If you were told by someone that America has had Kurds as early as 1870, you would be denying it without any hesitation. Well, you could have been right all along until about a month ago when Mr.Qazi proved otherwise. Mohammed Qazi, a Kurdish American from Nashville, Tennessee, is embarking on writing a book dealing with the history of Kurdish immigration to America.

Mohammed Qazi

Mr. Qazi has spent a great many hours in the last couple of years inside
libraries, investigating and exploring thousands of archive documents in the
hope of learning about the very first wave of Kurdish immigrants to America.

Mr. Qazi, informing the Kurdistan Observer in a telephone conversation, has
collected hundreds of pages of information regarding the Kurdish settlers in
America.
 

Asked about the oldest immigrants to the United States, Mr. Qazi said "one month ago, I traveled to the city of Detroit in Michigan following a lead that a 68 years old man whose father had emigrated from Kurdistan and came to America in 1919.  I    was delighted to meet Mustaffa Salem on Feb 1, 2002 in Detroit. He introduced his wife and his mother to me. Musttafa, a retired police officer, told me that his father came to America leaving Northern Kurdistan when he was only 15.  His 90 year old mother of excellent health was Canadian but resettled in Michigan after she married his father in 1930." Mr. Qazi added that Mustafa and his mother still know a few Kurdish words.

Mustafa's parents and his older brother

Mustafa's father landed in America with the help of his uncle, Khalil, who settled in Michigan between 1865 and 1870.  Mustafa had a brother who died when he was 63. He also has a sister in Detroit. Mustfa and his wife have two sons and two grandsons. 

When asked about any travel document they might have, Mr. Qazi said" Mustafa presented to me an official Ottoman Empire identification card of his uncle, Khalil, and many other travel documents related to his father.

Mustafa's mother informed me that many more Kurds accompanied Khalil
and her husband on their journey to America. Mustafa and his mother drove me to a cemetery outside Detroit where she showed me more than twenty graves,  all close friends of Salem and his uncle Khalil.  She said that all were Kurds. 

When I met Mustafa's grandsons, Mustafa asked one of his grandsons if he learnt any Kurdish from their grandfather.  The grandson replied " Avê bu min bine"  or "bring me some water".