Spring 1979, with Adel Murad in Nawzang, on the Iraqi-Iranian border. The Iranian revolution was in full swing, Ghassemlou's KDP-I was in control of Mahabad, Sanandaj was contested between the leftists who later established Komala and Moftizadeh's Islamists, and Kermanshah was Kurdish but mostly Shi`i and sympathetic with the revolution. The valley of Nawzang, just across the border, was Talabani's headquarters. (Mahmud Osman's Socialist Party of Kurdistan was there too but soon moved out.) I remember sleeping on the floor in Talabani's simple house, beside Fuad Mahsum, who is now Iraq's president. But of all the people I met there (including Noshirwan, the later founder of Gorran), it was Adel to whom I felt closest. We had first met a few years earlier, at an AKSA conference in Germany. [1]