From Mountains to Oceans: The Prison Narratives of Behrouz Boochani

“No friend but mountains” is a phrase of profound significance to Kurds, the biggest stateless nation in the world. The current imagined territory of Kurdistan, outlined after World War I by the Allies, consists of a generally mountainous expanse of some 200,000 square miles overlapping the current borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia. The mountains mean a lot to the Kurds, and “no friend but the mountains” reflects how the mountains have helped the Kurds pro- tect themselves from raids by their neighbors throughout history, and the isolation the mountains create has resulted in the maintenance of a distinct identity for Kurds. The mountains still provide shelter for Kurds during wartime; for instance, thousands of Yazidis (also known as Yezidis or Êzîdî, a monotheist Kurdish minority  fled to the Sinjar Mountains (Iraq) to escape persecution by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in 2014. The mountains are also the main location from which PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) guerrillas run their armed struggle against the Turkish state for the recognition of Kurds’ sociocultural and political rights. But the saying also refers to the fact that Kurds have been betrayed by Western powers, especially the US, so many times. Kurds cannot rely on anyone. They do not have any friends—only their mountains.