Before the 1991 uprising, Firsat Sofi and I knew each other through our families, as my Peshmerga relatives from the September Rebellion used to live in his village of Gazne, near Choman town. We grew up during the Kurdish rebellion, and I was three or four years older than him. Back then, we would ask the youth from Diyana (Soran town) to join the Kurdistan Democratic Party‘s (KDP) Student and Youth Union. This was in 1991, and some people were still concerned about the return of the Baath regime and would not join the Union.
When I asked Kak Firsat, he joined straight away and was very happy to do so. That day, he was wearing a tracksuit and had a football in his hands, and that is exactly how he and a friend of his came with me to the secretarial office of the Union, which back then was in Diyana high school. Mr. Dizhwar Fayaq, a secretarial member spoke to him then and was really impressed by the new member. This was because Mr. Firsat was talking about how he has read novels such as Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ and ‘The Siege’ by Anatoly Darov. The way he spoke and argued showed that he was vastly more mature than most of the teenagers we had spoken with before.
My relationship with him grew stronger from that day on. We would always exchange books. He was a very patriotic young man. Part of his patriotism was inspired by the mesmerizing impact of Abdullah Pashew’s poems. Back then we had many educational and art activities. I always liked Kak Firsat, who had a slight frame, but a great mind that allowed him to be at the forefront and be seen for his greatness. When he became governor, he told our colleague Sangar Abdulrahman, “Ako was always like that, he would write speeches for our ceremonies and plays, and he would tell me to go and read them.”
As I stepped back from the Student and Youth Union, he climbed its ladder step by step purely because of his brilliance and skills. We stayed in touch, but to a lesser extent. When I started working as a journalist in the early 2000s, he also became the editor-in-chief of Riwanin, a newspaper released by the Kurdistan Student and Youth Union, and our relationship was rekindled. He tackled every task with a seriousness and passion that saw him succeed. In my opinion, Riwanin was by far the most successful weekly student newspaper in Kurdistan. When he left the newspaper he told me, “I did not know that life is so good without all that exhaustion.” When he was in parliament, our relations remained strong.
Before he became governor [of Erbil], he came to me to ask for my opinion. After a while, we spoke on the phone and I told him that I felt he was exhausted like the old days when he edited Riwanin. He said that he was really tired, but trusted in Allah that he would do many good things [for the people of Erbil].
Due to his loyalty for our shared past, he would consult with me for most major decisions. When his mother appeared on Rudaw and said that Firsat would always befriend people older than him, he later told me that she meant me.
I messaged him when I heard that he had fallen ill in October. There was no response. I went and visited him at the Sante Life hospital in Erbil on Friday, October 30. During the two minutes that I was allowed to see him, I tried to cheer him up by telling him about the news of the 120-year-old woman in Cizre who had recovered from the coronavirus. However, the way he looked and the story that I heard about his treatment at home saddened me. When they took him to Turkey, I once asked the head of the health department of President Nechirvan Barzani’s office about how he was doing, and also asked a relative a few times, they would tell me he is good. However, what I saw in the hospital made me feel hopeless.
When I heard the news of his passing on Wednesday, it was the news I was expecting.
Kurdistan lost a true patriot and I lost a dear friend. Goodbye, Mr. Firsat. May your soul rest in peace. Rest assured that your memories will not end with this article, because you were one of Kurdistan’s success stories. May your grave be blessed with thousands of candles.
This is an English translation of a Kurdish-language piece published on November 18.
