Glory Ho

Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) means between two rivers. In this case, the Euphrates and the Tigris. This ancient land was where agriculture (hey, maybe we should grow something and then eat it! Or sell it!) and writing (hey, if I write it down now, I can look it up later!) were actually INVENTED. First it was the Sumerians as early as 23rd Century BC, then a ruler by the name of Nebuchadnezzar (have you seen the Matrix?) presided over the Babylonians.

I don’t know how to say this, but I mean, that’s kind of a big deal.

Today, a taxi drove us to Dohuk today in Northwest Iraq. We rode through long stretches of sandy wasteland, squat cinderblock villages and checkpoints with Barzani photos. We passed the road to Mosul and Baghdad. (We were 30 miles from Mosul, if you must know.)

We whizzed by a celebrating wedding party in the cracked landscape. A community of mud huts with a proud UN Flag was a refugee camp for PKK families. Dohuk was happier, more hospitable and more articulate than Erbil. Whatever message we implicitly received along its streets had been carved into the air with care and pride. The town was at the foot of one-dimensional, movie-set mountains, much like the Flatirons from Highway 91. Below, the pink, blue and yellow houses of a Christmas-tree sheltered 1970’s train set city lacked only the open-book roofs to make it a Rocky Mountain mining town.

The next day we rode further north. As the grassless, rocky foothills of the depressing landscape became mountains, they formed the long backsides of a stegosaurus or brontosaurus. Amedya was a village on a plateau pedestal, with the carved white gates of Mosul, now cracked and neglected, serving as a shepherds cliff-side refuge.

A family (I think three of these women are wives) in Amedya. Nothing too new. We were served food and drink in two different homes–sometimes a stone shack, other times a furnished house. Everyone was bewildered, but kind.

On this one hundred and thirty fourth day on our life in the Middle East, cultural differences had become mere nuances. The dash of sugar thrown into the stew, the right clogs with an outfit.

Until we visited Lalesh, the principal holy site of the Yezidi people. While the Yezidis are ethnically and culturally Kurdish and they speak Kurmanji, (Northern Kurdish), their religious beliefs distinguish them from Iraqi’s Muslim majority.

Yezidism, with flavors of Christianity, Islam and paganism , believe that they are all descendants of Adam, rather than Eve. They worship Melek Taus, a peacock, which they consider to be the leader of the archangels. Just as this archangel was given the choice for good or evil by God himself, (he chose good) the potential for both exists in human beings.

Are you still with me?

It gets better, or rather, worse. Superstitious laws of purity govern the Yezidi community with a freshly scrubbed and fierce hand. The color blue cannot be worn. Stepping on the threshold of any temple is forbidden. Spitting on any of the four elements, earth, air, water or fire, is considered impure. Perhaps most narrow-minded, is that Yezidi communities believe that contact with non-Yezidi people is polluting to the spirit and soul. Sharing such items as dishes or blankets with outsiders is forbidden. They do not allow converts and marrying outside the religion is viewed as cause for exorcism from society or honor killing. Sometimes, as a YouTube video exposed, in the form of a public stoning. In 2007, Du’a Khalil Aswad was stoned to death for her involvement with a Muslim boy. I still shudder at the thought.

This is not an uncommon practice and not confined to the Yezidi region of Iraq.
However, as Michael learned about the roots of Mormonism in Under the Banner of Heaven, as we stood within the circle of Christianity’s parables and miracles in Jerusalem and as we’ve struggled to focus on the ever-blurry line between the culture and religion of Muslim countries, one thing has become apparent. All religion, at face value, without promotion, politics or emotion, to someone equipped with an average amount of reasoning, sounds a little wack. Yet we must respect the beliefs of those we encounter.

Yezidism is no different, right? This is what I try and tell myself.

But I just can’t do it anymore. Throughout our travels, we are constantly forced to honor the religion around us. To adapt to misogynistic customs and oppressive rules. To listen with the polite expression of a guest and preserve what’s left of the tattered American image. And we’re usually doing this as they explain to us just what’s wrong with the United States.

