- Diana Nammi and Karen Attwood
A gripping and moving first-hand account of one woman’s fight to change the world around her
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Diana Nammi became a frontline fighter with the Peshmerga when she was only 17. But this wasn’t always her fate. Originally known as Galavezh (Morning Star), she grew up in the Kurdish region of Iran in the 1960s and 70s. This was a time of cooperation and looking out for neighbours. It was also a world of forced marriages, with a woman’s value determined by her husband or male relatives.
But Galavezh was cherished by her father, who was a kind and brave man. At the age of four, she witnessed him stepping forward to save a woman’s life on her wedding day, when she was threatened because it was believed that she was not a virgin. From this act, Galavezh learned that one person can change the world around them…
This is the story of what Galavezh did next. She became involved in political activities while at teacher training college as a teenager and as demonstrations to oust the hated Shah swept the country, Galavezh began to play an active part in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, like many other students. But after the Shah was forced to leave, the new Islamic Regime which came to power supported no opposition, and Galavezh found she had no choice but to become a soldier in the famed peshmerga fighting force, after Kurdistan was brutally attacked. She spent 12 years on the front line, and helped lead the fight for women’s rights and equality for the Kurdish people. She became one of the Iranian regime’s most wanted.
Peshmerga literally translates as “one who sacrifices oneself for others”. The forces, including more than a thousand women on active duty, are currently fighting ISIS in northern Iraq. This is the unique and powerful account of a woman who fought with these troops, travelling across Iran and Iraq, standing up for women and girls and slowly but surely changing the world.
Girl With A Gun is also a story about family with a powerful love story at its heart.
Deeyah Khan, award-winning filmmaker and activist: “Diana Nammi has been an inspiration to me ever since I was first finding my feet as a women's rights activist. Her story is full of drama … At every stage, she has displayed extraordinary courage and reserves of emotional strength. The world needs to know more about this incredible woman.”
Born in Kurdish Iran, Diana Nammi played an active part in the Iranian revolution before it was hijacked by the Islamists. At seventeen, she became a peshmerga fighter and was on the front line for 12 years. In the UK, she has been at the forefront of the battle to get ‘honour’ based crimes understood and prosecuted. She founded the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (IKWRO) in 2002.
Diana is a sought-after expert on honour-based violence and speaks all over the world on the issue of women’s rights and equality including at the European Parliament, in Westminster and on broadcast media, including the BBC. She has appeared in the following documentaries: Banaz, A Love Story (2012); Saudi Arabia, Uncovered (2012).
In 2012, Diana was named in a list of 150 women who shake the world by Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In 2014, she received the Special Jury Women on the Move Award from UNHCR and was recognised as one of BBC's 100 Women. In 2015, she won the Women of Courage Award from the Women's Refugee Commission in New York. In 2016, she received an honorary doctorate from Essex University.
Karen Attwood is an award-winning writer and journalist with 17 years’ experience working on international and UK national newspapers and magazines. In October 2014 she was sent to interview Diana Nammi for the Independent on Sunday, and knew straight away that her life story would make an incredible book and film.
Karen is a former staff writer at the Independent on Sunday, the Independent, the Press Association and The National, in Abu Dhabi, where she was on the launch team of the Emirate’s first English language newspaper. She has written extensively about women’s rights and gender issues and has won awards for a blog which documented her (now healthy seven-year-old) daughter’s treatment for leukaemia. She runs a media training business Nine Media, works for the international NGO Action Against Hunger and, as well as her time in Abu Dhabi, has lived in Japan and France.
My earliest memory is of an arranged marriage between a bride, not more than fourteen or fifteen, and a groom twice her age. Ahmed was a huge man who used to work in my father’s bakery. He had pockmarks all over his face. Partially blind due to a childhood disease, he would scare all the children with his one glaring eye.
It was the 1960s. I was not more than four years old but I remember vividly the dazzling beauty of the bride in her red and gold wedding outfit. Rana had long, shiny, black hair, delicate features in her bronze-coloured face and enormous black eyes, lined with kohl, which made them shimmer. She also wore a look that I recognised as fear.
Like all Kurdish weddings at that time, the celebration lasted for three days. On the first day, which was like a hen night, Rana went to the hammam with her bridesmaids before having her hands and feet elaborately painted in henna. On the second day, the music began and the guests of the groom came together to dance. Three brothers, the Zizi brothers, who were well known in Saquez, the small city in the middle of Iranian Kurdistan where I lived, sang and beat a huge drum.
The music was joyful, rapid and loud, as everyone held hands in a circle. The younger guests began to show off and move faster and faster. I felt dizzy just watching them. The guests took turns in leading the dance and I felt proud as my handsome father held a glittery scarf, a chopi, aloft to lead the dancers round and round.
