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Next meeting: CNMS Bookclub

Veranstaltungsdaten

CNMS Bookclub

The book club’s next meeting is coming up. We’ll be reading and discussing the book Wenn Berge weinen (2026) by Gharbi M. Mustafa.
Gharbi M. Mustafa tells the story of a Kurdish boy, Hamko, growing up in Iraq in the 1980s and ’90s. It is a very personal story, told from Hamko’s perspective. Hamko lives with his family in Mosul. His first day of school becomes a defining experience for him; he comes to realize all too clearly that he doesn’t belong. The Iraqis of Arab descent despise everything Kurdish. He becomes the target of insults and beatings and must learn to stand up for himself. Later, the family is allowed to emigrate to the mountains, to the Kurdish regions in northern Iraq, where he soon makes friends and feels at home for the first time. But even here, no one is safe from the regime’s henchmen. And then the Iraq War begins, and a world comes crashing down…

The story tells of growing up in a patriarchal society shaped by tradition, of boyish pranks and first tentative love, of the search for one’s own identity, and of breaking free from family and cultural constraints. At the same time, this story also exemplifies the fate of the Kurdish people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein—a fate marked by systematic oppression and violence, futile hope, and displacement.

All interested parties are warmly welcome! The event will be held exclusively in German.