Onward to Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan)

At Silopi, Turkey, near the border, there is a kind of "mafia" (without the negative connotations) that organizes transfers of people from Turkey to Iraq. You pay them in dollars, and they arrange all the paper work at the border and get you to an Iraqi taxi on the other side. (I had read up on all this from online blogs.) When we got to the border, the officials were at lunch. An hour and a half later they started to process me through.

Yes, people will remind you that this is Kurdistan, and although I have met quite a few people from Baghdad and even hear the cries announcing "Baghdad" as the destination of the dolmus (shared taxi) right outside my hotel, my visa will not allow me to travel to Baghdad. So relax, Mom, wherever you are.

It seemed to go smoothly But then right away at the border, an encounter with

an Iraqi policeman who heard I am an American…

But I am really in Iraq!

They seem to like Americans, at least in this area.

(I wouldn't test that in Mosul, a few miles away) OK, first stop Zakho.

Bridge at Zakho, a thousand years old. Taxi driver from border wanted to stop to show me before taking me to hotel. Although not spectacular, Zakho is a lively town surrounded by mountains, some still with snow. And, yes, a river runs through it.

The Bazaz Hotel is, according to Lonely Planet, the best in town. I figured I wanted Western-style toilets and air conditioning since it's supposed to get to almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a few days. Of course electricity can't be counted on 24 hours anywhere. (I've already experienced frequent blackouts lasting from a few minutes to a few hours. The longer ones are scheduled, I think.) My room was $25/night with breakfast. Two boys carried my luggage all the way up flights of stairs from the taxi and refused a tip. The satellite TV, when it's working, has more channels than I've seen anywhere from probably more places in the world than I could name.

Classy joint.

Any fear I had that Iraqi Kurdistan would be modern and Americanized was definitely unfounded. Almost no one

speaks English. I seem to have forgotten my Arabic-English dictionary, and my Kurdish is also rusty, so

communication is a challenge. I do know (now) that "supass" is "thank you" in Kurdish.

Mahla Juhudea

One of my main interests in Zakho is from reading Ariel Sabar's recent book, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. So I reread the book's description of the Jewish area's location (on my Kindle) and asked about it at a grocery store. A young man phoned someone he knew who spoke English--a Kurd who actually lives in Nashville, Tennessee--and he told me how to get to "Mahla Juhudea," as it is still known. Though I made clear I was perfectly willing to walk to the other side of town, the man in the store hailed a taxi and insisted on coming with me and not letting me pay, ignoring my repeated attempts. Almost $2, which could not be insignificant for people here. I had read about Kurdish hospitality, but I didn't expect this.

Although the area is still known as the Jewish neighborhood, there are no Jews living there anymore. I could not find any sign of past Jewish life except perhaps two holes from nails from a former mezzuzah. The neighborhood is now some old houses mixed with reconstructed and newer ones, but it is a poor area and with children playing in the alleys, I could well imagine it as a lively Jewish or mixed area. I did talk with a few elderly men who spoke some English, and they remembered Jews living with them and leaving--in 1951 according to Sabar although they seemed to recall it was 1948 or 1949. No one had heard of Sabar's book although it features their very neighborhood. America is far away.

The word "exotic" is overused in travel writing, but I guess one sign, for me, that I am in a different culture is when I draw attention of local children--some a bit afraid and some eager to talk and have their pictures taken. Mahla Juhudea was definitely like that.

and they multiply…

My biggest surprise about Zakho is the conservative atmosphere, a pretty sharp contrast from Turkey. Many women in Turkish towns cover, but the proportion of women in black chadors in Zakho is much greater than any place I have been, and it's not unusual to see women with full face covering where you can't even see their eyes. After dark I saw no women on the street. I am told this culture is closer to Iran than nearby Arab countries, and in some ways it is even more traditional although less so the further south you go in Kurdish Iraq. On the other hand, covering is not required as in Iran, and many younger women dress in a much more Western way--but I have never seen any part of a woman's leg uncovered (other than a foot in sandals) …not that I was looking, of course.

Now it's not just those of us in the West who seem to have this fixation about the styles and dress of women. The Kurdish and Arabic TV music video channels seem to have this persistent theme of a man singing love songs surrounded by women, and the women are not in chadors! (And why are they always blonde?) I enjoyed sitting in a café, frequented mostly by women in chadors, watching the cafe's own selected channel of these music videos. Some are quite seductive too.

May 15: to Dohuk

But it's not just the older generation of women who are traditional. Many older men still wear traditional Kurdish clothes.

Is it dangerous here? While in the bazaar (souk--don't know the Kurdish word) I heard some loud bomb-like explosions and could see some sparks.

