The plane we were on, coming from Erbil, hovered over Baghdad just one hour after takeoff – Baghdad, whose sky still carries in its dust the breath of history and the lament of a land that has witnessed much injustice and much patience. A light haze veiled the city, like a thin curtain of ancient memories, concealing beneath it faces long gone but features never forgotten.

From behind the glass, Baghdad stretched out like the page of a book written in both blood and ink. I remembered all those who had sought to erase the Kurdish truth, who had tried to block the light of freedom from reaching the mountains, and I remembered those who had cried out for dignity. Yet truth resists death – like fire smoldering in ashes that have never cooled.

We had come to Baghdad to hold a forum in collaboration with the Barzani Charity Foundation and the Iraqi Parliament, introducing Jan Dost’s latest novel, The General’s Last Battles, which tells the story of General Mustafa Barzani - the man who became a legend, who bore the burdens of his people on his shoulders, led them through valleys of danger, and left an indelible mark on history, no matter how much time may change.

But the irony was both harsh and beautiful at once.

Here we were, visiting the very Baghdad that once issued his death sentence and hunted down his sons – even into the mass graves. The Baghdad that ordered the chemical bombing of Halabja. The Baghdad that, for decades, tried to bury the Kurdish voice beneath the sands of the south and under the shadow of the Anfal Campaign.

And here we were, honoring in its parliament the very man once pursued by its armies, condemned to death, and exiled from his homeland for many years.

This same Baghdad, which once branded Barzani as a rebel, a tribal feudal lord, a man of insurrection, now celebrates his name as a Kurdish icon adorning the hall of the Iraqi Council of Representatives.

What a scene!

It was as if history had grown weary of argument and decided, at last, to take the side of truth.

Barzani has returned to Baghdad – not as a prisoner, nor as an exile, but as a hero honored in the hall of parliament.

It is as though time itself has bowed in apology, and as though the mountains have sent forth one of their sons to remind the capital that pride cannot be bombed, that freedom cannot be buried in the desert, and that the sands of the southern mass graves cannot obscure the truth – for truth, like the oak tree, does not die.

I gazed at the faces of those present and heard a faint voice within me say:“Recognition came late, but it came… and it came clothed in pride, not remorse.”

In that moment, I felt the souls of the Kurdish martyrs hovering above the hall, like birds resting upon mountaintops after the rain.

I felt that three of General Barzani’s sons, and all those buried in unmarked graves, were with us, smiling from beyond absence, saying:

“We are here… We did not die in vain, nor were our steps lost.”

Baghdad, whose voice was once silenced by fear, now speaks in the name of justice.And the general who once carried mountains upon his shoulders has returned, light and unburdened, carried on the wings of memory.

He has returned…

Returned so that we might reclaim his past, and he might grant the future new meaning.

Returned to tell all of Iraq that dignity cannot be killed, and that though oppression may endure, its fate is always to break.

Returned to say: from the soil of persecution, honor is born; from the depth of the wound, freedom blooms.

Yes, the General has returned to Baghdad – fifty years later – victorious.