A goat herder by trade and so illiterate that he had his name tattooed on his forearm, Ahmed suffered under the years of Isis occupation and his father had earlier been killed during the Iraq war.

What, the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder asked, was more natural than a nation emerging from its long infancy in its ...

What, the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder asked, was more natural than a nation emerging from its long infancy in its historic home? Origins and innocence, blood and soil, national mythology ...