Electrical wires exploding, as it turns out. Not surprising when you see the wires strung up like this

everywhere. Electrical connections in my room are pretty interesting too, but enough said on the subject.

The real adventure is a bit further away…forbidden, dangerous, and tantalizing.

Food is unbelievable here. I counted ten courses of appetizers, not even including the basket of bread. I thought there was some mistake. Maybe they heard me order something else. Maybe (too much travel elsewhere) they are trying to charge me something exorbitant. No, it's normal fare here, and the price is often under $7 for the whole meal--followed by chai (tea) of course.

Actually I have never been to a place less eager to get a tourist's money. I think that's actually because they don't know about "tourists." One blogger complained that he was totally ignored in Zakho. True, no one approaches you, but you have to initiate, and then they give more than you ever expect. I've seen no postcards. When I got some suspicious looks taking photos, I said "tourist…no Saddam, no Baathist," and the look changed to welcoming smiles. OK, the serious stuff. I spent most of today talking with officials of a human rights NGO (with a translator) and then a woman from Baghdad and now Canada who is involved in development work here. She said her husband (also from Baghdad) remembers as a kid that it was forbidden to enter the area of Saddam's main Baghdad palace. Now, working in the Green Zone, he is forbidden to leave that same area. She seemed to think there was a certain equivalence, or at least parallel, in the isolation from the people represented by this fortress-like area. But Dick Cheney promised we'd be greeted as liberators. Actually in Kurdish Iraq, "we" Americans are regarded that way. So the question is: can this Kurdish area remain part of Iraq?

The flag of Kurdistan is everywhere.

May 17: Sadness and beauty in the mountains of northern Iraq Gaheen Kamal Hussain, whom I met at the human rights office yesterday, was my driver and guide

for a full day in the spectacularly beautiful mountains of northern Iraq (bordering Turkey and Iran).

But Amadiya, the main town in the area and Gaheen's original home, was also the site of some of the

most horrific of Saddam's actions during the Anfal. Gaheen was six years old and remembers walking

with his extended family six days over the mountains, with hunger and sickness, to escape into

Turkey until the American military stopped Saddam's attempted genocide against the Kurds. We

visited Gaheen's grandfather who still lives and works on his farm. He posed formally for the camera,

but before and after he welcomed me warmly with repeated embraces.

Later we visited Asia Tahir and others who lived in the nearby village of Banya Merstakle when Saddam's people massacred all the men and older boys and forced the wives to watch them being killed and tortured in Saddam's (now destroyed) palace outside Dohuk (the city where I am now). All of the women now live together as widows and help each other. Asia Tahir, below, told how she appeared at Saddam's trial in Baghdad, seeing him for the first time, right in front of her, and giving her official testimony. She said that after she spoke, Saddam just smiled.

The mountains themselves are beautiful, far from the picture of Iraq that we Americans see on television each day..

Amadiya as seen from higher mountains

May 18: to the border

A long day of border crossing but in its own way delightful, as almost everything here evolves into being even when you least expect it. The driver from Dohuk at first appeared stiff and unfriendly, but he turned out to be anything but even though he spoke no English. On the drive he played and sang (and almost danced to) Kurdish songs, grabbed my hand to express solidarity, indicated by gesture his political opinion of each country, and said farewell with a warm embrace as if we were long-time friends. His political views were not always as expected: Iran bad, Saddam very bad (of course), America good, Israel good (showing by hand gesture "Kurdistan and Israel together"), Palestine bad (probably part of a generalized dislike of Arabs, symbolized by Saddam). Of course he would have no idea that I'm Jewish. I heard very different political opinions from people during my five days in Iraq, and I was most pleased to hear them expressed freely, as with a group of university students I met in Amadiya, each not necessarily agreeing with one another. (One, surprisingly, felt very much that Kurdistan is part of Iraq and disliked Bush for invading Iraq.) Several students took out video cameras to record my political views, as if they were somehow important. I did my best to defend Obama's intentions in relation to the Muslim world against some skeptics who thought he would be no different from Bush. Anyway, it was refreshing to be able to feel proud of an American government and be able to try, sincerely, to defend our president. At the border I was approached by a Kurdish man from Erbil on his way back to London (via Diyarbakir and Istanbul). He spoke good English, and we talked in the dolmus during the hours of border processing and all the way to Diyarbakir. The border crossing back into Turkey involves much more stringent security checking than the crossing into Iraq, the Turks fearing both political (Kurdish) and other kinds of smuggling. But I understand from Gaheen (yesterday) that a lot of the illegal smuggling (e.g., petrol and oil) is tolerated with various "understandings" because they help the economy of Iraqi Kurdistan.