"Green almonds, or why the world needs the Kurds" - Paweł Smoleński

Everyone’s heard about the Kurds, but do we know anything about them that would escape stereotypes, repeated by TV programmes?
“Green almonds” is a result of the author’s journeys to Iraq and Kurdistan made within the last decade. What we’ll find here is a history of persecutions of the Kurds, and their gorilla war of independence under the leadership of the Barzani tribe.
Smoleński visits places that have constituted Kurdish identity: a museum of genocide in Halabja and a Yazidi sanctuary in Lalish. But he also meets ordinary people in their everyday lives between work and a visit to a shopping centre, with emigrants coming back to their country, and with those who don’t hesitate to accuse the government of nepotism.
This book is a story of an autonomic region with an independent president, a flag, and ambassadors, and still deprived of its borders. It’s a story of a nation that successfully opposes Islamic fundamentalism and of people who dare to dream.