ignoring the achievements.
Marie Berry (34:08):
So it strikes me that this is the moment, then,
in which a multifaceted,multi-pronged approach to
thinking about social change isnot only a good idea, but is
just desperately important.
And I'm curious, then, for youpersonally, how do you go about
your work and your activism in acontext in which the stakes are
(34:30):
high, the backlash is real, theconditions are difficult, and
you have been pushing forward avery brave, a very important, a
very powerful agenda now for along time.
What is, how do you do thatwork and what is your strategy?
Choman Hardi (34:45):
Well, thank you.
I think the word that youmentioned, multifaceted, is
essential.
I think we cannot just fightpatriarchy through academia and
activism.
It's not gonna happen.
We really need to engage allthe tools that we have, and I
think arts have been a very goodtool.
I think what the arts can do isbecause, I mean, feminists have
long argued, haven't they?
(35:05):
We cannot be what we cannot see.
Right, if you don't see a womanin power, you don't think woman
can be in power.
But arts can imagine adifferent reality, challenge the
status quo, make the inequalityand injustice visible, create
empathy for the oppressions thatwe usually just shy away from,
(35:27):
but also to imagine a differentworld, an alternative world
where things would be different.
And I think, if we can justimagine that, yeah.
We can also work for it.
So one of the things I havebeen trying to do is maybe
working in an Americanuniversity and pushing for
gender studies and providingtraining and doing research and
(35:49):
getting funding isconfrontational.
Maybe alongside that, we alsoneed to engage.
Artists and activists are alsobeing attacked a lot, so how can
we find new ways of?
Sometimes a song plays a veryimportant role, right?
A poem can do that, a novel, aninstallation, any of these
(36:09):
things.
So one of my own projectsrecently I have just I'm working
on establishing well, I've gotlicense for it spectra for
creativity and development.
So we're hoping to have anartist in residence space and a
space for a woman's rest andarchive, because in our
community in particular,housewives never have a day off.
So men go on holiday, men go toparks, men go to swimming pool,
(36:31):
to the tea house, to the mosque, they go to private gardens,
they drink, but women, even whenthey go visit someone else,
they end up washing the dishesand they always have childcare.
So the idea was it also camefrom.
You know, with research, youknow we go and interview people,
we go to them, we disrupt theirlife, we interview them and we
(36:52):
leave and it sort of sometimesfeels like theft right, and I've
had women telling me I'd rathernot talk.
I'm planting cucumbers.
Can you leave me alone please?
I'd rather not retraumatizemyself.
You're gonna leave, you'regonna turn off your recorder and
I'm left alone to deal withthese feelings.
Who's gonna help me?
And I have struggled with theseideas.
(37:12):
Yes, we need to have thesestories documented, but at what
cost?
So the idea is if we can bringsmall groups of women, in
particular housewives.
I think one of the problems ofthe woman's movement in our area
is that it's very middle class.
It's usually graduates.
Their life is very differentfrom the ordinary woman on the
ground who are, you know, maybedidn't complete their education
(37:36):
housewives and their experienceof patriarchy, how they cope,
what are their strategies, howthey have they survived, what
networks have they formed it'ssomething that we don't really
understand well and I think ifwe really need to, if we want to
understand patriarchy, we needto understand those groups
experiences.
So the idea is to bring smallgroups of women for a few days
(37:57):
for rest.
Their children will be safe andlooked after and, if they agree
at the end of their stay, maybewe can record their story.
So in a way, they get somethingback and they give by choice.
So this is the idea, and I amthinking this is less
confrontational, but it alsogives us the grounds, the
knowledge and the data that weneed in order to really
(38:19):
understand what patriarchy doesto women and how we can
challenge it.
Marie Berry (38:23):
I love that and my students will have heard me, you
know, herald the Adron MarieBrown's phrase that small is all
as kind of the real bedrock ofsocial change, and what you just
described to me sounds likethat, right, it's not a
revolution that topplessomething, but it's in a home
(38:45):
and it's in a place, and it's inpeople and it's in a
relationship that one builds andit's in a prioritization of
rest, right, which is a radicalidea in a world consumed with
exhaustion and productivity andall of that all the time, right.
So I think that's such abeautiful component of your
activism and I wanna just whatis your lesson, what walks and
(39:11):
travels from what you justshared with us, right, what is?
How do we, as people that careabout building a world that is
more free for more people, howdo we go about doing that?
And what is your experiencekind of in your context and in
your place?
What lessons perhaps would youoffer those of us who are
invested in this work whereveroppression exists around the
(39:34):
globe?
Choman Hardi (39:36):
First of all, I think you, you know, sometimes
we tend to research communitiesthat we don't know very well and
sometimes we don't know thenuanced.
You know where the borders are,where the red lines are, where
I think it's very important toknow the community we work in
and work very sensitively, and Ihad for a long time, you know
(39:57):
they have been there, have beenmany people who sort of closely
have been watching my work andtrying to find faults with it,
trying.
You know, feminists are usuallyportrayed as anti-religion,
anti-god, anti-family, anti-men,all these things despite the
fact that many of us are married, right, and many of us actually
(40:18):
have children and we love ourfamilies and quite a few of the
women, for example, who work inthe field, are religious.
But these ideas of You'reradical, radical, radical.
So it is sometimes about bitingyour tongue, hanging in there,
continuing the conversation withthose who are willing to talk,
(40:38):
those who obviously their mindsare made up.
But sometimes I've found that,even in class, with students who
say the most clumsy things, Ijust need to bite my tongue,
have more patience, provide moreexamples for the next class,
continue the conversation,continue pursuing that and I
think for us, I find that veryconservative people and radical
(41:01):
people are very good at workingtogether.
We're not very good at workingtogether.
I don't know why women aredivided along lines of class and
education and ethnicity andrace and religion and politics
and all of that.
If we could just work together.
I know we've said that manytimes before, but I see it, I
see in our surrounding.
(41:22):
Every time something hashappened it's because the women
from the different sides havecome together and pushed
together the different leadersfrom the different sides.
But I really don't know.
I think I feel that I'mcontinuously learning still,
that I'm still a student here.
I do feel like an impostersometimes.
I sometimes walk into aminefield, I think I know
(41:46):
something and suddenly somebodysays something and I'm
completely like whoof.
I've never thought about that.
Give me a few days and let methink about it.
And to be open to be challenged, to be open to learn, to be
open to be corrected.
Even if your pride doesn'tallow you at that moment, maybe
think about it later.
And I do that a lot.
I do a lot of self-reflection,a lot of self-criticism.
(42:09):
Many times when somethingexplodes, I always ask what
could I have done differently?
Of course, there are times whenit's not about you.
You haven't done anything, butit's a good process to do anyway
.
To just say, if I was to dothis again, how could I do it?
And I also have this habit ofalways, before I publish
(42:30):
anything or before I make adecision about anything, I talk
to many people, many people whothink very differently from me,
and I want to understand it fromas many dimensions as possible,
then finish this article ormake that decision or whatever.
Sometimes that means beingindecisive, but I'd rather that
than making decisions quicklyand then making huge mistakes.
(42:51):
I don't know if that's helpful.
These are things that I amdoing myself.
Marie Berry (42:57):
No, I think it's helpful for all of us and a lot
of that resonates very much.
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