The region had its share of more modern problems as well. Men sought work in the south, leaving their families alone for large chunks of the year. Others worked as smugglers, risking their lives to cross the mine-studded border mountains, patrolled by the Revolutionary Guards, who killed perhaps a half-dozen men every year. The quality of the natural environment was worsening, too, through water pollution, air pollution, and deforestation.
Our host would like nothing better, he said, with longing in his eyes, than to take us out into the remote Hawraman countryside. But he was under constant surveillance because of his political activities in the 1980s. It would also be extremely difficult for Asoo and me to travel into the villages alone. Villagers would be suspicious of us, for one thing, but, more to the point, the authorities would stop us. If we wanted to protect ourselves, and travel on to the town of No Sud, where Asoo’s relatives lived, as we had planned, we needed to go directly to the authorities upon leaving him to obtain permission.
That would be a good idea, Asoo agreed, a bit vaguely. He had often traveled in the region, but never with a foreigner. I was suddenly struck by the fact that he was only seventeen years old and we were both neophytes here.
Taking leave of our host, we did as he advised, descending into the heart of Paveh to enter a dark, utilitarian building that housed the region’s administrative government. Here, we were passed from one office to another by unsmiling, bearded men in loose, long-sleeved shirts and sandals. Some picked up the phone after studying my passport, to talk with their higher-ups, and I could understand much of their conversations: No, no, she has no official documents, just a visa. She says she is a writer. She is alone. She is American. It sounded suspicious even to me. It was strange that I was here at this time, with my country on the brink of war with Iraq, less than thirty miles away. With a sinking heart, I grew more certain that permission to go to No Sud would be denied, when one especially unpleasant-looking man suddenly washed his hands of us by sending us down the street to the local police department.
Here, we were greeted with equal unfriendliness and suspicion, especially after one officer discovered a slight irregularity with my visa. But then a higher-up arrived and, with a beaming face, ordered up more rounds of tea. “We are so happy you are here. Writers are always welcome in Iran.” He handed us a letter granting us permission to proceed to No Sud and told us to call him should we run into trouble.
WITH THE LOGISTICS of the trip finally taken care of, we took a quick look around Paveh, a web of bumpy roads and brick-cement buildings spread up and down steep hills. Carpets hung from balconies, tractors cruised, and most of the men wore billowing pants with cummerbunds. Most of the women wore chadors. Behind the town rose Atashgah, a rugged peak that was once a sacred Zoroastrian site.
After a simple lunch of rice, yogurt, tomatoes, and flat bread, we headed west, to be sure to arrive in No Sud before sundown. The road leading there, threading around some of the highest mountains in Kurdistan, was too treacherous to travel after dark. It had no guardrails or lights, and along the forty-five-kilometer stretch were exactly 274 turns—many of them dangerous, said our driver, who traveled the route often.
We made stops along the way in a few roadside villages. In one, an old man with a bristly mustache and lopsided turban said that before the Iran-Iraq War, his village had housed 105 families, but now held only thirty-five. Most had left to look for work in the cities.
“Do you know the history of the Hawraman people?” he then asked. “We are the descendants of Rostam”—the hero of Iran’s national epic, the Shahnameh—“who once lived near Mount Damavand, near Tehran. But Darius the Mede expelled us, and we ran away here, to the safety of the mountains. We have lived here for thousands of years.”
The old man’s story made me think of the Avroman Parchments. Found in a cave in the Hawraman mountains, carefully preserved in a jar, the documents date back to the first century B.C., and record the sale of a vineyard in both Greek and Parthian. One way or another, this was an astonishingly ancient land.
And the mountains were as advertised: one steep surging peak after another, many wider and smoother than the mountains I’d seen in Iraq, but just as breathtaking and formidable. On a late afternoon in October, slopes were bristly and brown, with few trees, but with a golden sheen of plumpness and plenty. Far beneath their rounded humps, the Sirwan River meandered along, en route to the Darbandikhan Dam in Iraq, while a silver slip of road curled and uncurled up ahead, playing hide and seek among peaks and valleys.
