The Straw Seller Girl Kurdish Mona Lisa - Khajij Because of her beauty, a British officer kidnapped her in #Erbil# and took her to Britain. Khajij Juma Mawloud Shkak, known among the Kurds as The Straw Seller Girl, was kidnapped in 1934 by a senior British army officer in Iraq on her way home near Takya Sheikh Abdulkarim in Erbil. After asking for her hand and after no positive response from her father, On her way back and leaving her father's coffee shop within minutes, she was kidnapped. A few months after her kidnapping, Khajij's father, The Straw Seller Girl, was informed by the Jewish police station in the Ta'jil neighborhood that his daughter was in the UK. Sherzad Mohammed, nephew of Khajij continued his talks and said the father of Khajij, who is my grandfather, was both a military leader and a comrade and friend of Smail Agha, Simko Shkak. After the unjust killing of Smail Agha by the Iranian Imperial regime in 1930, he left the village of Gangachin in East Kurdistan in 1934, His daughter and son Khajij and Mohammed settled in Erbil with Simko Shikak's two daughters, Safiya, and Surme. My grandfather fled to Iraq in 1934 and settled in Erbil. My aunt Khajiji and his brother, my father, were both 12 years old at the time. They were born in 1922. My grandfather had no other children.Khajij's brother says his grandmother, who is the mother of The Straw Seller Girl, was of Russian descent. After their marriage, my grandfather changed her name to “Manij”. According to my father, she was a tall, beautiful woman with yellow hair and blue eyes When they came to Erbil in 1934, my grandfather returned to his village with the intention of bringing her to Erbil, but my grandmother was disappointed and returned to Russia. Sherzad goes back to his aunt and explains why she was called The Straw Seller Girl. “When my grandfather came to Erbil, he didn't know anything and didn't know anyone. So he rented a shop near the Hamra cinema and sold Straw. He had a stick of insects next to his shop. Therefore, those who brought grapes and fruits from the upper villages to Erbil bought straw for their cattle from my grandfather's coffee shop thus he was recognized as the straw seller. Sherzad, 50, who is the only memory of Kafrosh's family in Erbil, continues to tell his father about the day his aunt Khajiji was kidnapped. After my grandfather goes to the store, They had no relatives in Erbil. As usual, my aunt would tell my father, “Let's go to my father's shop. I'm going home and making lunch. My grandfather says you go home and let Mohammed be in the shop. I will bring him back with me.” “ khajij My aunt shikak complained on her way home,” Sherzad said. Before she reached Takya Sheikh Abdulkarim, according to witnesses, a car full of British soldiers stopped him, pushed him into the car, and kidnapped him. One of the witnesses knew my grandfather and came straight to the shop and told him that the British had kidnapped his daughter. After a long search, the Turkmens on the castle, who saw my grandfather knew no one in Erbil, advised him to go to the Jewish police station in the quickening neighborhood and file a complaint against his daughter's kidnappers. After three months of coming and going, they informed my grandfather's emergency police station that my aunt Khajiji was no longer in Iraq and had been taken to Britain. Khajiji was kidnapped at the age of twelve and in 1936, two years after her abduction, her photograph was published throughout Kurdistan. Sherzad Mohammad describes the characteristics of his aunt Khajija Shakaki: “What I heard from my father was that she enjoyed Shikaki's women's clothes. She always wore dresses and most of her shirts were red because she liked red. She wore gold belts on her shirts and my grandfather bought it for her to show how much she loved her . . . . . “The Straw Seller Girl liked two kinds of food, one was Hajami Kofta and the other was Grdor, a Shikaki food made of a mixture of rice, yogurt, and meat It is cooked. Sherzad added: Before the kidnapping of The Straw Seller Girl, the British official had proposed to her grandfather several times and expressed his willingness to do whatever they asked for. His father, Juma Kafroshi, says we are refugees here and will not sell our honor to the world.
When his daughter was kidnapped, as Sherzad relates, his father was a senior official of Samko Shakak and became a straw seller in Erbil. When his daughter disappears and is kidnapped, due to the amount of sadness he became blind in both eyes.
According to the brother of Kafrosh's daughter, her father died five years after her kidnapping and was buried in the square in Shaqlawa according to his will.
He repeats that he heard all these things from his father, who was my aunt's only brother, as a child.
To prove all the stories that Sherzad told about his grandfather, who was a leader and comrade of Simko Shakak, and his aunt, who is known among the Kurds as The Straw Seller Girl.
This is proof that he had a black-and-white picture of The Straw Seller Girl. where his aunt, his father, and his grandfather took it together. his grandfather was standing in the middle of them both with his hand on their shoulder. The girl in the photo was the same as the one published.[1]