Off On A Tangent

Can I Have My House Back Please?

The city had been one of the ones hardest hit by Saddam’s program of “Arabization,” which would displace Kurdish families and give their homes and property to Arab families settled from the south. There are up to 300,000 internally displaced people, as the United Nations clinically calls them. Many of them live in squalid refugee camps outside the Kurdish cities such as Arbil or Suleimaniya.

But in a vivid homecoming scene, Khoshna described how he returned to his family’s old home in Kirkuk only to find an Arab family living there. He said they were afraid of him and his troops, but he reassured them they could live there until they found a new home. Then he would like his house back, please.

You can leave the furniture.