He was just nineteen and newly married when they were forced to flee. I try to picture them: faces furrowed with worry as they melt into the mountains, fugitives in their own land.
Today, there isn't much to mark the spot: a few tanks – surprisingly small, almost like outsized toys – behind a wire enclosure.
'Here in Kore, there was big –'
'Battle?' I venture, helpfully.
'No –' Sleman hesitates, uncertain of what I mean, before settling on '– big fight.'
I sense a tinge of doomed heroism behind his words.
The Kurdish uprising of 1991 was quickly and brutally quelled but, here at this pass at least, the Kurds had stood up to Saddam's army and had repulsed it, capturing the tanks that still stand like a gesture of defiance to Baghdad.
We continue towards Shaqlawa, but stop in the Safeen mountains for me to visit the cave of Raban Boya. I know very little about the place, other than that there was once a Chaldean Catholic hermitage high in the rocky hillside. The pious still come – pilgrims of various faiths – 'to ask for children', explains Sleman. So I am surprised to encounter an elderly couple toiling their way down as I ascend. We smile at each other shyly as we pass, each guessing what the other's business might be.
The path to the shrine is steep in parts. The shrine itself comes as a disappointment: a small grotto blackened by candle smoke, with multi-coloured mounds of melted wax.
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