Gorges family tales ring true
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
SULEIMANIYA, Iraq - Andre Gorges has heard the stories.
At 22, having grown up in Windsor, he paid little attention to the tales of the wars of the Kurds and the Iraqis, Saddam's tyranny, the deaths of friends and family, the dangerous flight from Iraq to Iran, the woes of poverty and hardship.
Somehow, hearing them again in Suleimaniya this week was different.
Maybe for the first time, Andre began to glean the passion his father and his cronies have for Kurdistan and why they make an annual trek to Iraq.
These men -- mostly in their 50s and 60s -- keep modest homes in Aradan, about eight hours north of Suleimaniya.
Andre's retired 55-year-old father, Isho, and four of his buddies, all of whom have settled in Windsor or Michigan, drove from Aradan a few nights ago to rendezvous with Andre and support his bid for the Iraqi National Boxing team.
Monday night after sparring, the young boxer didn't wait to shower. He immediately met up with his father and sat and listened to these old tales, but somehow it was different this time.
Somehow they seemed magical.
Isho spoke of the flight to Iran with his barely two-year-old son, and how he toppled off the horse they had taken. Fifteen of them made the trek over the mountains in that run to the border, knowing they risked being murdered by Saddam's soldiers.
Isho and his army buddy, Shamon Giliana, had scooped up their loved ones in hopes of making a new life elsewhere.
Iraq was no longer safe. After all, they were Kurds, and these two had manned anti-aircraft weaponry against the Iraqis in a hard-fought, bitter war with Saddam. After losing that war, Isho took his family to Basra, near Baghdad, and lived there for a few years. But after Andre was born, Isho decided to make his escape.
"I heard all this before, but never paid much attention," said the son.
But after the trek from Erbil to Suleimaniya, crossing over the mountains, and driving through desolate and arid stretches of landscape, and seeing how people live, a new awareness of his roots was awakened.
"I may have been born in Baghdad, but remember nothing about it. I grew up in Canada, and I think of myself as Canadian. That's why, whenever my (Middle Eastern) friends (in Windsor) talk about what's going on here, I can't see why they care," said Andre.
He said that when Iraq won soccer's Asian Cup in July, his friends were "going nuts over it."
Andre said, "I couldn't care less. I'm Canadian. What did it matter?"
He also never understood his father's return to Iraq to build a house, especially when the country was under siege with assassinations and kidnappings.
Isho and some of his friends, who joined him in that flight into exile 20 years ago, only began this return to Iraq since the fall of Saddam, and since Kurdistan has become relatively stable and peaceful.
"I would come back to live here, but my wife won't come," Isho said.
Giliana feels the same, but at 64, isn't certain he would make his return permanent. "For the moment, I live here six months, and in Canada six months. But maybe someday, I'll come home. This is my homeland."
But there are health issues, too, and many can't leave. The country still has no proper health care system.
"But you have to understand, this is where we were born," said Isho. "This is our country."
Aradan is a village of about 400. It suits his needs. It's as close to what he left culturally, and Isho feels the few months that he lives there help bridge that sentimental gap he feels in his life.
It makes him proud that his son has come here, and prouder yet that he is boxing with the Iraqi national team.
Andre is just beginning to understand the significance of coming to Suleimaniya. Each morning that he rides the rickety bus with seven Iraqi boxers and hears them talking about their lives, he feels a new companionship and, in a way, feels at home among them.
Andre admits he arrived here feeling arrogant. He had just come off winning his third world welterweight title at Ringside in Kansas City and figured he'd kick butt against these boxers from such a backward country.
"I thought I would dominate, but I was wrong," he said. "They're tough."
But Andre's days in Suleimaniya are not spent entirely with the boxers or training. His curiosity about his Kurdish roots has taken him to the city's market where he poked his way through the narrow streets, hoping to immerse himself in the culture. He smiled at a man sprawled out and asleep in the afternoon in the shade of his shop where carcasses of meat hung in 42 C heat. He marvelled at a row of sheep's heads and organs that were neatly arranged on a wooden table.
The young boxer pushed on and found his way into a place of prayer, where the men removed their shoes, washed their arms and necks and feet under taps running into a funnelled groove in the concrete. He eyed them as they bowed and prayed in this shaded area.
Further on, he spied children bargaining for chickens and saw money changing hands and spotted the gypsies begging in the street. He saw the men outside a shabby little cafe playing dominoes on a rickety table.
This is life in the streets. This is the picture his father, Isho, had tried to paint for his son, but Andre never listened. He never had to. His life is rooted in Canada. But now Andre may be headed for Cairo as a permanent fighter with the Iraqi boxing team.
When Andre's Iraqi friends in Windsor reached him on the telephone after he arrived in Suleimaniya, they laughed at his complaints of staying at the run-down Hotel Dhoc with its decrepit rooms.
"This is Iraq," they told him.
"But later," said Andre, "when we had moved to the Mihrako Hotel with air conditioning, flush toilets, a swimming pool and restaurant, they didn't believe me. They said to me, 'You're talking about Las Vegas. This is Iraq!'"
It wasn't the country they had left.
More Iraq Articles from Marty Gervais:
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