On our first morning together, I had asked Bayan if I could pay her for her services. “No!” she’d said indignantly, straightening her already ramrod-straight back. “We Kurds are not like foreigners. We do not want money for helping people.”
Bayan’s dream was to work for the United Nations or another foreign aid organization in a country similar to Kurdistan. For the moment, however, she, like most young people in Kurdistan, was unemployed.
We rendezvoused that morning with Sosan, one of Bayan’s best friends. In contrast to Bayan, Sosan wore makeup, large earrings, nail polish, and a V-neck sweater, and was bareheaded, with long curled hair. She also seemed more worldly than Bayan. I wondered at how two such apparently different women could be so close.
The twosome did have one thing in common, however: clunky black shoes with thick stacked heels, which in Bayan’s case were about four inches high. I’d seen similar shoes all over Dohuk. They were the latest fashion craze among young women.
We entered the city’s half-covered, half-open-air bazaar, which housed a typical Middle Eastern array of goods ranging from spices and vegetables to plastic products and makeup. Most interesting was the fabric market, holding dozens of shops bursting with bolts of mostly synthetic fabrics in all colors and designs, some very ornate, with gold and silver threads, sequins and brocade. Used in the making of the traditional Kurdish women’s dresses, which could cost as much as $200, the fabric was imported from all over the region, the most expensive coming from Bahrain. Neither Bayan nor Sosan wore the traditional dress except on special occasions—only the older generations wore it every day, they said. Nonetheless, the fashion of the fabrics changed every few months, and the most stylish of Dohuk’s matrons tried to keep up.
“Dohuk is a city that depends on appearance and gossip,” Bayan said, “and clothes are very important.”
Even in Kurdistan! How strange it is that the ordinary petty vices never lose their hold, even in the wake of extraordinary suffering. Vanity, jealousy, bickering—they’re always there.
We stopped at a modern-looking restaurant for lunch. The airy downstairs was filled with many tables and chairs, but it was only for men. The upstairs, with far fewer tables and a ceiling so low that I had to duck my head, was for families and women.
“Sosan and I often come here for lunch,” Bayan said, with such a gleeful look to her eye that I gathered that most women in Dohuk did not go out alone for lunch.
Bayan and Sosan had met at the University of Salahuddin in Erbil. It had been the best of times, they said, eyes shining. They’d loved being away from their families and living in a strange city. They’d shared a dorm room with three other young women and had learned so much—about their studies, about different kinds of people, about themselves. How we miss those days! they sighed. Bayan had earned a degree in English, and Sosan had graduated in law; but without jobs, both now spent most of their time at home and were bored.
I was surprised to hear that Bayan’s family, whom I assumed were quite religious and thus conservative, had allowed her to go away to school. Traditional Kurdish families do not allow their daughters to spend the night away from home.
“Some families do not let their daughters go away,” Bayan agreed when I asked, “but more and more are letting them go to the university because they know they will stay in a dormitory.”
And Bayan’s family was not particularly religious after all, it turned out. Except for two aunts who belonged to a moderate Islamic political party, Bayan was the only woman in her family who covered herself. She had decided to do so in college. “I thought it was right for me,” she said simply.
Our kebabs arrived, along with large platters filled with rice, greens, and flat bread. A photographer wandered up to ask if we wanted our picture taken, reminding me that eating out was unusual in Kurdistan, where discretionary income was scarce.
I waited until we were almost through our meal before broaching what I knew would be a ticklish subject—boyfriends.
The women gasped.
“We cannot have boyfriends!” they half whispered, half giggled, glancing nervously around the restaurant, though we were the only upstairs diners, and the waiter was long gone.
“This is very dangerous for us!” Sosan said. “This is illegal.”
“We know what is right and what is wrong,” Bayan said. “And honor is very important to us. If we lose our honor, it is ninety-nine percent we will be killed.”
“No,” Sosan said, nudging her friend, “this is not right. The law does not allow killing.”
