Paris: Internship and Work at the Kurdish Institute

at the memorial website of Kavien Begikhani

Introduction

This page is about Kavien’s stay in Paris, july and august, 2018. He worked at the Kurdish Institute in Paris, organising parts of the archive and interwiewing the staff of the institute. This visit to Paris was made possible thanks to the kind support of The history of the Kurdish people was very close to Kavien’s heart and very closely related to his personal history and the tragic events in the lives of his family. The Paris pickpockets who robbed Kavien of his wallet, including all official documents, threw a dark shadow over his stay in the beautiful city and at the beautiful Institute. He was devastated by this event. In retrospect, this was the first occasion where he mentioned being tired - perhaps the first signs of a burnout. He made many photos in the institute, which show both his love for books and his compassion for the victims of the wars and genocides in Kurdistan, and the diaspora of the Kurdish people.

Photos

 
The photo shows Kavien together with Dr. Kendal Nezan, director of the Institute. Dr. Kendal and Kavien met on several occasions, such as on this photo, taken the year before when Dr. Kendal visited the Netherlands for a symposium.

 
This photo by Kavien shows a shelf of books about Kurdistan. The Institute has a very large library and Kavien made many photos of books and significant pages in those books. Note the titles such as Memoire de Kurdistan (Memory of Kurdistan) by Dr Joyce Blau (member of the Board of the Institute), Kurdische Grammatik (in German), Les Kurds et le Droit (in French). Kavien spent many hours in this library.

About the Institute

Created in February 1983, the Kurdish Institute is an independent, non-political, secular organisation, embracing Kurdish intellectuals and artists from different horizons as well as Western specialists on Kurdish Studies. Its objectives are to maintain in the Kurdish community a knowledge of its language, its history and its cultural heritage, to contribute to the integration of Kurdish immigrants to Europe into their host societies and to make the Kurds, their culture, their country and their present situation known to the general public. Also see the

One more photo


This photo shows one of the tiny, tiny, bookshops of Paris, at just 50 meters from the Institut Kurde de Paris, 106 Rue La Fayette. Loe made the picture about a year later, knowing that Kavien had a warm love of books and bookstores. When Loe showed the photo to Kavien, indeed he said with enthusiasm “heey, I know that man, I used to talk to him.”
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