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Karzan and Josie Kreer-ka , are now happily married with two children, Tarot and Tasha … but the road was bumpy - if politics brought them together, it also nearly pulled them apart…

Karzan comes from south Kurdistan, the area occupied by Iraq. As a Kurd he did not have the right to go to university to continue his studies, so in 1984, he left his country and family to go to Venice to pursue his film studies. There he met Josie, who had been brought up near Bath, who'd gone to Venice to see a friend and find out what to do next in life. Josie intended to stay only 4 months, but ended up staying 7 years with Karzan.

After the Gulf War, in 1991, Karzan returned home to visit his family for the first time in eleven years, "So many disasters and tragedies had happened there - and when I came back, I had sort of gone mad. I was so depressed I refused to acknowledge all the eleven years of the life I had created in Europe acting, everything … I went to Josie’s parents in Bath to tell them the relationship had finished."…m For Josie, this was terrible, "I knew it was going to be a very emotional journey for him, but I didn’t expect the total rejection of everything - I was shocked - he was so changed. It was awful!"

Josie and Karzan decided to finish their relationship in Venice, "It’s not that we didn’t want to be together any more," says Karzan, "it’s just that something had gone wrong when I went back to see my family." But Venice played its tricks on the pair, "The magic went inside me - this was my home. Home was no longer the place I’d left in Kurdistan, or the home in England where Josie comes from - Venice was our place, this is where we met." They decided to get married.

Easier said in Venice, than done in England. Josie wanted to return to England for the wedding and to open her carnival mask business here. But each time Karzan tried to visit Josie, he was faced with constant detention and questioning by the authorities, "Even when I came with my marriage visa - I was kept for one hour - they phoned Josie to see if it was true."

Josie parents were delighted. Karzan had become close to Josie’s family during the time when whe was unable to return to Kurdistan. But for Karzan, it was rather different, "My family had never met foreigner and to think I was to marry an English girl was very alien to them. I didn’t know how they’d react." The wedding in England could not include Karzan’s family - who were not allowed to travel out of Kurdistan. Eventually, in 1993, with the UN safe haven’s initiative, Karzan & Josie travelled to Kurdistan, "I felt a huge responsibility taking my parents and brother there because of the unstable poilitcal situation. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I saw Karzan and his family waiting, I felt the responsibilty drop away, and I felt welcomed."

Karzan wanted Josie in particular to meet his father, who has since died. "I’m very happy I met him," says Jose, "I felt honoured, - he welcomed me where many families would not dream of allowing their child marry a foreigner." Karzan too, was surprised by his own father, "My father was not literate - he'd never even seen a movie - but he took two rings from his pocket, putting one on Joses’s finger and one on mine - this is not a Kurdish tradition to do this, but he was trying in his own way to bring the two cultures together."

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