The two women started urgently speaking in Kurdish. I got the sense that Sosan was telling Bayan to keep quiet. Like many Kurds I met, Sosan seemed reluctant to have me learn anything negative about Kurdish culture. Her liberal dress was as misleading as was Bayan’s conservative.
“Do you hear about honor killings often?” I interrupted them.
“No,” Sosan said.
“A few times a year.” Bayan leaned forward confidentially. “One time, a woman was a little wrong in the head. She went to Zakho, she said she wanted to go to Turkey. She was there seven days, and she didn’t do anything, but her family killed her.”
“But this is illegal,” Sosan said reproachfully. “It was, what do you say in English?—premeditated. Her killers were sent to prison. That is the law.”
“It is a matter for the family and the clan to decide, not the law,” Bayan countered.
“What about the man?” I asked. “Is he ever killed for having a girl-friend?”
“Everything depends on many things,” Bayan said. “Often if the man and woman are young and unmarried, their families will talk, no one is killed, they will marry. But if they are older and it is adultery, the woman will ninety-nine percent be killed, and sometimes the man.”
A FEW DAY SLATER, Bayan and I set off in a hired car to visit Aqra, about two hours east of Dohuk. Thought to date back to the 700s B.C., Aqra was developed by Prince Zayd, a Zoroastrian, who may have named the city after the Kurdish word for fire, agir, a sacred element to those of his faith. Probably founded in what is now Iran, Zoroastrianism is the first-known belief system to posit the concepts of life as a struggle between good and evil, individual responsibility for behavior, and life everlasting. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all trace many articles of their faiths back to Zoroastrianism.
Aqra lay in a fertile valley surrounded by wheat and barley fields, and orchards of olives, figs, pomegranates, peaches, and plums. Kurdistan’s famed mountains notwithstanding, it holds at least an equal area of flat lands, which, during the early 1980s, produced 35 percent of Iraq’s cereals, 50 percent of its corn, 33 percent of its rice, and most of its tobacco.
The Aqra valley was also filled with picturesque villages built of clay and stone—a far cry from the crisp new village settlements almost everywhere else in the region. Unlike the vast majority of rural Iraqi Kurdistan, the Aqra valley had not been destroyed during the Anfal. It was largely occupied by the Surchi, Harki, and Zibari tribes, who had supported the Iraqi government during the Kurdish revolution. Traditional enemies of the Barzanis, these tribes and various others had wanted nothing to do with Mulla Mustafa, and provided the Baathists with small standing armies, in return for stipends, to help fight the rebels. Most of the tribes, however, were never so much pro-Baath as they were anti-Barzani, often treating the Iraqi government as if it were yet one more tribe to play off against the others.
Many Kurds call those who cooperated with the Iraqi government jash, or “little donkey.” The first jash were recruited during the 1961 to 1963 Kurdish revolution, at which time they probably numbered about 10,000, but after 1983, their number grew exponentially, to reach as many as 150,000 by 1986. By that time, most Kurds were becoming jash as a way of evading service in the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War. As jash, the Kurds’ duties were light—guarding checkpoints, keeping the local peace— and they could remain at home, farming, herding their animals, protecting their fami
lies, and earning a small salary.
Many jash also remained secretly aligned with the peshmerga and, when the 1991 uprising began, quickly abandoned the Iraqis for the Kurds—though only after being granted amnesty by the Kurdish leadership. Shrewdly hedging their bets, the jash also helped the regular Iraqi forces who surrendered to withdraw safely behind enemy lines.
During my travels, most Kurds told me that the jash had been completely forgiven and melded back into Kurdish society. However, those who had not become jash were always quick to point out that status and to praise others who had done the same. Theoretically, tribes such as the Surchi, Harki, and Zibari were now equal partners in the new Kurdistan, but tensions simmered beneath the surface.
AQRA WAS BUILT up a mountainside, with houses stacked one on top of the other halfway to the summit. Roofs served as walkways and plazas, and narrow staircases led between homes. A large mosque was located at one end of the city, along with a religious library and school. Yellow KDP flags fluttered everywhere—undoubtedly to counter the region’s anti-Barzani past. In the center of town sprawled an ancient courtyard with an open-air market where black-shrouded women silently examined the wares.
