‘A sad day for all’: Body of Jamal Nabaz home for burial

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The body of Kurdish writer and intellectual Jamal Nabaz who passed away in Germany earlier this month was returned to the Kurdistan Region today for burial after a lifetime of “dedication to his homeland,”

 

“It is a sad day for all,” Nabaz’s widow Hannelore Kuchler told the media outside the Erbil international airport.

 

“He hoped he could return to a free and independent Kurdistan,” she said. “It is unfortunate that his wish has not yet materialized.”

 

Nabaz was born in 1933 in Sulaimani and traveled to Europe in 1962 to pursue his studies.

 

He lived in Germany for nearly six decades where he married a German woman.

 

Nabaz who died of illness in a Berlin hospital at the age of 85 authored several books and scholarly articles on the Kurdish cause and nationalism.

 

The governor of Erbil Nawzad Hadi told reporters that the Kurdish government was happy to welcome home the body of a writer who devoted his life to his country.

 

“Today, as governor of Erbil along with the family of professor Jamal Nabaz and other colleagues I received the body of the great Kurdish intellectual and writer,” Erbil governor Hadi said.

“The Kurdistan Region is proud to embrace [the body of] this great writer who dedicated all his life in diaspora to his rich writings and our nationalism,” he added.

 

Nabaz’s body is due to be buried in his hometown of Sulaimani today.