Son of Mountains by Yassin Aref

As an American a little older than Yassin Aref it is hard to understand a life that didn't include Sesame Street, Atari, the Dodge Maxi-van and a constant abundance of material wealth and food. To a large extent education, opportunity and mobility were always in the cards for most kids growing up in the United States if they put a little effort into it. Not so, Yassin Aref, his family and their struggle as Kurds is unique, sad, uplifting and still ongoing. When my father was letting me go to state of the art computer facilities in the 1970s, Aref's father was a struggling farmer living in a mountainous region of Iraq constantly worried about the next meal, the Peshmerga and their resistance to Saddam. Faith and religion had a far bigger role than just a couple hours on Sunday at the Lutheran coffee hour.

Despite this struggle Aref managed a childhood that included extended play outside in the summer, religious discovery and tender moments with his dying parents. Being oppressed politically and economically held no excuse for Yassin, has he constantly sought the betterment of his education. Indeed he is quite critical in this regard of his own people who often wear the yoke of oppression in despair. His steadfast refusal to join the Bath party is part of this idea that education will be the only reform possible for the Kurds. From page 117;

"Once a friend made me angry by saying that I was preventing people from joining the peshmerga by telling them to finish school first, and so I was helping the government. I said I encouraged everyone to join the peshmerga, but middle and high school students study first before they join. That was the way of our future. It was the Iraqi government that tried to get Kurds to leave school because they wanted us to remain ignorant."

His book is full of anecdotes and scenes of his life and the Kurds that the world may never have been given a glimpse of if not for this horrible frame up by our government. Wily old imans divert government forces as wounded peshmerga hide in the basement during a feast to placate the commander. Yassin leads a religious ceremony almost by providence if not accident. The village gathers to watch Tarzan in Arabic on the only black and white TV around. Aref gives remembrance to his dying mother recounting a beautiful afternoon in her arms as a child in the Kurdish countryside. One of my favorites is the story of his return home one Spring to celebrate the Kurdish new year, Nawroz. Aref describes his instigation of the Spring celebration that might have been forgotten that year in the rain. He drags a tire home from the small city where he is going to middle school and gets the entire village to participate in a bonfire atop a mountain. Always under the danger of government attack, the Kurds engage in some laughter and forgetting.

Aref comes of age during the first Gulf War. He gives personal story of those gassed by Saddam, flees as a refugee to Syria, helps genocide victims escape the dump trucks they have been loaded into and even instigates the comical uprising in Chamchamal. When he his eventually married and finds a life and work in Damascus as a gardener and later an aid to the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan ( the IMK, which would later become a strong component of the government's case) he still manages tales of tender moments with family, intense discussion about religion and he even undergoes the classical lyrical time of education that includes everything from Marx to Sartre.

Even though he may have achieved happiness in Syria with his family and job, he realizes that a chance as a refugee through the UN program will probably be limited but an overall advantage to his small family. So just shy of a Masters Degree in Damascus he accepts an offer to live in Albany NY. A natural leader and hard worker, Aref also struggles to make ends meet as the drastically different Western life requires so many expenses and is constantly asking more. In his good natured self effacing way he does provide for his family and he becomes an imam at the local mosque. Even the brief time he spends here as a free man has a great perspective in comparison to his previous life. An incident with praying while working at Albany Medical is worth noting.

Of course the rest of this story is well documented and the appeal for Aref continues at the writing of this post. Once you get to know Aref and follow him right to the moment of his arrest and subsequent hearings and trials you can't help but to think that a great injustice has been perpetrated in our names. Aref's indignation and natural mistrust as a Kurd may ring hollow to the vapid and banal in American culture, but as he still remains in convicted and in solitary confinement for the most part, I hope his faith and determination keep him alive. While it would be disingenuous for a libertarian to make this book mandatory reading in schools, if I were ever able to release my inner thug on those in fact in power, I would require a three day seminar in the FBI, Justice Department and every law school that took a dime from government.

As my own personal, cultural and national history is so different from Aref's, to some extent we are kindred souls. I share an affinity for enjoying the innocent company of children and making them happy with an adult who will play with them on their level. While his religion is much different than mine ( I have none ), the yearning for truth and the simple joys in life certainly do make a much more interesting and engaging life. While we have no peshmerga in Columbia County, I'm certain to be one of the first to take to the hills in the event of a truly fascist meltdown. But until then I enjoy the curious perch of a libertarian who does not believe that any force is worth the cost.

"Wars are the normal way that change takes place in history. But Islam brought about change peacefully. Its idea for bringing about change was to not force people."

I first thought that Yassin Aref's story and account might very well be the defining piece of my Generation like Kerouac's On the Road was to the boomers. Yet his story and many like it are being told all too often. This is a page turner for anybody concerned about justice and how the War on Terror has become so in its own right. Despite the tragic ending and the ongoing injustice, this book has human face, story and language that is replete with wisdom, character, self aware ignorance (at one point he thought Bill Clinton was Jewish) and numerous incidents and recollections that will make you laugh, possibly cry and certainly make you think about your own beleiefs and assumptions about life everywhere, not just the good old USA.

A special note about Stephen Downs. Stephen was one of the attorneys on the case and was instrumental in the publication of this book. His afterward about the trial and Aref's confinement is a must read. At the end of the trial Aref fired Downs as his lawyer and asked him to be his kak, which means brother in Kurdish. I had an aooportunity to sit and talk with Stephen on Capital Outsider. Stephen urged Yassin to tell his story, which he wrote as he was being held at the Rensselaer Correctional facility.