Bayan and I stopped at the mayor’s office. Expected, we were enthusiastically received with multiple glasses of tea, served with fruit and candy, and given welcoming speeches by various officials. Then the mayor assigned us a guide to take us up the mountain to the ruins of a palace that apparently reigned on top.
Leaving from the central square, the guide led us up to one rooftop after another. Breathing hard, we passed women baking bread and washing clothes, children studying and playing ball. But our climb had only just begun: beyond the highest rooftop, a stony path continued zigzagging up the mountainside, heading first to three Zoroastrian caves. Said to be dug by hand, the caves contained arched doorways and ancient writings, along with blackened spots where sacred fires once burned.
Beyond the caves, the path continued ever steeper and stonier. I was wearing a long full skirt and city shoes that caused me to slip and slide, but they were nothing compared to Bayan’s long, tight skirt and four-inch-high stacked heels. Nonetheless, she had perfect control, climbing far more easily than I. She laughed away my concern for her comfort.
Baking nane-tanik
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I am very happy here. This is a very great time for me. I have never been to Aqra before, and I love the mountains. Even during the uprising, when we were climbing to Turkey, I didn’t mind.”
Bayan had been raised in the city, but, like many Kurds I met, she had an intimate, comfortable relationship with the outdoors. Everywhere I went, I found many like her—people of all ages and backgrounds who clambered up and down mountains as if they were hills. Old men and women, children, and even the out-of-shape urban middle-aged—all moved at a remarkable pace, making me wonder at times if there is such a thing as a mountain-climbing gene.
Finally, Bayan, the guide, our guards, and I climbed up one last incline, onto the mountaintop. The world and time suddenly collapsed. All around us was a flat and silent plateau. To one side sat a lone peshmerga in a lookout post with a KDP flag dancing above his head. To the other side were the remains of what must have once been an enormous palace, spread out over hundreds of yards. Most of the ruins was now covered with sod, but a few walls were intact, while on the far side were the broken clay pipes of a sophisticated irrigation system.
Aqra, built up a mountainside
The guide told us that the palace had been built by the Romans. The peshmerga said that it had been built by the Kurds. Neither hypothesis seemed entirely credible to me, but it scarcely mattered. The palace felt like a tantalizing secret. It was invisible from down below.
On the way back to Dohuk, Bayan suggested that we take a short detour, and we turned off the main road to travel a scenic back route over a small mountain. I enjoyed the detour, but far more wonderful than the drive was Bayan’s reaction. Her eyes were dancing. “This is not part of the program, we are traveling a forbidden way,” she said, clapping her hands in excitement, and quoted a famous Arabic saying. “To do something forbidden is very delicious.”
AMIN AND HIS FAMILY invited me to dinner and to spend the night at their house—a relatively common invitation in Kurdistan, where dinners often led to overnights, perhaps because of the region’s general unrest. I accepted. I liked talking to Amin, who, along with Bayan, was one of the few people I’d met in Dohuk who wasn’t trying to impress me with the accomplishments of the Kurds and their safe haven. In fact, the Kurds and their safe haven were impressive, but I wanted to draw that conclusion for myself.
We met at the Institute of Fine Arts, then wandered through the streets to the Mazi Supermarket, the violet-blue building that I’d noticed when first arriving in Dohuk. The biggest and most modern market in Kurdistan, the Mazi was stocked with everything from imported foods and cosmetics to German-made refrigerators and Sony video cameras. However, few Kurds could afford the Mazi’s prices; the store catered mostly to foreign aid workers.
Which is not to say that Kurds did not frequent the market. Walking up and down the gleaming aisles, ogling the wares without any intention to buy, was a favorite form of entertainment in Kurdistan, especially in the evenings. There was little else to do in Dohuk at night—or anywhere in the safe haven for that matter. People visited the city from all over the region—including Baath-controlled Iraq—specifically to spend time at the Mazi.
