It began as a thin line on a map. The mountains were unnamed in the atlases of my youth. Rivers split and rejoined like sentences searching for their verbs. “Who are the Kurds?” I asked my father as we watched the news one evening in March 1988. The RPN 9 newscast reported that a chemical weapon attack was launched by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in northern Iraq. I was a freshman student at the University of Saint Louis in Baguio City back then. My question lodged at the back of my mind. On the maps I knew, the Kurds were an adjective without a noun, a rumor of a homeland. In the news, they were a headline that moved too fast to be seen. In the footnotes, they were history’s afterthought. I wanted to hear the voices between the lines.           

More than three decades have passed. Who could have foreseen that I would meet the Kurds?

From the moment I attempted to scribble my story, a message from a young Peshmerga friend guided me in writing this book, leaving a trace on my heart. It did more than comfort and inspired me, it called me to act. In those words, I recognized courage born of hardship, resilience built on hope, and an immortal spirit that even death cannot defeat. That message has crossed borders and endured silence, urging me to stay engaged. 
     

This book came from that sense of responsibility. It tells the story of a people often reduced to headlines or statistics. In seeking the Kurds, I found individuals on the edge of disappearance. I met families trying to rebuild their lives amid conflict, children learning forbidden language, and fighters aware that anonymity risked being forgotten. My friend's message became a call to listen, observe, keep writing, and share what others cannot express or can no longer say. 
 

I do not write as a spokesperson for the Kurds. I write as a witness—partial, imperfect, and accountable. Each chapter of this narrative is shaped by that original message. Stories are lifelines. Memory can resist erasure. Honest storytelling stands against forgetting. 
 

If this book succeeds, I hope that by the final page, the Kurds are no longer distant but a living presence: voices, faces, and names that deserve to be remembered. The message that once reached only me now belongs to you as well.