On the third day, the bride’s family brought Rana to the ceremony in a car through the city and her father handed her over to Ahmed, who was dressed in a traditional white shirt and dark blue trousers, known as a kava and pantol.
The dancing and singing continued into the night and then suddenly, as though the lights had gone out, the atmosphere changed.
My mother took my hand and we went into the dark and smoky bedroom. It was a messy room with the bedclothes all in disarray, with just one dimly lit lamp in the corner. I could see a long white piece of material lying on the mattress and a beautiful rug on the floor. In a corner sat the lovely Rana holding her knees and crying quietly. She was trying to cover herself with her long dress. Her long black hair tumbled all around her body.
Ahmed was standing towering above the bride, his expression cold as ice. He appeared completely unmoved by his new bride’s distress. Rana’s mother was also down on the floor, holding onto Ahmed’s legs and crying: “Please don’t send her back home, her father and brothers will kill her.”
Girl With A Gun is 96% funded. Can you help us to the finish line?
Friday, 8 June 2018
Fantastic news - we are at 96% funded. A huge thanks to our recent pledgers and even bigger thanks to our very first supporters who pledged a year ago now and must be wondering when they will ever get this book! We are planning to submit our manuscript to Unbound at the end of August with publication earmarked for next year.
So help us get to fully funded so we can make this happen. Please…
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An extract from Girl With A Gun and new pledge levels added
Tuesday, 23 January 2018
Now that we are at 82% funded (thank you so much for all of your support!) Diana and I are gearing up our writing. We have also added a number of pledge levels to help to get us to 100% funded, including five limited edition prints of this incredible photo above which shows Diana, in the centre, with a group of Peshmerga.
As a thank you for your support here is an extract from Girl With A…
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Festive Greetings and we're almost 80% funded
Wednesday, 13 December 2017
Diana with her younger sister in Kurdistan, Iran in the late 1960s.
Girl With A Gun is currently 79% funded which is excellent news. If you can help us edge over 80% by telling your friends about the book, upgrading your pledge or by getting an alternative Christmas present for someone by pledging on their behalf that would be wonderful.
Now that we are so much closer to being fully…
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Girl With A Gun - We are 70% funded
Friday, 3 November 2017
Today, we're sharing this beautiful photograph of Diana in Kurdistan, Iran, along with the news that we are 70% funded! Unbound tell us that all of their books that have hit 70% have gone on to fund completely so this is a huge milestone and really exciting. Please do help us to keep up the momentum by telling your friends, family and colleagues about Girl With A Gun and encouraging them to pledge…
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Upcoming Funzing Events and 40% funded
Saturday, 7 October 2017
Dear Girl With A Gun supporters,
We have a number of Girl With A Gun events that we'd love you to attend. The first one is on Wednesday, October 11, on Battersea Barge, South London. I will be interviewing Diana about her life as a woman on the frontline in Iran and Iraq and how she set up her charity IKWRO in London to campaign against honour-based violence. You can get tickets at this Funzing…
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Girl With A Gun on Sky News, one third funded and Funzing!
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
Diana Nammi has made an appearance on Sky News breakfast show Sunrise where she talked about her life as a peshmerga and our book Girl With A Gun. You can see the video of the interview here.
We've also been busy with a Funzing event - these are after work talks in London. Our event at vegan pub The Haunt in Stoke Newington completely sold out and we had an excellent audience who asked some thought…
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One quarter funded, Sisterhood magazine interview and a pledge party!
Saturday, 15 July 2017
We have made it to one quarter funded which is excellent news. We are well on our way. Thank you to those who are among our first supporters. Getting from 25% to 50% can be one of the most difficult parts of crowdfinding as many people will not fund a project until it gets to the half way mark so it is vital to build momentum at this stage and not stall the campaign. You are now our key cheerleaders…
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Thank you - almost 100 supporters for Girl With A Gun
Saturday, 17 June 2017
Dear crowdfunders,
Firstly, a huge thank you for buying a pre-order copy of our book. We are at 98 supporters in just over a month and at 18% of our target funding level. We cannot do this without your support so do please spread the word about our book among your friends and family and anyone you think might be interested in Girl With A Gun, the story of Diana's early years, the Iranian Revolution…
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These people are helping to fund Girl With a Gun: A Teenage Freedom Fighter in Iran.
Hi, I read about this amazing story on sisterhood. I would like to support but don't want my name to appear in the book. Is there a way to donate without a mention?
Hi David,
Thanks for getting in touch. You can chose to be anonymous if you'd prefer. Please see here for details: http://help.unbound.com/unbound-for-readers/pledging-for-a-project/can-i-support-a-book-anonymously.
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Unbound Support.