35.55707° N, 45.42591° E – IRAQ

The Kurds’ reputation for courage has been won by centuries of resistance and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. This project centers around the remarkable Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, a Peshmerga fighter and one of the foremost intellectuals in Kurdistan. During the 2003 invasion, she swept down from the mountains and dispatched her forces to safeguard the Sulaymaniyah Museum from further looting.

Then she set up and ran a ten-year undercover operation, using her own money and intelligence operatives to buy looted antiquities from the black market before they disappeared for ever. 

One of the recovered pieces is the Gilgamesh Tablet V, part of the earliest surviving works of literature- and the foundation for everything that follows from early heroic sagas to the modern novel. 

In 2023 Jonah X travelled to Sulaymaniyah to meet with the legendary Peshmerga leader Kak Mahmoud and the curators of the Sulaymaniyah Museum.