NAZAND BEGIKHANI
Exile for a woman is not just displacement and dislocation, but a process of self-construction. To be denied home, is to learn that creativity with self-confidence can become one.
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Dr Nazand Begikhani (M.A and Ph.D., Sorbonne University) is an exiled contemporary Kurdish poet and academic researcher into sexual gender-based violence (SGBV), and an active advocate of human rights.
After 15 years work as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol in the UK, she was awarded in 2019/2020 the Vincent Wright Chair and Visiting Professorship at Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), where she is a lecturer on SGBV in conflict zones, focusing on ethical and methodological principles. She is also a freelance tutor (British Council, ESRC, Ted Hughes Arvon Center, TY Newydd) on creative writing and trauma for young girls and boys who experienced war and displacement, including in refugee camps in the Middle East.
After imprisonment, torture and the execution of several members of her family, including her three brothers, Begikhani fled Saddam Hussein’s genocidal operations in Kurdistan (Iraq) in the 1980s. She reconstructed herself in exile (Denmark, France and the UK) and received her M.A and Ph.D in comparative and sociology of literature from the university of the Sorbonne, Paris. She is the author of many books, articles and book chapters, including ten poetry collections, in Kurdish, English and French.
Nazand Begikhani has conducted research on many aspects of sexual violence and gender relations, including honour-based violence (HBV), rape and sexual slavery of Yazidi girls and women at the hands of DAESH (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. She has also served as advisor on social policy, gender equality and higher education to many national and international organisations, including the British Scotland Yard (2003-2005), the Swedish Ministry of Integration (2004-2006), the United Nation’s Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and President of Kurdistan Region Mr Nechirvan Barzani.
Nazand has been awarded several international awards, including the UK Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her work on HBV (2000), the French Simone Landrey's Feminine Poetry Prize for her poetry work (2012), the Kurdistan Gender Equality Prize (2015). Her poetry was also nominated for the Forward Book of Poetry Prize; one of her poems, An Ordinary Day was elected by Forward Poetry Prizes as one of the best 40 poems of the year in the UK (2007).
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An Ordinary Day
Selected by Forward Book of Poetry Prize as one of the best poems of the year
The security officer
got up early
put on his white shirt
had honey toast with nuts
kissed his three children
hugged his wife passionately
and left for work
At his desk
sat ten files
of ten men to be shot
He signed them
while drinking mint tea.
At ten o’clock
he ordered the shooting
got angry over a gunman who missed his target
Taking out his pistol
he fired at the missed target ten times
Before the end of his shift
he visited the mothers of the ten shot men
ordered each to pay 100 dinars
for the cost of the bullets that killed their sons
In the evening
he celebrated his brother’s birthday
At night on the surface of a mirror
he saw a drop of blood trickling down to his feet
He tried to wash it
the trickle rose to his chest
Where does the difference lie between the killer and killed?
©Nazand Begikhani
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