The Potato Eaters: Stories

We Are the Sacrifice of Our Time: On Farhad Pirbal’s The Potato Eaters

An Introduction by Porochista Khakpour

Farhad Pirbal entered my life at the worst time possible, which really could not have been more perfect. I had more on my plate than ever, and that should not be read in the glamorously dismissive way some literary elite refer to their projects. I was too busy, of course, but not because of the muses. I was late on my tax extension; my elderly dog was not thriving; my partner and I were at each other’s throats. Also, our four-hundred-something-square-foot studio apartment had become a nonstop construction zone—a galling symphony of drills and hammers and saws was our daily soundtrack, results of demolition and renovation of the scale you recognize just might be there to con old tenants out so they can quadruple rents. Broke, tired, sick was my daily anti-affirmation. All was bad.

Maybe because I’d heard of him or because I have an interest in Kurdish writers or because Deep Vellum does great books, something told me to say yes to writing this introduction amidst the chaos. In came the manuscript and I continued to fall apart, but by the time I got lost in these stories, the world was falling apart with me. Suddenly our world was back in wartime, the kind of war we never quite witness—not like this at least, a hell of baby limbs and blood and guts and debris and missile whistles and mothers’ screams and the never-ending toxic discourse of too-comfortable, theory-poisoned scholars and analysts, an inevitability broadcast from every last-gasping social media platform. Broke, tired, sick, said the world back to us. Then we moved into a new apartment that sounded too good to be true and then was too good to be true; instead of construction sounds all day every day, there were low-flying airplanes ascending from and descending to a local airport at such low altitude that they evoked fighter jets deploying for combat. My first memories on this planet happen to be the first years of the Iran-Iraq War and so anything approaching the theatrics of armed conflict easily blisters into all-too-familiar panic for me. This was my origin story as a refugee, after all. Broke, tired, sick. I began to dream of leaving this place, any place; I began feeling like I was truly losing my mind a little, and instead of friends consoling me when they heard that, their answer became, Yes, me too.

At my preferred hours to read and write, the night owl’s nine–five, I started reading and reading. In a way, all my despairs, old and new, found a perfect home in the Pirbalian universe.

How does one describe Farhad Pirbal to Western readers? Could he be a bit Charles Bukowski? Maybe a bit Gregory Corso, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Hunter S. Thompson, William Gay—plus a touch of the surrealists and Dadaists from Europe, and don’t forget a dash of the mischievous Sufi agitators of the East! But the truth is, trying to find someone to compare Pirbal to is useless, as he is that rare, near-mythic true original. We are all destined to be bad imitators of his if we’re lucky! But his singularity goes further than just words on a page. After all, what literary tradition can boast a prolific genius of this magnitude who also spends his spare time going in and out of prison for everything from disorderly conduct to arson. (I promise I’ll get to that.) You—probably broke, tired, and sick as I am (and Pirbal is too!)—know it would be as useless to blame the poet as it would to blame poetry. Especially in this case: for as much as Pirbal seems to struggle with the world he’s in, I can’t help but feel it’s the world that’s somehow fallen short of him.

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Farhad Pirbal is a sixty-two-year-old writer, philosopher, singer, poet, painter, and critic from Hawler, Southern Kurdistan. As translator, scholar, and my friend Shook wrote in a beautiful essay on him for Poetry Foundation, Pirbal may be the greatest innovator of Kurdish literature in the twentieth century, in both poetry and prose.

I’d just add that it goes further than great: Pirbal is one of the most unforgettable icons of the Kurdish art world—the kind of public figure who gets stopped on the street—and for good reason. He is a social media fiend, extremely present on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter. There’s something absolutely charming about this kind of extremely accessible anti-celebrity; against your will you’ll find yourself mesmerized by his wild-eyed, shaggy-haired, ever-gesticulating presence, demanding you hear him. He’s not easy to forget. He looks like the kind of guy who is not quite an old man, but who has looked like one his whole life, his signature overgrown mustache giving off eccentricity and affability. He was a renowned mad professor and he looks like it, the sort of West Asian genius whose earthy crudeness tempers a slightly mystical air. Everything about him is equal parts intimidating and lovable.

