White Baboon

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: