Children of the Jinn: In Search of the Kurds and Their Country

Forty years after the publication of Margaret Kahn's book, Children of the Jinn, Kurds, the fourth largest linguistic and ethnic group of the Middle East, are still being denied basic human rights. The book is an historical and ethnographic account of the lives and struggles of the individuals she met during the year Iraqi Kurds rose up, with American backing, to wrest their rights from the Ba'athist regime. In the Iranian border town where she lived, she witnessed the arrival of a hundred thousand refugees. She volunteered in the refugee school and saw first-hand what happened when the U.S. government reneged on its promises. She traveled by land over the Turkish border and was trailed by secret police aiming to suppress Kurdish rights. The book is also an intensely readable account of what it means to navigate a totally different culture. In a bygone world where international telephone connections were lacking and the internet did not exist, Kahn went from her native America to Iranian cities and then into remote mountain villages to learn more. Children of the Jinn tells the intimate tale of how she came to better understand the people whose story and culture she had fallen in love with. This second edition features many new photographs of the people described in the book as well as a glossary and a recommended reading list.