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Due to lack of documents and records, the only source of information about my family tree and our origin comes from what we have heard from our forefathers. If we look at the graves, and the pottery which they used to bury their dead, Parazan has a very old history. It was destroyed and rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt from history unknown until present time; nobody had recorded the destruction or the reconstruction of my little neglected village. What I know is from what I have heard from my mother, my elder brother and our relatives. I have heard a lot about my grandfather.

Uncle Arif was known as the uncle of the whole village due to his age, as he was considered as the eldest of all at that time. He was a well built man, tall and strong. He was a very serious man; he wanted to complete anything he started and to see everything in position. It was for that reason that his other brothers took advantage of him. ‘One is always busy with hunting, another wants to be smart’ he said desperately, ‘Arif has to do all the hard work’.

People say that he was very humanistic, they heard from him saying, if something was stolen from you; do not run after it, God will compensate you twice in the other world. He was praying five times a day as any traditional practicing Muslim but in his old age, he was tired of it. He was praying to God to end his life to be free from the hard work of so many prayers every day and from fear of draught. It is not clear when and how they converted to Islam, as most of the old graves belong to the Magists or Zoroastrians. They believed that earth, water and air were sacred so a dead corpse should not be buried in ground but it must be hanged on a high mountain or on a tall tree until birds ate the flesh and became dried and clean. At that stage, they put the skeleton in a big pottery and buried it under ground in a straight position. Any where you go in Parazan, you find thousands of those potteries under the ground.

It is obvious that Muslim Arabs occupied Kurdistan in the seventh century. As occupiers they forced them to convert to Islam. After a bloody conflict many Kurds converted, however, some small minority cults remained on their traditional religions until today, such as Kakais and Ezidis. Some people believe that Muslims came as occupiers and destroyed all their recorded religious documents which were written on 700 buffalo skins. The Muslim leader of that time had to contact his headquarters in Mecca, they argued, for the permission to burn the documents. The headquarters advised them to burn them, as Zoroastrianism was not recognized as a heavenly religion, as Judaism and Christianity were. Those religions were known as people with books from God and were allowed to pay tax in order to remain on their own religions. There is little information heard about my great grandfather who was a Muslim according to his name Mustafa, but who was the father of Mustafa, what was his name, what was his religion, where did he came from, nobody knows.

Dr Shakir Khasbak, an Iraqi university lecturer and writer argues that Kurdish people even though they converted to Islam, they kept many traditions from their former Magist religion. I can confirm his argument as Kurdish community has many Zoroastrian traditions such as a great respect for the dead, considering any tree or plant around the graveyards as holy and sacred. They have great respect for guests, as you have to serve them the best of you have, respecting and helping strangers and guide them to their destination. Going to graveyards and ask for help, spiritual help, during illness and trouble is another tradition that came from the Zoroastrians. 

No registrar had honoured to register Arif in any records and no doctor had the honour to tell him open your mouth I want to check you. He was living in the simplest way of life of the primitive agricultural age. He never heard names such as tobacco and alcohol. In reality, he had a good health until his last years when he was affected with cancer and suffered from it a lot in silence without any medical help. The only remedies at that time were derived from herbs. They were effective in curing many diseases, but not cancer. Money was not in use at that time or at least at that place. A doctor or healer treated people for the sake of God and humanity. He may get gifted to live on but not a proper charge. The religious man taught children and he received gifts also. People had not to pay for workers to work for them in the farms and fields; they helped each others with the mutual work called dastawam. In dastawam you work for free a day or several days for someone and in return he will work for you the similar time for free. To avoid a big dowry or money at all, people exchanged their sisters for marriage, and this was called Zhinbazhin. In Zhinbazhin, you let somebody to take your sister as his wife and you take his sister as your wife in return.

My grandfather had a very simple life. He made baskets from tree braches, spoons and dishes from wood and the women made big pottery containers from clay in order to keep wheat, barley, wheat flour and all the grains safe and dry. They used dried goat skin for carrying water home from the fountain, called (Kunda). They used dried sheep skin for making (mashka) by cleaning it and hanging it over the fire place to suck the smoke for a long time and be dried and clean.  They used Mashka for making (Do), a kind of very popular drink in Kurdistan made from shaken yoghurt. When the yoghourt was shaken in the Mashka it produced some butter called (Kara), which they used it for cooking and breakfast. They kept the Kara in a dried goat skin, particularly prepared for keeping butter called (Hiza).   Some extra (Do) was put in a silk sack and hanged until all the water came out of it and became concentrated, they called it (Xasta), which meant concentrated. From that Xasta they made small egg shaped stuff called (Kashik) which was put under the sun light until totally dried and kept for the winter as a kind of breakfast cereal or fried in oil as a food.

