THE BIRD BOY
The boy wants nothing more than his maman’s lap and a view of the birds
that soar over his Kurdish village. Nameless, impressionable, and watchful, the
boy soon becomes a man in a mountaintop ritual with his papa, uncles, and
cousins. And as a man, he must join the male villagers when they march to war
against the shah’s army. But the Kurds, fierce protectors of their homeland
against centuries of invasion, fall to the shah; the boy’s father is massacred
before his eyes. As the only survivor, adopted by the very soldiers that
murdered his father, the boy begins a new life as Reza Pejman Khourdi -
conscripted soldier for the new Iran.
Ten years later, in Tehran, Reza is notorious
within the Iranian army for his cruelty against Kurds, so-called rebels who fight
against an Iran they cannot believe in. Promoted to captain, Reza is ordered to
find a Tehrani bride and move back to Kermanshah, his homeland, to enforce the
shah’s rule. Reza tells no one he is a Kurd, suppressing all memories of his
maman’s tenderness and his baba’s bravery. He weds Meena, secretly hoping to
banish his orphan loneliness in her genteel breeding.
