Kurdish poet Rafiq Sabir buried in hometown of Qaladze

QALADZE — The body of Kurdish poet and writer Rafiq Sabir was buried Sunday in his hometown of Qaladze, in Sulaymaniyah governorate, in accordance with his will, during a ceremony attended by a large number of local residents.

Sabir died on February 28 in Stockholm at the age of 76 after an illness. His body could not be returned to the Kurdistan Region at the time, owing to the closure of Iraqi airspace following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that began the same day.

Born in 1950 in Qaladze, Sabir was regarded as a leading voice in modern Kurdish poetry. He spent years as a Peshmerga before the 1991 Kurdish uprising and later lived in exile. Among his best-known works is “Lawki Halabja,” a poem addressing the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja carried out by Iraq’s Baath regime, which killed more than 5,000 people and injured more than 10,000. His poetry collections include “Burning in the Rain,” “Mirror and Shadow” and “An Appointment with Light,” with his collected poems issued in two volumes under the title “Secrets and Doubt.” He also wrote works of political and literary criticism, including “Culture and Nationalism” and “The Empire of Sand.”

In his will, Sabir asked to be buried in Qaladze, for his personal library to be donated to the Qaladze Public Library and for a collection of his literary letters to be published after his death.

His wife died of cancer five years before him. He is survived by their daughter, Maria.