All you have to do is search his name on Twitter to see all kinds of hero worship from a young audience. Some of it is due to his attention to human rights activism—Pirbal has not been shy about pushing back against ruling parties and politicians of all kinds. But the rest seems to be due to mostly, well, vibes. babe wake up! Farhad Pirbal is having another meltdown! an account in Hawler quips; I have activated my farhad pirbal mode and life is getting better, a young Kurdish woman in traditional Newroz garb declares; there’s even a tweet which features a very bizarre, ornate portrait of him and Adele set to a thrillingly addictive mash-up of her song Set Fire to the Rain with Pirbal’s tumultuous oratory.

The kids aren’t just making fun. They know this is a scholar, that he studied Kurdish language and literature at the University of Salahadin. They know that in 1986, he left Kurdistan for France, where he continued his Kurdish literature studies at the Sorbonne. They know about the cultural center he set up in the mid ’90s in Southern Kurdistan. They know this man deserves the highest level of respect.

But they also know everything else, and that’s the line where the normal stuff ends. You can’t talk Pirbal without getting into his infamy.

Pirbal has not been shy about talking about all this and neither has his family. A few years ago, his family turned to the public, urging for his arrest as a step towards rehabilitation:

We, the family of Dr. Farhad, are very saddened by his inappropriate and unfair behavior in the Kurdistan Region’s cities and towns, especially in the city of Hawler, and especially by his verbal attacks and foul language against public figures and officials. We seek an apology from all the parties. He is suffering from psychological problems and is addicted to drugs. His health conditions are very bad … He is currently a threat to the safety and security of the public. Hence, we call on the KRG to take quick and appropriate measures against him …

But in July 2019, things took a turn for the worse. Pirbal went as far as setting the Wafaiy House library on fire, videotaping his arson and posting it on Facebook. Rumors have swirled that he was upset about copyright infringement and not getting paid on time, but he was arrested within hours and spent some months in prison again. The charges were ultimately dropped, as was a lawsuit.

Pirbal, the mischievous trouble-making trickster who seems to get away with everything, is a little irresistible in our chaotic times (or entertaining at least!). But there’s also another way his penchant for self-sabotage hits home: Pirbal is the most uncompromising survivor in letters. And at least for those of us of the broke, tired, sick ilk, we need this story too.

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In my literary circles, everyone loves to relay the endearing anecdote of Kafka laughing uncontrollably while reading some of his darkest writing to friends. You can find Pirbal in that anecdote too, but take his essence dipped in acid and processed through a blender. There’s laughter, sure, but there’s something else, perhaps some singing then screaming then crying then laughing again, then the kind of crying that becomes laughter that becomes crying that becomes laughter … the uproar only certain men equally exalted and fallen seem made of.

Some of us will just get it, for others it might take a second. But for me reading Pirbal felt like therapy—just like hearing about his life somehow felt healing. There are few truly outlandish iconoclasts left, it feels like, and if they exist the mainstream certainly hasn’t let them become a celebrity the way Pirbal has. Pirbal is for the overeducated who have given up their concept of those laurels; he’s for the extremely prolific writers who constantly threaten to never write again; he’s for the messy artists who make everyone a bit nervous with their insistence on messes; he’s gonna wreck someone’s night but you hope it’s not yours so you can just watch. He’s the miracle of second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. chances for the bad kids—and there’s nothing consoling about his life. There is no happy ending in his own story or his own stories. Maybe the only happy ending is evidence of him so defiantly alive on the page, on the streets, on the internet.

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Is it possible to put Pirbal the man aside for a moment and just marvel at the stories in The Potato Eaters? I was delighted to realize, yes, the creation more than lives up to the saga of the creator.

To begin with, these stories are a master class in all kinds of formal innovation. His prose is the work of a poet. He utilizes syntactical precision and structural economy with the same intensity with which he sets free entire passages into the lush and unapologetically orchestral wild. Metaphors pierce reality and the figurative turns literal without warning. Footnotes work like you’ve never seen them work before. The second person is employed so masterfully you barely notice