No Sud itself emerged around a final bend just as the sun was setting, at the end of a curved road that cut a fine brown line along a red cliff. Sailing around the semicircle, we cruised into town, slowing to a crawl as we passed through a plaza crowded with men and boys in baggy pants, then squeezed our way down a painfully narrow street along the edge of a cliff. Directly ahead plunged a valley, followed by a wall of mountains—Iraq. Directly behind lived Asoo’s relatives.
They enthusiastically ushered us inside. We were just taking seats on the floor when the police arrived. We had been in town less than five minutes. Who was I? What was I doing here? The family looked tense, and my heart pounded. However, upon hearing the purpose of my visit and where I was from, the police beamed. Welcome, they said, we are proud to have an American writer in our town. Come visit us tomorrow for a glass of tea.
We never did make that visit, and, on the way back to Paveh the next afternoon, we were stopped by a group of grim Revolutionary Guards. Iran’s police and Revolutionary Guards are two distinctly separate groups, and though we’d passed through other Revolutionary Guard checkpoints without incident, this squad paid little attention to our letter of permission from the Paveh police. They also refused to give the friendly captain we’d met a call. They didn’t like my presence in the region. A guard then climbed into our car to accompany us all the way back to Paveh, a two-hour drive—dashing my hopes of visiting more villages. He was surly and menacing when he first got in, making me wonder if my luck in Iran had run out at last. What would happen when we reached Paveh? But as the miles rolled by, the guard lightened up and, when we arrived, spoke briefly to his commander, who waved us on our way.
Asoo’s uncle was a burly shopkeeper in his sixties, dressed in baggy pants and a turban, married to a much younger woman wearing a turquoise caftan —his second wife, whom he had married after his first had died on the dangerous Paveh–No Sud road we had just traveled. They lived in two rooms on the second floor of the spare house, while his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson lived in two matching rooms below.
Our host in No Sud
Though a man of little formal education, Asoo’s uncle was well versed in the region’s history, and he told me many complicated tales involving the Hawraman leader Jafar Soltan, who had resisted Reza Shah’s army. He also spoke about the years of the Iran-Iraq War, when Qassemlou and his KDPI forces were based in and near No Sud, and the town was subsequently flattened. Once, No Sud had been many times the size it was now.
I had noticed No Sud’s emptiness, but hadn’t guessed its cause. It disturbed me to think that newcomers such as myself could come to a place like this and see it only as it was, with no inkling of all that had gone before.
The son who lived downstairs had been a victim of the Islamic regime, Asoo whispered. He’d simply disappeared one day two years earlier, and no one in the family had known where he was until his release from prison six months later. After eight years of surveillance, the authorities had suddenly decided to arrest and torture him for his political activities ten years before.
As we talked, night fell. Dinner had come and gone, and we were relaxing over fruit and glasses of tea, when the clip-clop of hooves sounded outside. Minutes later, more hooves clopped by, and then more and more, until it sounded as if an entire cavalry was arriving. Indeed it was: The nighttime’s smuggling activities were beginning.
When I’d heard about the smuggling between Iran and Iraq, I’d env
isioned small groups working covertly together, trying not to draw attention to themselves. I was completely unprepared for the scene that greeted me when we stepped outside. Hundreds of men and mules had gathered in the central square and in a lot down the hill, bathed in a wan yellow light. Many men were saddling up with blankets and ropes, or checking their cell phones—used to warn one another of danger en route—while milling about were a few businessmen, who would later ship the illicit goods into Iran’s interior. Smuggling in No Sud was no clandestine operation; it was a town affair. Everyone knew about it, even the authorities, who, for all their harassment of the smugglers, were blatantly looking the other way. I hardly needed proof of that but got it anyway, when I spotted an armed guard actually sitting on the edge of the plaza, watching the men, looking bored.
Hadn’t I noticed the big banks in town? my hosts asked, after I voiced my astonishment at the sight of the guard. There were two of them, both multistory and built within the last two years. A town the size of No Sud, with no legitimate business to speak of, hardly needed one big bank, let alone two.
Although smuggling between Iran and Iraq had existed for decades, it became big business only about five years before, the smugglers told me. Some of the goods entering Iran—which included cigarettes, tea, alcohol, and electronics—were originally from Turkey; others came directly from Iraq. The Kurds sometimes smuggled goods in the other direction as well, out of Iran and into Iraq, but that was more unusual.
To travel to and from Iraq took six hours each way, with the men leaving about nine P.M., to return the following morning. On average, a man earned 6,000 tomans ($5), for his night’s work, hardly enough to warrant risking his life—not all of the authorities were looking the other way, and there were mines to watch out for. However, there were few other ways to make a living in No Sud.
Each of the Iranian border towns specialized in the smuggling of different goods. No Sud had the tea and banana market all locked up, while other towns concentrated on alcohol or electronic goods. Of course, to smuggle alcohol and electronic goods was much more lucrative than to smuggle tea and bananas, the men acknowledged when I asked, but it was a lot more dangerous. They wanted to come home to their wives.
“What about Ansar al-Islam?” I asked. “Are they a danger for you?” The terrorist organization’s headquarters were just over the border, not more than ten miles away.
The men shrugged. Not really, it seemed.
“Are they operating here in Iran?”
One man laughed. “Iran is too smart to let them operate here,” he said.
It was getting late, and the smugglers started to leave, to be instantly swallowed up by the darkness beyond. What lay ahead of them that evening, I wondered as I watched them slip away, some so very young, many very thin.
Asoo, his uncle’s son, and I climbed up a steep set of stairs to an old fountain. Surrounded by a garden, it had been a favorite haunt of Jafar Soltan, the Hawraman leader. It was also one of the only places in No Sud that had not been destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War, Asoo said, as we bought bottles of orange soda from a woman in a purple velveteen dress. She had been weaving a pair of klash, the traditional Hawraman shoes, when we came up, and went back to her work as we took seats in the unlit garden. Empty now, it was crowded during the day with men playing cards and backgammon. The late day, that is. With almost everyone in No Sud involved in the nighttime smuggling trade, most people slept in until afternoon. This was no ordinary world.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Happy Is He Who Calls Himself a Turk”
THE ROOM WAS DARK AND A LITTLE MUSTY. THE DAY WAS fading, the sounds from the street growing dim. The half-dozen middle-aged women around me, all wearing white muslin head scarves edged with lace, leaned forward a bit in their chairs. Their kerchiefs gave them an angelic look, but their eyes were haunted.
They went around the room one by one, as if they were telling stories around a campfire. Nezahat started things off, but only after lighting a cigarette and, before her story was finished, lighting another.
She and her family had moved from their village to Diyarbakir, the unofficial Kurdish capital in southeast Turkey, years before the fighting between the Kurds and the Turks began. They found a place to live on the edge of town and were eking out a living as shopkeepers when their oldest daughter became involved with politics. At age twelve, the girl saw Turkish gendarmes mow down two next-door neighbors in cold blood, a sight she never forgot. At age nineteen, when the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was arrested, she burned herself in protest . . . at home. Her mother, the only other person in the house at the time, was unable to do a thing; her daughter was engulfed in flames. She rushed the girl to the hospital, but it was too late—“she was a martyr.” Nezahat’s face was impassive, but her hands shook as she lit her third cigarette.
Seniha was next. Her son had joined the PKK at age fifteen. He was martyred one year later, she said. He died in Lice, a town just outside Diyarbakir that was all but flattened by the Turkish forces in 1993, in a rampage following a PKK attack. He was killed with twelve other friends from school; they had all joined the PKK together and were probably buried together in a mass grave. She and the other mothers only learned of their sons’ deaths seven months after the fact, by which time it was too late to know where the grave was or claim the boys’ bodies, authorities told them.
