Contemporary Poetry

politics and poetics 81

camps (Topzawa, Dibis, Nugra Salman, Nizarka, Salamya).

At the beginning of each Anfal stage chemical attacks were

used to kill, terrify and destroy the morale of the people. After

the air raids and alongside conventional bombing the ground

attacks started. The attacks were designed to steer civilians

towards certain collection points near main roads where they

were awaited by the army and the jash forces (Kurdish merce-

naries who worked for the Iraqi government).^54

This role of the poet as a chronicler of testimonies is key to the
poem ‘Dropping Gas: 16 th March 1988 ’. Amidst the confusion
of war in Halabja, the poet listens to a neighbour who has lost his
entire family ‘he wants to show me’ (p. 19 ), whereas others are
‘journalists taking photos / some men robbing dead bodies’ (p. 19 ).
The poet serves as an ethical witness, questioning ‘I stand detached
from everything, / observing, believing and not believing’ (p. 19 ).
Hardi’s poetry presents the poet as exile, examining and dissect-
ing the ravages of Kurdish diaspora. ‘The Spoils 1988 ’ negotiates
how: ‘Anfal came and some survived it’ (p. 20 ). By contrast there
are those who could not have ‘left for unknown destinations / and
started their lives in a new land’ (p. 20 ). The imagined space of a
home is equated with a return to a site of trauma. Even in ‘What I
want’, the poet, in depicting ‘humane soldiers’, recreates a barbaric
scene of counter-defi nition: ‘soldiers who would never say: / “We
will take you to a place / where you will eat your own fl esh” ’ (p. 11 ).
Memory and reminiscence are evoked through the mythmaking
possibilities of Penelope’s loom in ‘The Penelopes of my homeland’,
dedicated to the ‘ 50 , 000 widows of Anfal’. In this poem the widows
weave ‘their own and their children’s shrouds / without a sign of
Odysseus returning’ (p. 21 ). Hardi’s evocation is strictly one of the
anti-heroic. Life for Us presents the stark reality of women grieving
after the ‘disappeared’, which in ‘The 1983 riots in Suleimanya’ is
depicted as ‘the mourning woman with unshaved legs / unshaped
eyebrows and ashy lips’ (p. 46 ). The liminal position of the exile is
evident in Hardi’s work. ‘At the Border 1979 ’ recounts the return
to Kurdistan where the young sister plays with being present in
two places simultaneously. She calls at the checkpoint, ‘ “Look
over here” she said to us, / “my right leg is in this country / and