Unconquered Peaks

“It’s not just me that’s saying it, the fact is that Sykes-Picot has failed, it’s over,” declared Massoud Barzani in a 2016 BBC interview. As president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region and a leader of the world’s largest stateless nation, Barzani’s condemnation reflects more than Kurdish grievance. Signed in 1916 by Britain and France, the Sykes-Picot Agreement symbolises the imperial imposition of borders that divided previously fluid populations and produced states with weak national identity and legitimacy. While only one of several wartime agreements, it has come to represent a broader dissatisfaction with externally imposed statehood in the Middle East and the enduring instability those borders helped create.

It always happens at the worst possible moment. A silent exam hall. A quiet bedroom at night. A library so still it feels like noise would be illegal. And then – out of nowhere – a high-pitched ringing appears, as if the brain has decided to test a fire alarm that no one installed. The question is simple, slightly annoying, and surprisingly fascinating: why do our ears ring when everything is quiet?