A deeply felt memoir of Kurdistan from a woman willing to give everything for her people
In the first of three planned volumes, accomplished public servant Nesreen Barwari documents not only her storied career in Kurdistan’s regional government through the early 2000s but her challenges and achievements as a young woman in a male-dominated society. In the Land of a Thousand Springs’ opens with sweeping chapters that tell of the earliest days of the Kurdish people. The focus eventually tightens up and concentrates on the last 75-80 years of history of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Against this backdrop, the Barwari family’s story is told.
Nesreen Barwari’s family stories and relationships make up for some of the book’s most powerful reading. Their relationships get them through months spent in detention under Saddam Hussein’s regime and during the time when they’re fleeing Iraq on foot through mountainous passages with thousands of other refugees. Barwari also recounts idyllic childhood days spent in her family’s ancestral mountain village under the loving eye of close and distant relatives and revels in her parents’ pride as she excelled in every academic exercise.
Post-university, Barwari finds her calling through employment with United Nations agencies invested in helping Kurdish refugees return home and re-settle conflict-affected areas after completing her degree. She builds a reputation for leadership, creativity, insight, and integrity, all rooted in her strong, family-oriented upbringing and national pride.
Throughout the book, Barwari recollects every step in her consistent rise through government offices, culminating in her appointment to Minister of Reconstruction and Development under the Kurdistan Regional Government in the 1990s. Her focus on public policy solutions, cultivating support for projects that provided basic needs to the people of Kurdistan, and her determination to make a real difference drives the narrative so swiftly that it’s hard to believe she accomplished so much so fast.
Barwari’s writing style tends toward academic and strictly factual. For anyone with a deep interest in history and public policy, In the Land of a Thousand Springs offers a front-row seat to the tumultuous experiences of the Kurdish people in Iraq. At the same time, it showcases one woman’s victory over cultural limits. Nothing was going to keep Kurdistan and her people down.
But when Barwari gets personal about her family in Iraq, the book sheds its sheen of the academic and gets real. From welcoming her father and brother to Boston while studying at Harvard to building a house for her family to return to in their home village, Barwari’s affection is authentic and unwavering, giving the book a moving personal edge. There are glimpses of humor and lightness in these scenes that are a refreshing counterweight to the heavier experiences Barwari faces. She will never forget where she came from, and she will always keep looking forward, toward the future of her people.
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