Honor killings are wrong. And I’m ashamed that we wandered around with these Yezidis without pressing the issue.

Location: Northern Iraq

Twenty minutes outside the buzz of Rania, away in an unnamed village, soccer games mixed with goat herds, ratty cows were free agents, houses were made of cinderblock or stone, water for drinking and washing came only from an outside tank and this is the community school:

Away from the generators of the dirty city, pearls slept undisturbed in the afternoon sky, blanketing the village in jewels it never asked for. The ridges in the distance rose in fits like a healthy EKG. Shepherds nodded and raised their cane in greeting as we scrambled across rocks toward a spring. This was a different dimension. Part Braveheart. Part Greek myth. When a couple of gypsy-scarfed women eating sunflower seeds on a blanket asked us to stay for tea, we accepted. I want to say to them:

Your kettle has the skin of a tough but scarred old woman as it rests, straight-faced in the flames. Do be careful when you pour the water. Your teeth are so loose that the tea flows between them. Please, just two scoops of sugar or you will lose them. Your hands are so chapped from washing and drinking outside—please, let me loan you my cream.

But they are content. They don’t need my panic or warnings or even my Burts Bees Lip Balm.

When a proud village family asks us for tea ten minutes later, we accept again. I want to say to them:

Your fair skin is surprising and I know you won’t like this, but your hospitality reminds me of Turkey. I know we can’t talk, but I find you as fascinating as you do me, and I understand the messages in the lines of your face. I know I can’t take your picture, but thank you for letting me gaze at your face.

When my parents arrived at our Peace Corps apartment in Bulgaria last spring, I warned them about the door. Covered in a somewhat convincing wood-grain peel with a massive gold knob, it had no less than six bolts–four in the middle, one in the ceiling and one which shot into the floor. Seeing this door causes two potential reactions: 1) Wow, Sofia must be a dangerous city or 2) Wow, someone’s paranoid.

But it’s tough to say if the reason we never had a theft was because Sofia doesn’t have a lot of crime or because we had a very secure door.

Kurdistan was crawling with security. Perhaps that’s why it was so safe.

***********************************

It was dark, but the stars and the moon across the twelve to fifteen white, armored Suburbans we passed allowed me to read the logo and tagline across their doors. On the left, a skull and crossbones in black. On the right, this cryptic tagline: “Saves Lives. Builds Futures.”

We walked, six of us abreast, our passports tucked away in the pocket of some guard’s fatigues after a signing in at the high security entrance. Me, Michael, an American-Turkish political science professor, a Anglo-Australian wandering traveler and some British guy named Neil. It was 10:00 but it felt much later. We’d been at the University of Kurdistan’s International Women’s Day Celebration this afternoon, a disorganized, but A-for-effort debacle of dance, drama, purple ribbons, visiting dignitaries, detailed Power Point slides and disrespectful audience participation. We’d then taxied to a happy hour at Café de Paris, where we’d been drinking until now. After a particularly long line at the checkpoint, our taxi had just had a minor scuffle with a drunk driver. Another eventful evening in Northern Iraq.

Now we were headed to Andy’s house inside what our friends call “New City” or “The Compound” a place which houses contractors who had jobs with Blackwater, DinaCorps USAID, UN and other acronyms. People there to support Western influence, whatever that might be.

Andy was Scottish. He was the kind of guy who understood the importance of candles at a party, wore a blazer with ease and kept his bathroom clean. Even after Michael’s bottle of MGD somehow cracked his sink basin, he still let us try on his bulletproof vest and hold his Glock while we took photos of each other looking mean.

He even kissed our feet when we told him we were tourists.

Andy was a PSD. Private Security Detail. One of many beefy, goatee-sporting, beer-bottle-holding men who were paid obscene amounts of money plus benefits, accommodation and flights back home so they would work in Iraq and protect others. Some were drivers, guards, secret service. Others helped de-mine fields.

