Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed was just 10 years old when a series of events following the 1958 military coup forced her family to flee Iraq. Her father, the eminent Kurdish jurist and author Ibrahim Ahmed, had already survived one assassination attempt after serving time in Baghdad’s notorious Abu Graib prison on trumped-up charges of insurrection. His novel Jani Gal, written while incarcerated, was widely viewed as a call for Kurdish independence during a time of violent upheaval in Iraqi politics. Her novelist mother, Galawezh, refused to leave her husband’s side and, along with their eight children,…