As we neared the store, we ran into Amin’s friend Farhad, who walked with us for a few blocks.
“What about the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center?” Farhad asked when he learned where I was from. “Didn’t they make you want to attack all Muslims?”
“No,” I said. “That won’t solve anything, and besides, most Muslims are innocent—I think the United States needs to reexamine its foreign policy instead. There has to be more dialogue between the East and the West.”
Farhad was silent for a moment. “You are a humanitarian,” he finally said. “And that is very beautiful. But I cannot think like you. If I were American, I would want to attack all Muslims. I myself want to kill Arabs and Turks. I hope there will be war so I can kill my enemies.”
His face had darkened, and I shivered a little, wondering who he was. But I also recognized that I had a luxury he did not have. As the citizen of a stable, powerful nation, surrounded by peaceful neighbors, I could afford to talk about a vague idealistic future filled with cultural exchange. But as the citizen of a fragile semiautonomous state, surrounded by hostile neighbors, Farhad had to worry about the immediate and very real problem of survival.
Over the next hour or so, Amin and I explored the Mazi market, wandering up and down every aisle several times. One section held fresh fruits, breads, and other local goods, but most shelves displayed hundreds of imported products, many from Turkey, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Iran, India, and Oman.
Outside the store, we sat on benches and ate ice-cream bars. Night had fallen, and the sky was startlingly clear, white clouds passing before a full moon, sharp as a photograph in a developing tray. Strings of lights swooped up the sides of the White and Black Mountains framing Dohuk, while neon sunbursts advertising the market flashed overhead.
A large family passed by, the men swaggering in fine shal u shapik up front, the women struggling with children and packages behind.
“When I see that family, I remember a sad joke,” Amin said. “A woman tells her friend, ‘I know my husband loves me so much!’ ‘That’s wonderful,’ the friend says. ‘He must be very generous and kind.’ The first woman answers, ‘No, that’s not right. I know he loves me because he beats me all the time. . . .’ ”
A half hour later, we took a taxi to Amin’s home. Shadows jumped back from the curb as we drove, melting into darkened buildings and blind alleyways. Black shapes skulked here and there.
When we arrived, Amin’s teenage sister and mother we
re waiting. Delicious smells were wafting out of the kitchen. Beaming, Amin’s sister sat me down on the living room floor, while her brother brought out small plates of pistachios and olives, along with twelve-ounce vodka cans—common in Kurdistan.
“First you will take a drink, then we will eat, then we will drink some more, and then you will tell us when you want to sleep!” Amin said, and disappeared again. Smiling shyly, his sister turned the television to the BBC.
But a moment later, Amin was back, his face sagging. A folded piece of paper was in his hand.
Somehow, although the family didn’t have a phone, Dr. Shawkat had tracked me down. Apparently, he’d called someone who knew someone who brought the note.
“Christiane must go back to Sayyed Majed’s house immediately,” the note said. “Her life is in danger, and she will be better protected there.”
“This note is like a dagger in my heart,” Amin said.
“What does this mean?” I said. Had something happened—an Iraqi invasion perhaps—or was Dr. Shawkat just being overly protective?
I suspected the latter, but I didn’t see how I could take the chance. Amin, his sister, and mother didn’t want me to take the chance either.
You must go, they all agreed. Sayyed Majed has guards, and you will be safe there.
The taxi ride home seemed much longer than it had before, as I illogically imagined Saddam’s agents suddenly pulling up, blocking our path, hauling us out.
But at Majed’s, the family was surprised to see me. They knew nothing of Dr. Shawkat’s note, though he had called for me earlier and been startled to learn that I wasn’t coming home that night. He’d also taken Amin’s name and particulars.
I knew it, I thought.
At the same time, I also realized that I was happy to be back. I did feel safer here, with the guards out front. Amin’s neighborhood had been half lit and filled with shadowy doorways.
A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts Page 11