In Andy’s backyard was the Edge, the only bar in the compound, a twenty by twenty hole with forty men and four women which blasted Shakira and Fity Cent. He ’d even built a ladder which escorted friends across his back wall and into the bar and pool next door. We talked to a lot of people who went to Baghdad once a month in armored vehicles but were not allowed to get groceries outside the compound gates in Erbil, Kurdistan. When we expressed surprise, they said without disdain: Well, you just never know.

But we did know. We’d researched Kurdish Iraq. We’d read websites and blogs. We watched then news as often as the devout Muslims prayed. We’d been hanging out with University teachers, contractors who had lived here for up to two years with no armed guards and no issues besides unreliable electricity.

But maybe when all you see in your community are guns, tanks, armored cars and security forces, maybe you start to fear the outside world. Without this fear, job justification might be weaker. You might feel guilty about the danger pay deposited into your bank account every month. You might find it difficult to stay trapped here another day if it didn’t all make some kind of sense.

What do you think?

The ride to Rania was a roller coaster. Great America’s Screaming Eagle with its shockless, wooden construction comes to mind. Zana’s no-name car was the epitome of luxury—beige and gold, proof of purchase still stuck to the windows, digital dash, cruise control, compact-disc player and leather interior with head-rest to floor-mat dog-fur covers. Unfortunately, drivers below the age of 40 from developing countries who have managed to somehow own a car tend to drive as fast as they possibly can whenever they can. This includes the fifty meter space between Kurdistan’s frequent speedbumps, which makes the halt they come to five inches before the speedbump rather difficult. But steady breathing, focusing on the black smoke of a distant horizon-perpendicular oil well and absolutely no reading make it doable. Besides, by now we have stomachs of steel. We have eaten straight grease, unpasteurized milk, tap water-washed vegetables and other unidentified objects from many living-room-floor spread plastic picnic cloths and have yet to become truly ill.

So when we pulled onto the shoulder in the middle of nowhere, chose a bright-red-and-white chicken, watched a man cut its head off and stick it in a blood-draining funnel, and then wrap it up in a plastic bag which we then put in our trunk and ate with rice the next day, neither of us even flinched.

We’d been invited to this mountain town by our couchsurfer’s students, Zana and Nejad, for the weekend.

The rockstar alert was a little higher here in Rania. The fair faces of the Kurds stared and followed us through the bazaar full of kebab stands, barber shops, lurid god jewelry displays and basic goods like power strips, soap and spark plugs. Some Kurds pumped our hand with a grateful glee, some said “Hello!”, others couldn’t bother. One clothing store clerk with a friendly, eager and somewhat sad smile started a conversation in English and invited us to take a seat. His story gave us chills.

“From Kirkuk, but I lived to UK for two years, but then they make problem to me. I must leave. My father, he worked to Saddam. My brother he killed someone two years ago. I was just a little boy. But people make problem to me. Now I am in Erbil. But people make problem for me here, too. We will see. ”

Stories of Kurds escaping to the UK was common. One of our hosts, Nejad, had lived there for four years. He lived in a low-income London suburb with his brother, worked day and night in a Soho falafel shop, then sent the money home to his parents for rebuilding, medical costs, basic needs.

But other kids were luckier. Zana’s father lives in Norway and sends money home to provide for the family. Zana attends the University of Kurdistan and goes home to visit his mother, the patriotically-named Kurdistan and his sisters Soma and Sonya every weekend (which in here, is on Friday and Saturday). Kurdistan is a warm, busty woman with skin the color of muddy coffee and henna-highlighted hair. She hugs me tightly and instantly and lets me help in the kitchen, a rarity. The bathroom here, like all others we’ve seen so far in Rania is a wet squat without toilet paper.