Sakine had once had five sons. One died in a prison hunger strike protesting conditions there, one was killed while fighting with the PKK, and one died in a traffic accident. Another was arrested in 1979, tortured, and repeatedly “raped with sticks,” she said. Freed in 1992, he fled to the mountains ten days later to fight again, saying he couldn’t stand the quiet at home. She hadn’t heard from him since. She had lost her husband because of him and the son who died in prison. Her husband forbade her to visit their sons in jail, saying that respectable women don’t visit jails. When she disobeyed, he divorced her. Now, she had only one son left at home, and she was very afraid for him. How could she keep him safe?
The women called themselves the Peace Mothers, and they were trying to reach out to Turkish as well as other Kurdish mothers who had lost loved ones in the civil war. “All we want is peace,” said one of the women in the now almost dark room. Sounds from outside had ceased, but someone near me was weeping.
TURKEY’S KURDISTAN WAS a land of ghosts. I felt it as soon as I arrived, and the feeling lingered long after I left. The Kurdish-Turkish civil war may be over, but its footsteps are still echoing down streets, sneaking up from behind, as remembered assassins’ bullets crack out. Ghostly victims are still being dragged into anonymous cars or lined up in rows to be shot. Long-destroyed villages are still burning, invisible young men and women are still dying. And another kind of ghost is here as well—alive on the outside, but dead on the inside, living in vast city slums, their homes and villages destroyed, their loved ones disappeared.
The Kurdish-Turkish civil war that raged in southeast Turkey from 1984 to 1999 was one of the greatest underreported stories of the late twentieth century. During its long, vicious course, about thirty-seven thousand Turkish soldiers, Kurdish guerrillas, and civilians were killed, between 1 million and 3 million Kurds rendered homeless, and over three thousand Kurdish villages destroyed—almost as many as were destroyed in northern Iraq. Yet throughout—and even today, as the war’s aftermath and human rights abuses continue—most of the world scarcely noticed.
The seeds of the Kurdish-Turkish civil war were sown shortly after the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and World War I, the Turks had found themselves in a humiliated position, with the Allies planning the breakup of their territories, promising different lands to different peoples. Some of the best parts of Anatolia, the Turkish homeland, were to go to Christian peoples, while the Muslim Turks themselves were to be relegated to a small, semibarren region with no access to the sea. There was even talk of giving territory to the Kurds.<
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Just when it seemed as if things couldn’t get much worse, they did. The Greeks, with the encouragement of the British, took over Smyrna (now Izmir), home to a large Hellenic population, and began invading farther east. For the Turks, this was the last straw. Galvanized by the idea of a former subjected people inhabiting prized Turkish territory, they organized under the Ottoman general Mustafa Kemal, who’d previously served with heroic distinction in the Dardanelles campaign, to wage the 1919 to 1922 Turkish War of Independence. By the time it was over, the Turks had successfully driven the British, French, and Greeks from their homeland.
Mustafa Kemal rose to become not just a national hero, but “Atatürk,” or “Father of the Turks,” a near godlike figure who would in effect rule Turkey unilaterally until his death in 1938. A westernized career officer, Kemal sat down with the Allies in 1923 to hammer out the Treaty of Lausanne, which established the Republic of Turkey. He then began propelling his bankrupt land into the twentieth century as rapidly as he could, outlawing the Islamic veil, replacing the Arabic alphabet with the Roman, and building what would become a robust modern economy. With a parliament and constitution, the new republic was based on democratic principles, but with the authoritarian legacy of the Ottoman Empire still lingering and Kemal hailed as a savior, most Turks were happy to see their new president take on all-encompassing powers.
Initially, the Kurds supported Kemal, fighting alongside his forces in the war of independence and taking heart in the Treaty of Lausanne, which declared all citizens of the new republic equal before the law “without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion.” But already in 1922, Kemal had abolished the old sultanate system, which had helped to sustain the aghas’ authority. In 1924, he began a pitiless campaign to assimilate the Kurds.
A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts Page 37
