Kchi Kafrosh, the unknown MOna Lisa

                                            Kchi Kafrosh

                                                                                The unknown Mona Lisa

The writer’s memoir,

I am an English artist from a royal British family; my name is Sam Grudge, born in 1963, England-Nottinghamshire. Art was always a hidden treasure in me which I could feel it, just like a baby inside a pregnant woman who can sense the moves, the heart, and the soul. After finishing primary, I went to an art academy and then became a painter.

In history of painting, there are many peculiar pieces of great and all-time painters, but nothing bewildered and bewitched me as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I, as everyone else, tried my best to understand the veiled secret of the legend, but more I studied more I drowned. I was assured that certainly not even there cannot be anything akin to, but that no piece dares to approximate the circle of magic of Mona Lisa. This belief persists throughout my years of painting until the time has befallen to change everything. I am a traveler, and visited many countries like Brazil, India, China, Mozambique, Ghana, and etc, and one of my friends who worked in UNESCO after the Iraq war by months asked me if I would like to volunteer myself with a group to go to Iraq carrying the slogan of social awareness; which worked to increase the social awareness of Iraqi people. Though I knew how dangerous it was, I acceded to, and went there.

First we started from the south part, and then we went to the north part, Kurdistan, an autonomous region, where Kurds live. One day in summer, after been in Iraq for a month already, we went to a countryside which was the first place to visit in the North part. The people all came towards us with open-arms and hospitality, the leader of the village invited us to his Diwaxan, a large sitting hall more like a large tent with the floor equipped with carpets and rugs and very big rest pillows for the back. Everything there was folkloric; the jams, beakers, clothes, even the people. Then after sitting for awhile something hung on the adobe wall opposite me quake and shivered my senses. I dropped my rucksack and stood up towards a painting on the wall. It was a woman with divine beauty; a goddess may begrudge her beatification. The same sense of Mona Lisa’s feeling pulsed up from my blood again which I never had had it for years. More I observed the painting; I leaped myself more into it.

I do not know how long I stupefied there like a statue, but what I know I found my bearings after babble from the local presidents with our translator   who was a Kurd too. Then he said “Sir, are you amazed by the painting?”

Well I did not know, it was not amazement, it was cursed with magic, and I was under the accurse of the woman. “Yes, yes…!” these were the only thing I could utter.

“Who painted this, who is she?” I said with bated breath.

“This is Kchi Kafrosh, people in Kurdistan allude to her as Kurdish Mona Lisa, I assume there are few places you would go and don’t see Kchi Kafrosh.”

I felt like there is a story behind the painting, I was eager and agog to know so with alacrity I asked “Is there a story behind this painting, it does not seem to be a local painter who painted this.”

“You are right, her story is very well known, almost everyone knows, from the elders to the babies.” He turned to translate these words to the locals, and I could not wait to hear it, I needed to know.

“This is nana Miriam,” the translator pointed at a very old bend back woman, “she will tell you the whole story, and I will translate it for you.”

                                           The Story

In 1928, the Kafrosh family- a father with a girl and a boy, moved in from Kurdistan Iran to Koya; a Kurdish city.  They moved in for trade and they settled there after the mother dying recently.  The folk knew little about them, but soon the beauties of the daughter bamboozle d and bewitched everyone.  She was in every talk, between every two persons, and among women. She was fourteen years old and 5 years older than her brother.

Her father started to work and opened a shop for selling ka, and because people not knew her or her name they started to call her Kchi Kafrosh.  It was not a year passed when one day while as usual she was taking lunch to her father through the bazaar, a British officer, who was in charge of the area, saw her and batty fell in love with her.

“Who is she, run after her…Hurry! Hurry!” the officer commanded the batman who found all about her and reported it to the officer.

After that day he always stood in the way to see her because she was a household since their mother was dead, and only came out to send food to his father and brother. The officer asked her hand, but her father rejected it since they were Muslims and if he gave her daughter to a Christian, unknown, and foreign person, he would have lost his reputation for ever. So however the officer tried to persuade him he rejected him. Even some said she also did not like to marry the officer, although he promised to marry her from an Islamic principle, and will cover her in gold, and help her father and brother, but they refused him.

Everyone in Koya knew about the one side love of the officer, and the bold rejections of Kchi Kafrosh. Then one day the officer decided to end the issue and prepared a plan. When as accustomed she brought food to her father, a unit of British soldiers surrounded her and abducted her, and the officer taking her fled back to Britain. When a local called her father and told him that he had seen the soldiers kidnapping her, he searched everywhere, visited and claimed every possible place for any news, while the British counsel promised to bring her back, nothing was known about her, till after some years later when a painting of Kchi Kafrosh arrived painted by a British painter.  From then Kchi Kafrosh became the legend and a fairytale handed down from one generation to another, and her story shall be told forever. Some said he created a castle for her and as he promised bejeweled her as in the picture, and that she lived her live away from her father and brother.

When Nana Miriam finished the story, everyone was puzzled and spelled. I went back to the painting and promised to promote it and write a story about Kchi Kafrosh, The unknown Mona Lisa.

Notes:

1. The story is a true story
2. Terminology:

• Kch: daughter, kchi: the daughter of
• Kafrosh: straw seller
• Nana: an old woman or grand mother.
• it is her real painting