Zana took us through family albums in the living room portraying a typical teenager’s life with friends, relative’s weddings, picnics and graduations. Except Zana has two grandmothers because his grandfather had two wives

Just another day in Northern Iraq.

The Pashmerga, the Kurdish police and security officers were everywhere. At intersections. At fountains. At soccer games. There were never any less than four guards at the gates of our compound, which includes ten-foot high walls. There were always two or three in front of the school, where our couchsurfing host taught English. During the drive to Rania with two University students, we encountered four checkpoints, two which required a look at our passport.

But our first real run-in with the police happened while taking photos there last week. We were caught off guard by two Kalishnakov-swinging camoflauged men who were not especially friendly. One minute there were two of them, the next more than 10. Our host’s face lacked reassurance or comfort.

So we followed the soldiers through mountain-surrounded Rania, a town known for its clever strategies and participation in the 1991 Northern Uprising in Iraq. We walked casually past the cement walls which contain brown courtyards, marble pillars and squat toilets. Past the women in their headscarves and ground-length velor housecoats, past the children in their fluorescent, synthetic clothing and rubber sandals. Past bench after medieval cart of men in their olive-drab traditional Kurdish garb, a cross between a Carhart worksuit, and a brown cummerbund-wrapped tuxedo, minus the bowtie. Past the Armani belt buckles and pin-striped suits. Past a Jack Daniels-bragging liquor store, sometimes a sign of a Christian neighborhood.

At the police station, four gun-wielding guards chaotically search us for a mobile phone. It was hard for them to believe we didn’t have one. Soon, we were herded toward a room and told to sit down. In the next sixty seconds, at least 15 people came into the room. We couldn’t tell if we were the excitement of the day or if they considered us a serious threat. Soon, it was another room. Then another. I wanted to hold onto Michael, but I couldn’t. Not here. Still, no one smiled. Still, our host was expressionless. I was calm, but fearful. I tried to look simultaneously scared, friendly and apologetic, my passport in my hands, ready to submit. Finally, a man behind a big desk in a heated office examined Michael’s passport. He waves mine away. I am just a woman, after all.

No problem. We can go. We can take all the pictures we want. They just had to make sure we weren’t Turkish spies gathering information about the PKK.

Cool.

Not Baghdad, Iraq. Northern Iraq. Kurdish Iraq. Kurdistan, if you will. And we found plenty of research, testimonials and even an English-teaching couchsurfer by the name of Josh Overcast before we made our decision to be tourist pioneers. Oh the places we’re willing to go.

On our second night in Iraq, we danced to Madonna’s Vogue at a party thrown by an English teacher. There was a lot of wine, Betty Crocker brownies and bugles to eat as everyone told their stories. Brits, Australians, Canadians and Americans, a Turk, and even a few Kurdish showed up. Some had studied Middle Eastern culture and history for years. Others were just adding Iraq to the list of past teaching assignments in Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Croatia. Most were on a two-year contract and found strange comfort in the gossipy, but gurgling insta-family which expat communities so often provide. It didn’t matter that they never would have been friends at home. Whatever differences, no matter how obvious, were overshadowed by one thing in common: they had all freely chosen to come to Iraq and they were all tired of being here.

Our first day out in Kurdistan felt a little like Africa. Out of the secure, suburban but heavily-guarded ghost-town of a complex and into the real town center. Unlike Damascas or Amman, the streets were wider, catering to fast cars. But Erbil was much more rundown with a thick layer of grime and a general disinterest in itself. A 10,000-year old citadel still inhabited by one family sat like a dusty, lazy lion who had long since fallen into a deep sleep in the center of his kingdom. In the souk, blenders with pomegranate purple and guava garnet inside sat on white counters ready to pour. Most fast food “restaurants” didn’t have napkins or bathrooms, just a hanging cow carcass, a slippery floor of fallen food and a sink for washing your hands. Roads with deep grooves, like a permanently fired, vertical pieces of pottery led the way. As in every country we’d visited, the black market was ever-present with rechargeable, (but useless as we discovered) Sony batteries, mobile phones and flash drives. But here, despite a public space full of striped umbrellas, metal benches and fountains, infrastructure was a bit weaker. Electricity was sparse, international ATMs were non-existent and gas stations were no more than a man with a pyramid of petroleum-filled plastic gallon containers at his side.

