Redwan Adalat - Humans of Kurdistan

"Participating in a Kurdish drama series as the main character has been one of the happiest moments of my life. I was very mesmerized by acting, my wish was to participate in an international film or series, I will try to gain better achievements in this field. All my life has passed by in a great way, maybe there have been difficulties, but my happiness has exceeded that. There is nothing that I truly wished for and didn’t gain because I have put all my efforts in. I don’t want to think that I will lose what I fight so hard for. I have often tried to give the better things to my closest ones rather than to myself, without them even noticing." ...

May 01 2020

May 1, 2020

"I had not rested for a long while, but I was able to do that because of the quarantine. At the same time, I had a bad feeling...

Apr 30 2020

April 30, 2020

"I have had a naan bakery in this city since the time one bread cost 4 Fils. The government would give the bakeries an 88-kilo bag of flour for 800 Fils; these small bakeries were known as Asha. After a while, the commercial bakeries opened as well. At the time, one bread was for 4 Fils at the Asha, but for 10 Fils at the commercial bakeries. Th commercial bread was better and bigger because we would buy cake flour flour from Mosul for 3 Dinars and 200 Fils and would also use a special kind of yeast, which gave the bread a great smell. Along with that, some of the bakeries would buy 2 bags of chickpeas and would mash and mix it with the dough to make it softer; it was still good even when it was old. I was a baker until almost 10 years ago, but I could not do it anymore." ...

Apr 29 2020

April 29, 2020

"I have liked flowers since I was a child. I go on a walk whenever I feel down and stop at every flower shop and buy a flower. I have often gifted myself flowers or have given myself a flower for my birthday. I can’t give everyone a flower, because they don’t respect the flower like I do. If I have a house in the future, I will fill it up with flowers." "I am in 12th grade now. I am worried that there is no university that has the field I want to study. I want to study design, especially clothes design. There are no official places in Sulaimani for that field, because no one understand how some of the clothes are designed to match each other gift." ...

Apr 29 2020

April 29, 2020

"I was a part of the force that the Iraqi government sent to Jordan to protect it from Israeli forces, at a time when they were trying to capture Jordan. Iraq split its forces as an ally. We were at the defensive front-lines in the city of Irbid. I was there for almost 16 months, then returned to Halabja. I was laid off there. But when the chemical bombing of Halabja happened, we started walking all the way to Sulaimani. When we arrived in Saidsadq, we saw people had come with cars to meet their families there. They drove us as well and we arrived in Sulaimani. We started our lives in the city, I started working at the Sulaimani's Tobacco Factory and stayed there until 2008." ...

Apr 28 2020

April 28, 2020

"My only wish was to become a good barber and have my own barbershop. I tried really hard to achieve that, I faced a lot of challenges, but I did not want to give up.I started working as an apprentice in a barbershop for 6 months, but in reality I didn't go to become an apprentice, I made a lot of effort to learn the work, so I watched closely. After those 6 months, I was able to do it really well. I tried to learn more from my bosses, so I was really close with them. I also suffered some good beating by them. I knew I should never let go of my work. No one will be any good to you if you don't work for yourself. No one stays with you forever. Finally, I am now doing the work I had been seeking." ...

Apr 27 2020

April 27, 2020

"I didn’t enjoy journalism in my first year at the Institute. My father wanted me to finish school and get employed in the public sector. I was accepted in IT, but I didn’t like it, I though it was too difficult, so I went into the media field. Initially my father told me not to do it, he didn’t like it. He constantly told me that he will try to find somewhere else for me to study, but I enjoyed it and said I wanted to stay. After I did some work and I saw my own work on TV for the first time, my father was standing next to me and was watching with me, he said, 'Is that you?! I don’t believe it could be you, talking so confidently and working well' He saw that I can actually stand on my own feet, do what I want, and saw my work, which is why one day when we had visitors, he showed his friends all my work and was proud of me." "A girl posted on Facebook that she needs help, that in exchange for that, people are about to sexually assault me and make me do terrible things. So I reached out to her and created a report regarding the topic. The day after it was released, I got so many phone calls that I couldn’t make time for. I called everyone back to figure out why they have called this number; they all asked me how they can help that family. That was an amazing thing for me. That is one of the works I am really proud of and I had a great feeling." ...

Apr 26 2020

April 26, 2020

"This store belonged to my cousin, Khalid Zamdar, who is an old calligrapher of Sulaimani. He worked here since 1974, and I started working with him when I was a kid. Initially, I worked as an apprentice, but after Khalid Zamdar passed away in 1987, I continued, it has been almost 33 years now. Across the store was a wall that Khalid Zamdar would write on; famous sayings and poems. He would often get caught and beaten for that. There weren't many papers and magazines at the time, so whoever passed through would read the writings on the wall." "For a while, the Baath regime would kidnap children. One evening, a strike broke out, there was word that they kidnapped children. There was a well-known figure around here, they called him ‘Bakhay Kharaman’, he was a brave and bold man. They had captured the people who had kidnapped the children. There were two of them, one of them was caught by Bakhay Kharaman. They killed one of them. The Baath soldiers arrived there, so they took the other one away, wounded. Khalid Zamdar teared up, he wrote on the wall: The Kurdish children are children of a city/ they are scared of a snake/the snake was wrecked with the people’s force/tonight that snake was caught in its hole.The next day, Baath soldiers came and forced us to close the store. Then they made us erase the writing on the wall. People would call this store a school for Kurdish nationalism." ...

Apr 25 2020

April 25, 2020

"In 1978 we bought a Chevrolet cargo truck. We were going from Sulaimani to Dukan, Qaladze, and Rania. We would pick up everyone on the road there and the same on our way back. People were generally happy. Our main job was when the tomatoes, grapes, figs and other products would grow, we would go to the villages, especially the more difficult places. We weren’t many truck drivers, just a few, we were split up. Some of us would go to Sharazur and the others to Sharbazher, some to Dukan and Bazian, and so on. And the people in the area knew which driver’s turn it was on a specific day. We would bring everything they had to the city and would distribute it. There were all kinds of Kurdish products, except watermelons. People just had enough for themselves, it wasn’t enough for us to bring to the city." ...

Apr 25 2020

April 25, 2020

"I couldn’t finish college because I didn’t get accepted in the field I wanted. I didn’t get chosen there, I wanted to study either English or Arabic, and college required money, I didn’t want to put that pressure on my family. I got accepted at a university in Baghdad and studied the first two years there. Later I decided to leave school and return to Sulaimani. The Teachers’ Institute opened that same year, I was one of the first people to get accepted there. It was in Iskan then, I studied at the Institute for two years and became a teacher in Zrgwez village.The years that I taught there were amazing, we had everything. We were invited to eat at the villagers houses every day for the first 10 days. The people there were very nice to us. I still miss that yogurt they would bring us; I could say it was better than meat for me." ...

Apr 24 2020

April 24, 2020