They dried different herbs and vegetables in summer and cooked them in the winter, as there were no fridges or freezers. They made their shoes from animal skin, and as the skin was not properly made to become good leather, it became hard when it dried up. To avoid that, they had to put the (kala), as they called those shoes, in water at night so that they would be soft in the morning. Kala was dressed with some fabric called Petaw. My mother told me that one time they forgot to put all the shoes in water in the evening. In the morning, when the men discovered that they had no soft shoes to wear, they got crazy. They stayed at home for that day and could not go to work. My mother once said that the women and children were walking bare feet. There were no enough kala for all, so they used them for hardworking men only. As for the summer, they made another kind of shoes called (Klash), which had the upper part from woven silk, and the sole with a stack of fabric strung together by strips of leather. 

My auntie was complaining about the complexity of the new life (1970s Iraq!) as she said, ‘ nowadays life is rubbish, everybody busy, I heard from uncle Arif talking about the mulberry day, that was the real human life’. When we asked her about the mulberry day, she said, ‘A man was shouting to everybody not to go anywhere for that day, we shake the big mulberry tree today! They ate and celebrate mulberry season all together. Uncle Arif had a simple garden on a hill behind his house. He took grapes, pears, and walnut to the plain areas that never grew anything like that and swapped them with wheat and barley; that was called (Karwani) which meant caravan.  There were many stories about people went to Karwani and fallen in love, got married or others robed and came back bare hand or not coming back at all. They were talking about people sleepwalking, as the way as too long and they travelled day and night following their donkeys, mules and horses.

Uncle Arif lived as a simple man and Far from the Madding Crowd, as Tomas Hardy described city life. He never heard any disturbing voices from any train, aeroplane, ship or car. He was using donkeys and mules for transportation and farm work. No factory smoke, no pollution, and no inorganic food at all. He was a good friend of his nature but the nature was not so friendly with him.

His most concern was with draught. Draught was the major problem, as draught meant no wheat crops so a famine was unavoidable. They talked about two major famines: first was called the big famine and the other was called the small famine. The big famine started with the First World War as the Ottoman Empire sent its troops to Kurdistan to collect men and food for their war against the Russians. When the troops entered a village, they looted all food, wheat and flour; they captured as many men as they could take with them and their hungry horses ripped all the green wheat and barley fields and transferred them into a bared desert; so they were disappointed about the next season. The other famine started with the Second World War and it was not as severe as the first one. Later on with any draught or any sign of little rain in the spring, the shadow of the famine returned and some elderly people still believe that a famine is on its way anytime.

There were many ceremonies and traditions surrounding rain and draught. In spring time when the rain was late they made a toy bride, the rain bride as they call it, with two sticks and they dressed it with colourful clothes. Two children took the rain bride and went through the whole village, people from all the households had to pour some water on the rain bride as some kind of prayer that God would hear their plea and bring rain. The men by their turn had to go to a holy place, which was not the mosque but a (Shaxis), a graveyard surrounding the tomb of one of the most important Sheikhs of the village, Sheikh Ilyas in Parazan, and pray the rain prayer. This tradition also looks like a Zoroastrian tradition, as they go to a Shaxis to pray to God for help to bring rain and not the mosque.

An elderly man told me his story in the big famine. ‘I was a small boy at that time’, he started, ‘ the Ottomans came to our village and my mother took a sack of wheat, which was the only source of food we had, she made it as flat as possible and told me to lie down on it and pretend that I was very sick. I made myself as to be very ill and continuously said ah oh ah oh. When the Ottoman soldiers opened the door and saw me, they said that is a very sick boy, they left. When my mother came back after a while, I was still saying ah oh. My mother said, oh dear me, stand up they are left. They took what was dry and their horses ate what was green; that was the Ottoman story’.