During lockdown I started a short story group on zoom. We met every fortnight to read a story out loud and discuss it. It was a brief place of safety cocooned from the madness of the world outside. We have carried on, rather less frequently, ever since. It’s simple and fun, and has led me to read a huge variety of stories, throwing my net as wide as I can.
Last year, inspired by the wonderful Farhana Shaikh at Dahlia Books who curates Short Story September, I bought a copy of The Potato Eaters by Farhad Pirbal, a renowned Kurdish writer, poet, philosopher, artist, singer and activist. He has published over 70 books, but this is the first to be translated into English. Many of the pieces were tragic stories of displacement and isolation, but I found this one, about a soldier returning from war, both specific and universal.
The soldier has been dreaming of the idyll that was his home and the woman he loved, but on his return both have been irreparably damaged. They no longer exist. Although it’s always tricky to read work in translation (I have no idea what I am missing from the original) the story was still poetic and moving. We found a lot to appreciate and discuss about it, and it was one of my favourite stories of 2024. I also have the added pleasure that now I follow Pirbal on Instagram, and he looks exactly like Einstein.
First published in English in The Potato Eaters, Deep Vellum, 2024. The Potato Eaters was originally published in Kurdish by Sharafkhan Bidlisi Publishing House, 2020
A Personal Anthology 