Kurd·ish

Kurd·ish (ˈkərdiSH) adj. of the Kurds, their language, culture, etc.  n. the Iranian language of the Kurds

I’ve been sitting on this word a long time. I’ve  googled and read and searched databases and read, and I just couldn’t seem to figure out an angle, to get a grasp. But today is the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and although the Kurds are just one group, just part of the picture, it felt apropos to do a little connecting and reflecting. Here are some words I have culled.

A day that delineates borders and boundaries—
between countries, between ideologies, between histories,
between the time before this was so and the time after this was

In the United States, the television glows with stories of widows and widowers, children who have grown inches and ten years in age without their mother or father. The skyscrapers are shown and the planes hitting and the fire and the smoke. Over the radio, voices saying life was never the same again and I miss her and We will never forget. This never forgetting part of our collective chorus. But what are we not forgetting? What are we choosing to remember and what are we choosing to forget?

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament says, “September 11 was a terrible crime that killed 3,000 innocent people. But the number of people killed in Iraq since September 11 is much, much bigger than the number of Americans who died.  And no one in the world seems to know or care.”

To remember means to bring to mind, to have a recollection of, to keep in mind to attend to or consider.

Ahmad Abdulhussein, the cultural editor of Al-Sabaah, a large government-owned newspaper,  was in Toronto on September 11 and remembers the panic on the faces of Americans he saw there. He also remembers seeing an American man shove a young Muslim woman in a burqa away from a city bus. Today, he says “America had one attack. We have attacks every day, and we as journalists focus on the daily attacks which take place here.”

To forget means to fail to remember, to treat with inattention or disregard, to leave behind unintentionally, to fail to mention, to fail to become mindful at the proper time.

Mohammed Ayoub, an employee of the Population Ministry, said Iraq, under Hussein, never experienced the type of unrelenting carnage which has been a hallmark of the post-war period here. “How could any Iraqi forget Sept. 11?” Ayoub said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s the day our world changed too.”

Quotations and material from paragraphs 3,5, & 7 taken from an article in the National Journal. Please follow the link to read the whole, compelling article: http://www.nationaljournal.com/in-iraq-remembering-a-day-that-changed-two-countries-forever-20110911