By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
Summer, 1987. In the mountainous village of Bergalou, northern Iraq, it literally started raining birds. The poor animals dropped mid-flight when the Saddam Hussein administration dropped chemical bombs on the Kurds, a persecuted ethnic minority.
Temporarily blinded by the toxic attack, Joanna is saved by her husband Sarbast, a ``peshmerga,'' or Kurdish freedom fighter. The two miraculously escape, living through other bombardments and deadly hurdles. Now living in the United Kingdom, Joanna and her family are most fortunate ― unlike the other hundreds of thousands, they have survived to tell their story.
But this is more than a story of survival. Winged with hope and compassion, it is about a woman's extraordinary courage to live ― and to love.
Jean Sasson, the author of ``Princess'' and other international best sellers chronicling the oppression of Middle Eastern women, brings ``Love in a Torn Land.'' Topping charts in the United States and the United Kingdom, the incredible true tale now comes to Korea.
The Korean version is brought by David In-yeup Song, director of the Humanitarian Aid Team at the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), and Gen. Choi Ik-bong, formerly dispatched in Korea's Camp Zaytun in Iraq. The Korean title ``Peshmerga Lovers'' (Today Book: 439 pp., 13,500 won) was selected through a contest, which drew over 2,000 submissions.