The faces of confusion and awe were what reminded us of Madagascar. It was apparent that even the IT professionals, teachers and contractors living here didn’t often venture into the souk because the Kurds just didn’t know what to do with us. They stared, suspicious and shy, but not threatening. One man in traditional garb took our photo twice as we drank tea at his outdoor stools and learned a little Kurdish.

But even once we knew the basics, getting a price was never easy. Whether you wanted a falafel-stuffed pita, a haircut or a taxi ride, your first inquiry was waved away as if to say: “well discuss it later”. Then, when it was time to ante up, they hushed up, waiting for you to over or under-pay them.

We ventured into an tangerine-trimmed barber shop where the men all wore avocado-colored chemises. Michael was saddled up within seconds. The cut took less than 10 minutes and before long I was having my eyebrows and mustache (I didn’t even know I had one) tweezed through the string-squeezing method. As I gasped for air and tears slipped out of my eyes, the entire shop laughed and snickered at my pain and Michael told me to be tough. My eyebrows look fabulous but it was sufficiently traumatic.

Again and again, we hear about the safety of Erbil. Stuff doesn’t happen here. The only violence occurs in the form of illegal honor killings, Kurdistan was yet another ethnic group without a homeland—over 30 million people worldwide (20% of the population in Turkey, 15-20% in Iraq) Between the near-decade-long Iraq-Iran war in the 80s and the devastating 1988 incident in Haljaba when Saddam killed off five thousand Kurds with a single drop of mustard gas, the Kurds are not only without a homeland but were often without protection from Iraq’s ruler. But when the US established the no-fly zone in 1991 following the Gulf War and the Oil-For-Food Program distribution was revamped by the UN in 1996, Kurdish life has been steadily progressing forward. Now their flag, a 21-ray sun, symbolizing their Nawrooz holiday on the 21st of March and the white (peace) red (blood) and green (nature) stripes is flown freely. There are still honor killings, where women aged 10 and up are executed by a male relative for having inappropriate relations with the opposite sex. Their crimes range from having a strange boy’s mobile number to being caught in a clandestine meeting with him. Honor Killings are illegal, but police don’t always intervene or prosecute.

Our timing wasn’t perfect, however. AlthoughTurkish-PKK conflict had been relatively quiet for months, the day we arrived, Turkish troops began a fresh incursion into Northern Iraq in an effort to undermine the PKK, “a militant Kurdish organization with the objective to create an independent Kurdish state” to some, and a “terrorist organization” to others. What was worse, the incursion was prompted by a “green light” from the United States.

When we were in Turkey back in November, the U.S., a long-time ally, wasn’t doing enough to help Turkey fight the PKK, whose goal, if achieved, would create a separate Kurdish state. But now that we were in Kurdistan, a homeland-less group which the U.S. has supported and protected for nearly two decades, the U.S. government had decided to put their foot down in defense of Turkey. In other words, we were in the wrong country. Again.

Yet. It didn’t seem to matter. Separation of individual and government, as usual, was clear. Kurdish students welcomed us at the University. We attended a political science class and gave talks to classes about Peace Corps and Bulgaria. We checked books out of the library, used the computer lab and attended a protest against Turkish forces organized by the Student Union.

Just like Syria and Lebanon, Iraq had skidded from dangerous and exotic to reasonably safe a so-not-a-big-deal in a matter of days. The difference was that this was I-R-A-Q. The difference was that Lonely Planet had not only called it “the most dangerous place on earth” in it’s 2006 edition., but had printed this message under the Solo Travelers subheading: