Frishta

The kids sure are an affectionate bunch. We aren't allowed to kiss our students, but sometimes they pull us down, practically breaking our necks in order to give us a kiss. Neither are they afraid to say “I love you“ as if they have a thousand of those in their pockets to give away every day to their teachers. Today, when I asked “What is step 4 to solving a word problem?“, one adorable girl raised her hand and said “I love you!“ and giggled.

“Step number 4: 'I love you'“, I said as I wrote it on the board. “Frishta,“ I said, “I love you too, but if you use this as step 4 in solving word problems, you will not do so well in this class.“

Of course she just giggled again, and I could not help smiling either. I love my second graders to death. Once I figured out how to tame them, this class easily became the highlight of my work day. It's so nice to be able to teach ideas more complex than ABC's and counting, and also, it helps a lot to know that the students look forward to this class as much as I do. In any job I think, it does wonders for the work environment if all parties actually want to be there.

I Have a Dream

5-day vacay! Thank god for Eid. I love organized religion if only for their holidays. I have a dream that one day all the world religions will unite so that every day of the year will be a holiday, a celebration of this saint or that prophet, of the end of the Muslim holy month or the beginning of the Jewish one. We hold these several truth variants to be self-evident (but only in the eyes of the believer), and that all religions are created equal. I have a dream that we will one day live in a world where our religions are not judged by their followers or their tenets or the color of the mildew in their pews, but by the content of their holidays (mainly, whether there are gifts involved). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God/Yahweh/El/Allah/Ar-Rahman/Ar-Rahim/Al-Malik/...(there are 99 names of Allah) Almighty, we are free at last!

Breaking the Fast

Tomorrow at 8pm, the Eid festivities will begin, celebrating the end of the holy month and the breaking of the fast. Woohoo, partay!!! Today, a bunch of my kids came in with new haircuts and a few with henna tattoos. I guess the end of Ramadan marks the beginning or renewal of life again, from new haircuts to engagements. I've got at least one engagement party to go to, and I'm sure the town will be thriving with many more this holiday week.

Absurdistan

Reality is the best comic fodder; the truth of a joke is the cause of much of the laughter. Take this Times article on controversy in Arab tv. Here are some of the highlights:

1) And last week,...a third Saudi cleric said (in all seriousness) that children should not be allowed to watch Mickey Mouse, labeling the cartoon character a “soldier of Satan” who should be killed.

2) [The popular Turkish show, Noor's] handsome protagonist became a heartthrob, and his respectful treatment of his wife caused marital arguments and even divorces in several countries, according to reports in Arab newspapers.

3) Earlier this month...a prominent Saudi cleric declared that it was permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV stations that broadcast “immoral” material...A few days later, he appeared on state television to explain. He said he had not meant to encourage or condone the murder of station owners. Assuming other penalties do not deter them, he said, the owners should first be brought to trial and sentenced to death — and then they could be executed.

Doesn't that read just like a late night joke, like something you'd hear in a Conologue? Except it's all true! The Onion better watch out: Arab news headlines could put it out of business very soon. Actually, I'm kind of two ways about this controversy: clearly the Saudi Sheiks are way way out of line with their ridiculous comments about Mickey Mouse and the wickedness of wine-sipping Muslims. On the other hand, I've seen first-hand what these Arab soap operas are like, and as much as I want to side with the viewers and freedom of expression and all that, it makes it hard when you know that the shows the viewers are fighting for are actually really really lame, replete with bad acting and men with exaggerated moustaches. Is it really worth rallying around the likes of Days of Our Lives or General Hospital? But I know, I know, it's the principal of things...

Reality is absurd. It really makes you believe in the saying that we are the creators of our own reality. We all live in illusions created by the minds of other men, and every day we get up to go to work or school, and follow the rules of the society we live in, eat cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, and carry out other acts of normalcy, we perpetuate that illusion. It's not as noticeable in a (relatively) mild society like democratic America, but you really notice it in extreme forms of society like parts of the Middle East, and totalitarian regimes like North Korea. If you want a kingdom where your subjects call you "the Leader" and worship you like a deity, then by all means, create such a reality. Kim Jong Il has done it.  L. Ron Hubbard has done it. If you want your own paradise-like resort in the Middle East and a series of islands in the shape of the World's landmasses, then by all means, create it. The sheikh of the Emirates has done it.

The catch is that the more the creation is driven by selfishness and greed, for power and money, the uglier it will be on the inside, and the more problems will fester from the inside, out. The UAE is a prime example of that- on the outside it is paradise in the middle east, but once you enter the region and hear the stories of people who live and work there who are not sheikhs or businessmen, you realize that they've got some serious issues that they are in denial about, like parents' neglection of children who are left to be raised by the servants of the house, the appalling abuse in schools not only by teachers but also among students, the lack of workers rights, the ill treatment of laborers, the wasting of resources, the awful traffic due to the burgeoning population, the corruption at every level from government to airport baggage check lines. 

Even here in Iraqi Kurdistan, though it is no North Korea or Saudi Arabia, I still do get the feeling of treading in someone else's illusion because despite all the talk about Iraqi Kurds following a milder form of Islam, it still remains a very closed society in terms of the status of women and the expectations of behavior between men and women. Women don't have careers here. Jobs? Maybe here and there. As I noted before during the soccer match, women generally are not seen strolling about with their boyfriends or accompanying them on evening outings, and any expression of love- even something as innocent as holding hands- is...perhaps not expressly forbidden, but at the very least looked upon as something to be ashamed of. I've been told that anything goes behind closed doors, but this required secrecy is exactly what I find so oppressive. 

I imagine the relationships that develop between men and women here are highly idealized, after all they can only be based on looks from afar and snatches of conversation, and the rest is left up to the imagination until marriage. People are so quick to get engaged and married here, but many don't seem ready for it; they've got the ring, but they are still boys and girls lacking maturity who don't really love the one they are engaged or married too. Of course the same can be said of the majority of young engaged/married couples in America. Hm...It's a different culture I'm dealing with, sure. Love and marriage don't mean the same thing in all corners of the world, sure. 

Indie Runs Away (Again)

My Indie has left me again. In other words, I have gone without AC for the past week. Luckily the weather has cooled considerably since we first arrived, from a blazing 120 to a mild 80-90 degrees. Plus some nights, an actual cool breeze flows through the desert, so after a cold shower and sitting outside on my balcony with a book or my laptop, I can put myself to sleep on the living room couch despite the heat.

Lonely Planet

Major wind/dust storm taking place right now! The wind is blowing fiercely and making that ghostly oooooooh sound. Earlier, the sky was white as snow, but by the end of our walk around the campus, it was an eerie, deep blue sea shade made even more mysterious and extraterrestrial by the hazy orange Halloween-ish glow of the streetlamps. I was walking around with one eye open like a Cyclops, trying to keep the dust out of my eyes. I said it felt like we were on a different planet, but Val hit it on the nose when she said it felt like Hell. Minus the sunburned dude with the pitchfork.

Sequined Headscarf

September 26, 2008

September 26, 2008

This evening, I sit typing away in my living room with a beautiful headscarf wrapped around my neck. It is shimmery white and transparent, dotted with silver sequins that catch the light like tiny disco balls, and fringed at the ends. It was a spontaneous gift from a stranger, an old woman with a brown, weathered face like a walnut, who walked with her hands clasped together in front of her, and this scarf around her head. She was the grandmother of the 5 children that roamed the giant 4-story house whose soccer field we rented out this afternoon.

This mansion-like house stands across the street from our school like the answer to a “which one does not belong” puzzle: a lush, green Garden of Eden in the middle of the now-familiar dusty brown landscape. A trailer is parked in the backyard next to the soccer field, and beyond the yard and trailer, way way yonder, dozens of cows can be seen grazing (on what?) over the distant hills that presumably also belonged to the family. These people were rich! I picked up one of the adorable kids from her perch in the (probably imported) grass and took her on a tour of her own yard, waving her little baby arm at her father and burying her nose in the bright pink and purple flowers so she could get a whiff of their perfume. After I put her back down- away from the opening in the fence so she wouldn't get hit again with the soccer ball- I wandered over to the front porch where the women of the house were hanging around. The older women- the mother and grandmother- were wrapped up in the traditional black robes and headscarves, but the girl was still young so she could wear whatever she wanted and let her hair flow free. Naturally, I do not remember what the little girl was wearing, nor what color her hair was. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the unusual, and I found the transparent, white scarf covering the old women's hair to be particularly beautiful, the way the sequins caught the light of the sun. 

“Juana,” I said, pointing to the scarf. Juana means “pretty”, or “cute”, and you can use it for things as well as people- babies and women- so it's a pretty handy Kurdish word to know. The old woman responded by touching her scarf and pointing at me with a questioning gaze and some Kurdish babble.

“Zor juana (very pretty),” I said again with a smile because I wasn't sure what she was saying. Before I knew it, the old woman was taking off her scarf and handing it to me. I bent my head down and let her put it on me over my own hair, catching a whiff of the grandmotherly scent that remained with the scarf even after the scarf had left the old woman's head. I spoke with the women for a bit longer. One of them was named Bufr, meaning “snow”, and another Triska, meaning “lightning” I think. I heard someone calling my own name from the field. Game over, time to go! We lost, but it was fun because I got to play as a stand-in for a few minutes, during which I kicked 1 leg, 1 ankle, and zero soccer balls.

Later, I wore this scarf during my visit to the big mosque, where Niroj and I got locked in the women's section and had to bang our way out. That's right, we banged on the window until a stranger walked by and heard our ruckus. And then we banged some more because the first guy walked away and never came back, the clueless idiot.

Flags & Fire

The Kurdish flag has red, white and green horizontal stripes with a yellow sun in the middle.

The sun in the middle of the Kurdish flag with its 21 rays, like the 21 fire lamps on the pillars of Minare Park, is linked to their old pre-Islamic Yazdani religion in which fire- the source of light- symbolized their god. 


This divine symbol represented at the center of the Kurdish flag became the center of an interesting debate I had with one of the shuttle drivers here one night, who told me that angels were made of light, and spirits were made of fire. But fire is light, I thought. The light from a fire and the light from a lightbulb are the same basic element; they are both manifestations of one electromagnetic force. But he was convinced otherwise, and I can understand why: a fire burning on the hearth seems to be so different from the electric light shining from a streetlamp, say. But the example of the three different forms of water (liquid water, gaseous clouds and solid ice) is proof that in nature a single element can take on several seemingly unrelated forms.

If you're a lot like me, you would have gone home and googled it, and found out that the light that you see from a fire (campfire, the sun, a match) is indeed the same element as the light from an electric source (bulb, lightning); ie: firelight = electric light. To be precise, firelight is evidence of fire, but the fire itself is a chemical reaction involving fuel, oxygen, and heat. When the fuel gets hot enough, it starts decomposing (burning), and the carbon and other elements that rise into the air during burning emit light, which is the only part of the reaction that we can physically see. So simply put, a fire and a lightbulb are both different sources of the same light. 

Thus, assuming angels and spirits exist, and assuming the driver was right in saying that the former are made of light while the latter are made of fire, then it follows that (since fire and light are in essence the same thing), angels and spirits are not completely different beings, but only as different as humans are to say dogs. Humans and dogs are very different in in structure, but we are both made of the same element- which in the driver's “Old World” views, is earth. And in mine? Well that depends on the results of the Large Hadron Collider, doesn't it?

Gratitude

In thinking about how much I've learned on the job so far, I realize that it is not so much the institution, but the people I work with that has taught me everything I now know about teaching. Long talks through the night with some of my colleagues about how to convey certain ideas in math, and how to manage a classroom full of wildebeests (okay, young children), as well as observing the way my colleagues handled tough situations; their constant encouragement and support after long, exhausting days; and sharing funny stories about our kids at the end of the day...I am indebted to my fellow teachers for getting me through this tough first month of the hardest job I've ever undertaken. This place and job would have been the pits without them!

C is for Circus!

The other day, I was teaching the kindergarteners the sound of soft 'c', using circus as an example, but they didn't know what a circus was. How does one explain the phenomenon of a circus to 25 5-year-olds who have never been to, nor heard of such a thing? Did they even know what a clown was? I tried to draw a clown on the board, but in fact, I found out at that very moment that it is really hard to draw clowns. I stood in the front of the classroom miming a tightrope walker, and then a bunch of animals, but it didn't seem to clarify things any further. So I took two sandwiches and threw them into the air, trying to juggle, but I kept dropping one of them. I think I've permanently distorted the idea of a circus for an entire generation of Kurdish kids. 

“Miss Angie, where is Circus? Circus is here?”

“Uh...no, probably not. It moves around from city to city...” The Big Top in Iraq? Poor kiddies...

Swimming Under the Stars & Inexplicable Reasons

September 20, 2008

Last night around midnight, I went swimming fully-clothed in an outdoor pool located in the backyard of a seedy bar called “The Edge”. It took us an hour just to get past the checkpoint on the way to the bar because sometimes those security guards have extra long sticks up their asses, and when we finally reached the entrance- which for some inexplicable reason had a large Mickey Mouse painted over its walls-, we had to sign in and surrender our passports and wait for a regular named “Fred” to let us in, but man oh man, when I saw that pool, for another inexplicable reason, I suddenly wanted to go swimming more than anything in the world. Without hesitation, I pulled off my cardigan and cannonballed right in, jeans and all, and didn't come out (except to dive) for the next 2 or 3 hours. 

For all the hype, the bar itself was a severe disappointment, and if I do ever go back, it won't be for the middle-aged American soldiers and mercenaries in a small one-room bar with Frank Sinatra crooning “I did it myyyy way” from laptop speakers, but for the chance to swim again under the twinkling gaze of the moon and the stars. 

Raguil

This evening, I went with a colleague and 3 of the security guards to the city to watch them play a pick-up soccer game. As the only woman among a bunch of Middle Eastern men- 1 Lebanese and 3 Kurds- I was really touched when they went out of their way to treat me “like a lady”. As we were loading the car, they insisted that I sit in the front, saying they knew what Westerners thought of the way Middle Eastern men treat their women, and they wanted me to go back to the States and tell them (you!) it's not true of all Middle Eastern men. 

The drive into town was really lovely. The sun was setting in pastel tones into a hazy atmosphere that made the mountains in the distance appear smeared and faint, like the stuff of dreams. We were driving with the windows down and I could feel all the pressures of the week blowing away with the wind as we sped dangerously down the untamed highways and alleys of Erbil, swerving around stray dogs and people, and around fellow reckless drivers (actually, ”reckless drivers” is redundant around here; you either drive recklessly, or you don't drive at all). 

The game took place in a fenced-off rectangular field with a dirt turf, located in some random ghetto spot in the city, across the street from a grocery and a huge abandoned building. I spent most of the time trying to get a decent picture of my friends with the bad lighting that was available, and the rest of the time cheering them on. It was a short game with a lot of unnecessary fouls called, and according to a disappointed A (my colleague), completely lacking in teamwork. But I found it exciting anyway and was impressed by what I saw, being a complete novice myself in the world of soccer. 

As usual in Hawler (the local name for Erbil), bats fluttered and sped about overhead beyond the netted ceiling, and as the game went on, random people who lived or happened to be in the neighborhood dropped by to watch. Next to me, on the other side of the fence, an ancient looking goateed man in a long white robe stood with a young boy with huge dark eyes, their fingers laced through the fence holes, quiet, invisible spectators of the game. 

A man sat still as a statue on a crate just off the side of the road, a lone dark figure set against the luminous backdrop of the brightly-lit grocery across the street. Boys who were too young to play tossed around and juggled their own soccer ball in the out of bounds area where I was sitting. A dude pulled up on his motorcycle and joined the silent spectators. 

Watching the spectators as much as the game, I began to be distinctly aware of the fact that there were no other women around, watching, playing or even just taking a stroll around the neighborhood on this pleasant weekend evening. I knew some of the players were married, and no doubt others had girlfriends. Where did the wives and girlfriends go when their men came here for a pick-up soccer game? Did they ever come along to watch and cheer on their boyfriends and husbands? I would guess that the answer is no, or rarely. 

And yet, they behaved with the utmost chivalry toward me. One of them ran across the street during the game to get me an ice-cold bottle of water from the grocery. Before the game began, K (the security guard) waved me over to join him and A in kicking the ball around for warm-up. And later after the game, when we stopped by K's house where his father offered us a giant platter of tamar, he piled a dish full of the dried, sweet-pulped fruit for me to take home because I tasted one and expressed how delicious it was. On our way out, he paused by his mother's garden, picked a couple fragrant flowers from it, and handed them to me. 

During the car ride home, they taught me a word in Arabic, “raguil” which, I can't think of the word for it in English, though I'm sure it exists somewhere in literature, but it means a man who has all the qualities that a man “should” have: chivalry, courage, the heart of a lion as well as a lamb- a gentleman as well as a white knight. My colleague pointed out that even if one possessed all these qualities, though, one can't be a raguil without a certain other thing. Justly spoken: I could never be a raguil no matter the state of my heart because of my lack of herr. 

This evening, the guys were living proof that one could find qualities of an Arthurian knight in today's Middle Eastern men. Not only did they treat me as their equal, but over and beyond that, as someone special. Chivalry and romance are not essential for a man to be a good person, or for a woman to be happy with her man, and sometimes, acts like insisting that the girl sit in the front of the car, or waiting for her to get out of the elevator first, or picking flowers for her seem phony and may even make situations more cumbersome for the girl, rather than comfortable. And clearly, chivalry is a total double standard, and some ardent feminists get very huffy about how it emboldens the divide between men and women, rather than helping to elevate our status to equal that of men. But I think it's sweet because all these acts are physical manifestations of his thoughts, which are on you. Chivalry and romance may be unnecessary, but like fine art, this is exactly the quality that make them so endearing.

CHEEEEEESE!

September 12, 2008

What they don't yet know is that it takes wisdom to be able to smile and laugh in the face of Serious, Solemn Life. 

Everyone, say CHEESE!

XKCD Revisited

I love spending a whole afternoon catching up on XKCD. Recently, I reread this old one about the blogging obsession, and as you can imagine, it rang especially true this time around. Here I am in the deserts of Erbil, experiencing a major broadening of my horizons, and blogging about it like nobody's business.

That Lovin' Feeling

September 12, 2008

I confess (my ignorance!): I came here with the utterly false and naïve impression that my interactions with men in this Muslim region were going to be devoid of any sort of feeling akin to love, or any chemistry of that sort. Instead, I find that the situation is exactly the opposite, that the...whatever you call it...is much more intense here than I've felt elsewhere. I feel it when I walk down the streets of Ainkawa, when I do my food shopping at one of the malls, when I talk with the workers here at the school, and even among some of my colleagues. I guess I should not be surprised, after all, the more it is repressed- culturally, religiously- the more intensely it will come, this feeling, in whatever form- lust or something deeper.

'Abdullah Nasih 'Ulwan claims in his book “Islam and Sex” that Islam is not a religion of sexual repression, and that in fact Allah rewards those who, um, act on it. The catch is that you have to do it within the bounds of His laws- meaning in matrimony and not in the act of adultery. I don't whole-heartedly disagree with these ideas, especially the part concerning adultery, but Islam, the way it is described in 'Ulwan's book, does come off as an agent of sexual repression for those who “do not have the means to marry”, or for those who are too young to marry, or choose not to marry for a while, if ever. These unmarried ones are expected to resort to such tactics as “bathing in cold water” and “avoiding spicy foods” and “sleeping on the right side, not on the stomach or the back” and avoiding “intermingling” with the opposite sex (especially the non-Muslim ones) in order to “ease inordinate sexual urges” that would be condemned by Allah if acted upon. Is this one reason why people get married so early here? Hell if that were true about spicy foods, then Koreans would be the horniest of them all...(snort).

I don't know how pertinent the 'Ulwan interpretation is to the lives of Muslims here, who tend to follow a milder form of Islam. It is only clear that the whole range of this feeling- from purely physical sexual attraction to genuine attraction- is not amiss here, and on the contrary, there's a lot of it going around both in the school and on the streets. As for the teachers, well, like I've said so many times so far, we are a group of grown men and women stuck in a compound in the middle of nowhere with only each other's company. And simply put, we are human; when meshed together, we feel the pull of love or lust like we feel the pull of gravity. It's a major part of the human condition, I think, and I was naïve to think that I would be escaping it here in Kurdistan. 

Ode to Balconies

September 12, 2008

What is the worth of a balcony? A balcony is worth a hundred bars and clubs and other usual Friday night hotspots. Put some drinks, music, and good company on that balcony, and you'll have a night to remember. Throw in a dancing Scotsman, and you won't be able to forget, even if you wanted to. Which you wouldn't, because it's just too damn funny!

To Hell & Back Again

I just spent the last 12 hours puking my brains out. The heaves were so bad that I thought my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, and though I managed to keep them on, tears were leaking out of them and staining my glasses, not because I was crying, but from the sheer pressure of the heaving and vomiting. At one point, I tried to take one of those Cipro pills that the nurse had prescribed to me before I left for Iraq, but my body rejected it, and it only made my vomit taste all medicinal. Honestly, I wanted to die, or at least pass out from the lack of air or something, but unfortunately neither happened, and I had to be conscious during the worst case of food poisoning I've ever experienced. 

After the vomiting phase passed, the cramps came, and I actually gagged myself a few times in order to throw up whatever was hurting me so badly inside. My god. When I emerged from this torture session and looked around my apartment, I saw before me a battlefield of barfbags on my kitchen counter, in my bedroom, on my living room chairs and in the bathroom. At one point when I was barfing in the bathroom, I felt fluid dripping onto my feet. I looked down and realized that the toilet paper packaging I was using as a barfbag had a hole on the bottom, and vomit was spilling all over the bathroom floor. This was the first time I was glad that the shower was built to flood the bathroom floor because I could just take the showerhead and spray the vomit down the floor drain. It was the highlight of the night. 

Later, when the worst had passed, I crawled to the kitchen to make myself some cardamom tea, and as I sat at the counter forcing small spoonfuls of the hot, bitter liquid into my mouth, suddenly I really did start to cry. I'm not sure why. I guess the prolonged physical pain took a toll on my emotions. All I wanted at that moment was a lap to lay my head on and a motherly hand stroking my head and holding and babying me. 

Yesterday evening, two of my hallmates and I had decided to have a spontaneous group dinner for us and some other teachers. We didn't think it through at all, and the cooking was quite chaotic, with water from the boiling pasta spilling out all over the (flat-topped) stove and onto the kitchen floor, the lack of ingredients, and such. But the food turned out really really delicious, and we all sat stuffed and content on the balcony, the night before another hard week of teaching was to begin. Afterward, I had the first real workout since I've arrived in the small, un-air conditioned gym adjacent to the apartment complex, and afterward, I played soccer with V and the security guards, and N and I had an interesting conversation about the moon. 

Going over the events of yesterday evening, I realize it was not just the food poisoning, but probably severe dehydration that led to this horrible uncontrollable puking. When the AQC (upper management person) stopped by too see if I was all right and to discuss a schedule change, I was super super super relieved to find out that I was the only one who missed school today due to food poisoning. If my cooking had brought this upon my other colleagues, I would have felt mortally sorry. 

As for the schedule change, one of my periods with the kindergardeners has been replaced with a 4th grade computer class, where we will be playing with Kidpix. I used to use Kidpix back in my grade school years! I'm sure it has evolved a lot though since my elementary school days. 

Minty-Fresh Mary

I've got a toothpaste stain on my bathroom mirror that looks exactly like the face of Mother Mary, and I'm about to sell it on ebay! Do you think it'll go for more than “Virgin Mary on breakfast toast“? ($1000 I believe.)

Victuals and Rituals

Friday, 5/9/08

Ramadan, the month of abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, has begun. The restaurants at the bazaar today hung curtains over their entrances to show respect for those who were fasting. When we drove past the mosque, we were greeted by an awesome sight: a sea of colorful headscarves and robes filled the entire sacred building as hundreds of Muslims were bent down in prayer on the floor. The second time we drove by, the same sea of colorful headscarves and robes were pushing and jabbing their way out of the mosque, chinatown-style. This second sight was not so humbling, but just as impressive, with a dash of hilarity. Someone in the van made the remark that the Brits and the Yanks are the only ones in the world who queue up. And even then we don't call it the same thing. 

This is for my mother: she is more likely than not wondering if I'm getting enough to eat around here. “Enough”, to a Korean mother is usually a gluttonous amount of food, so to her, I would have to answer “no, mom, I'm wasting away out here in the desert.” To the rest, I would say that it's been adequate for survival. There are no restaurants around these parts save for the fancy and expensive Lebanese one 10 minutes away, and no place to grab a quick bite to eat, and so we are all forced to cook for ourselves every day. For those who know me, you might be thinking now that I really must be wasting away because cooking for me is an Event, not an everyday routine. But in fact, I have found ways around this lack of quick eats by living off of packaged soup mixes, cheese sandwiches, cereal, and diet 7-up, each of which take less than 5 minutes to, uh, cook. Luckily, I'm not one of those people who need a huge variety in my meals, and actually I enjoy the ritualistic pouring of the milk over the cereal every morning (and waiting for it to reach the perfect degree of sogginess), the spreading of the cheese over the flatbread, and sitting down to a hot bowl of soup during my lunch break in the solitude and peace of my apartment...it's all very soothing and comforting, and I have yet to get tired of it. You could say that food is my anchor in this sea of change.

What else about food? Tonight, against my vegetarian principles, I had a lamb sandwich at this lovely park that we went to in Erbil called Minare Park. It was the only item on the menu! (Naturally, there was no physical menu.) I wolfed it down and enjoyed it as much as the carnivores around me. The ambience at the park was similar to that of Tarin, the estate-like Lebanese restaurant, with walkways lit by hundreds of lamps, color-lighted fountains, and romantic music blaring from speakers somewhere out there. The fountains here, though, were a truly majestic affair, with water streaming down in sheets from sky-high Parthenon-like pillars. The most interesting part of the park was this circle of pillars crowned at the very top with exactly 21 large lamps with real flames burning inside them. This was where the annual festival celebrating the spring equinox took place, every 21st of March. You may wonder what place such a pagan celebration has in the Islamic region of Kurdistan. Interestingly, Islam was a religion imposed on the Kurds, who were originally believers of Zoroastrianism, a religion theorized to be the original monotheistic religion from which Judaism and Christianity blossomed. They believed in a single god, and fire was used as a symbol of their god, much like the role of the cross in Christianity. 

What else about food? Today, while getting my eyebrows plucked and drastically reshaped by one of my hallmates, I was told that my face is shaped like an almond. 

Once Upon a Time...

Somehow, I never thought to include bats in my idea of a romantic dinner setting. Last night, though, we managed to get outdoor seating at Tarin, the estate-like Lebanese restaurant that we've already been treated to twice indoors, and so I found myself sitting at the end of a long table situated over the sprawling many-acred lawn, surrounded by good company, good conversation, plates and wine glasses waiting to be filled, and “Lady in Red” blaring romantically from the lawn speakers, and when I looked up into the starless black sky, I saw dozens of delightful little bats zooming around overhead. Finding them charming rather than alarming, I noted that this was another one of those absurdities that I would probably never experience anywhere else but here...and maybe in the Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Before the food arrived, I took a walk with my camera along the smooth, white, paved walkways lined with flowers on either side (the only flowers I've seen in Erbil so far) and fountains lit with colored lights of pink, green and blue, so that they looked like shimmery liquid gardens themselves.

Later, after dinner, we hit the restaurant playground, and I went on a seesaw for the first time in years! Did you know you can defy gravity on a seesaw? It depends on who is on the other end of course. Having muddied my brand new sequined white flipflops on the way to the playground, we decided to dip our feet in the nearby fountain built of jagged beige-colored rocks. We climbed to the very top, where we discovered a sort of jacuzzi where the water was shooting and bubbling forth, destined for the calmer pool below. There we hung out until one of the pantalooned waiters wandered over and kicked us off with a friendly wave.

It is too good to be true, this place! An absurd bat-filled fairy tale set in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by terror a couple hundred miles south and 50 miles west. 

...and they lived happily ever after. The End.

Languages and Civilizations

Strangely enough, of all the places where my French could get put to practice, it is right here in Erbil. When I have a free night, I go outside into the warm summer night and chat with the shuttle driver in French, our only common language. He also speaks Arabic and Kurdish, and the conversations get really interesting when we are joined by the security guys who speak Kurdish only and the Lebanese guys who converse in Arabic. Something gets said in Arabic and it gets translated into Kurdish, and then the driver translates it into French for me, and some English gets tossed in there as well. I try to pick up words from every language, and it makes my head spin sometimes, but it's fun because being immersed in the babble of 4 different languages is like paradise for a language nerd like me.

While my Arabic got a late start, I can now string together whole sentences in Kurdish on top of greetings and other choice phrases- but only in the past tense. The interesting thing about Kurdish is that the infinitive form of the verb is used to form the past tense, while the other tenses (present, future, and subjunctive) are formed using the imperative. Kurdish is truly a useless language because not only is it spoken only in Kurdistan, but within this small region, there are several different dialects that are mutually incomprehensible. Imagine driving from Tacoma to Seattle and finding out they spoke German, not English. Or going from Tacoma to a French-speaking Olympia. That's how useless Kurdish is! But the uselessness of a language has never prevented me from wanting to learn it. Recall my stint with Akkadian, the 5000 year-old language (that died off with the dinosaurs a few millennia ago) of ancient Mesopotamia- which coincidentally, is exactly where I am right now! I'm in the cradle of civilization, yo...sad to see what it's become eh? After centuries of conquest and being conquered.

What's going to happen to us, I wonder???

If Faces Could Match the Soul: a different take on the idea behind Oscar Wilde's “The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Thursday, 8/28/2008

This evening, while sitting in the van taking us to Ainkawa, I listened as one of my colleagues told me a story about a man who was trying to make an escape through Turkey and had to hide money in capsules and swallow them in order to get it past the officials. The Turkey officials eventually caught on to this little trick and devised a way to get them to poop it out or something by feeding them some sort of oil. This same man was captured, imprisoned and tortured with starvation and who knows what else for 2-3 months and nearly died because he found a razor and slashed himself all over trying to end his misery. 

“Where did you hear this story? Was it a news article, or a movie?”

No, he said, it was Hazhar- one of our shuttle drivers. Hazhar, the one who so attentively helped me through my first shopping experience at Naza mall as I struggled to find the olive oil and understand the Arabic price tags. Hazhar who is no more than 30 years old! I would never have guessed that such a story was hidden behind that kind, unassuming face. 

“Would you like to hear another story, even worse than the last one?”

I listened as he told me his own story and the story of many thousands of Kurds who were victims- as well as partakers- of horrible, atrocious acts of violence, of seeing streets strewn with body parts at the age of 12, of the largest diaspora in human history, of being trapped on the road with no food or drink for 7 days and being forced to drink water from a river which other fleeing Kurds were shitting and pissing into just a few meters away, of rebellion and revenge and the absolute evil of Saddam Hussein. As I took all this in, I couldn't believe that this was the true, personal story of the man sitting before me, a story told so casually and matter-of-factly that he would even pause to smile- and even laugh- in between takes.

The storyteller is also all of 30 years old, and I often characterized him to myself as a happy-go-lucky, theatrical man who looks like he came straight out of an old British comedy. But this was no ordinary comedy- more of a tragicomedy that is apparently all-too common a story among the Kurds I see and interact with on a daily basis now. You would not expect this just from seeing their faces. I am slowly coming to realize that in terms of representation, the face is not capable of doing justice to the horrors that the human soul is capable of undergoing- or causing in the case of people like Saddam Hussein and militants who rip fetuses out of pregnant women's bellies before burning the mutilated women to death. People like me have only experienced a tiny fraction of the huge range of emotions and acts that we are capable of undergoing. What must they think when they see us foreigners with genuinely happy smiles on our faces?

“You can never be truly happy, you know?” said my colleague.

I can only imagine, but by luck or chance or the grace of God, no I don't know. 

Later, I was staring out the window and suddenly a truck carrying a family of 6 pulled up next to the van. Two of the children were sitting in the open-air trunk (a very common sight in Erbil), and with them was a live sheep, peeking curiously into the window at the other two children whose faces were squashed up against it.

“Is that sheep a pet or dinner?” I asked. 

“A pet?” answered the Scot, “Don't be ridiculous, it's take-out!”

It was the funniest thing I'd seen all day. 

My Address

I was just thinking the other day that there can't possibly be any postcards available for purchase in Erbil- it's not exactly a tourist-oriented city. I'll figure something out, even if it means creating my own line of Erbil postcards. 

As promised a while back, here is my address:

PO Box 36 

International School of Choueifat-Erbil

Masif Road

Khanzad Area

Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq

But I actually urge you not to send me any parcels because I think it will be quite expensive to fedex anything to Iraq. Regular mail like letters and such need not be fedexed! Or so they say...I'm a bit wary about the postal services here, but we'll see. 

Cheers,

Angie

The Kids

They are all growing on me, even the super-feisty, mulish one who refused to sit down today when I tried to tell him to 5, 6 times. Around the 5th time, my mouth was still saying “sit down now please”, but my unfiltered mind was saying “Sit the f@#% down NOW!” Sigh. If only they could hear what was going on in my head, those little rugrats would be scared shitless.

Today's second grade class went so well I can hardly believe it. No one had to be put into detention, and everyone- all 30 students- finally gets the idea of bundles, so we can finally move on to place values...I can't believe how smoothly the day went! This must be a fluke. I'm not gonna take anything for granted at this point.

Moushkila Nia

"Miss Angie, Miss Angie! Water is falling from up there, down!"

I craned my neck to see if the ceiling was leaking. Nope, no such thing! Turns out, they were trying to tell me that it was raining outside! I was almost as excited as my kindergardeners as we all crowded around the windows to marvel at the darkened patches of the school grounds where the rain had hit. When I walked outside later, it felt really strange; the heat that had been with us, a constant, heavy, immobilizing presence around us since we first arrived 3 weeks ago, was gone. In its place was something milder and refreshing and cool as a cucumber on my skin.

Today was an exhausting and confusing day. Two kids cried as if their were being boiled alive (after being skinned alive that is); there was a missing kid (not one of mine thank god!) who had not shown up to class since day 1, although his parents claimed otherwise; and I was so busy with my kindergardeners that I completely forgot to go upstairs during period 9 to teach my 2nd graders- so that's another 40 minutes lost, and only 2/3 of them understand finally how many bundles of 10 go into 100.

No problem though. Moushkila nia, as they say in Arabic. Tomorrow, I will get the other 1/3 to understand, and then we'll move on to bundles of 100, 1000, and 10,000, and then place values. In my kindergarden class, I taught my kids a version of "100 bottles of beer on the wall" as a way of getting them to practice counting objects. No worries, appropriate substitutions were made! Beer became pencils, and the wall was replaced by a desk, and 100 by a much smaller number, 3.

Imaginary Creatures

Thursday, 8/28/2008

Having this leaky pipe in my kitchen is like having a pet cat. Every morning, I wake up and the first thing I do when I walk out of my bedroom is empty the bowl that has  been collecting the water overnight, much like emptying and refilling your pet's water bowl, or cleaning out its litter box. I mop up the excess water that has spilled over onto the floor, and then I go on with my morning duties. Every afternoon, when I come back to my apartment for a quick lunch, as soon as I walk through the door, I put down my keys and purse and empty the water bowl again and mop if necessary. Rinse and repeat every 3 hours or so. It's kind of nice having something to take care of, even if it is imaginary. I like to think that Indie followed me here all the way from Tacoma. What makes the pet cat seem more real is that I have these bathroom slippers that I bought to avoid having to walk barefoot over the flooded bathroom floor after my showers, and when it is particularly overflowing with water, the slippers make this awful squeegying sound like the meows of a cat that is being squeezed to death under my slippers. Disturbing, I know! 

And also, I think every apartment in this building has been furnished with a pet cricket. I'm not the only one who hears the chirping noise throughout the night, but trying to locate the thing is like a live demonstration of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, sort of. Every time you approach the place where the sound seems to be coming from, it moves away and seems to be coming from a different part of the room. Like, I could have sworn it was coming from the kitchen, but when I crept into the kitchen, it seemed to be coming from the bathroom area, but when I crept into the bathroom area, it went back to the kitchen. This is impossible! It is a fact that nothing can travel faster than light, not gravitons, and certainly not crickets! Is it phuzzy physics/action at a distance, or just the AC at work?

New Week, New Beginnings

Wow, what an amazing change from last week. I think I can do this! I feel like I'm learning how to be a mother with this kindergarden gig. How to deal with multiple crying children. How to send 20 kids to the bathroom and have them come back out without looking like they just dove into a pool. How to make kids laugh while learning. Whew! I see now why Captain Von Trapp decided to run his family of 7 kids like an army brigade. Today, I found out that one of my kids is scared of Bob Marley. I played a CD of his songs during break, but the little tyke asked me to turn it off. 

"You don't like it?"

"No Miss Angie, I don't like it. It's scary."

How can anyone be scared of Bob Marley???

And the smiley face/sad face list worked like a charm with my second graders. No one wants to be stuck on the sad face list because that means scary detention man (who I've been told can be quite a terror). On the other hand, kids can be very competitive, and that prize for whoever has the most smilies next to their name after a month is like their Holy Grail. I haven't even told them what the prize is yet! Heck, I don't even know what the prize is myself. Any ideas? And now I leave you with a comment about the copious amount of posts I've put up lately:

"Fuck sake, Angie you are writing a fucking dictionary..."

The Business of Love

Tuesday, 8/26/2008

It's been said that it is natural to feel love for more than one person. But where do you draw the line in terms of what you do with these other people you love? This is a question lots of people have yet to define the answer to, and the cause of so many broken relationships is due to couples not seeing eye-to-eye on this question. As a strong believer in fidelity in relationships, I want to ask: since when has the “naturalness” of something counted as justification for a course of action? If we always acted according to what felt natural, we would kill, hit, steal, and curse more, and in general we'd be a much more violent race than we have already shown ourselves to be. But we stop ourselves from following our gut feelings and carrying out these acts of violence/crimes because as much as it feels natural to take something if we want or need it, regardless of who it belongs to, we know there are rules like “don't steal”, “don't kill,”, etc., that must be followed in order for society to function. Why should love be treated any differently than other gut feelings? 

Monogamy may not feel natural to some, but the breaking of it is harmful on so many levels. In movies (which aim to make a point about reality) and real life, I've seen this breach of vow turn gentle people into bitter people, and sanity into insanity, trusting natures into ones that are forever suspicious of even acts of true kindness; it hurts kids and creates a permanent distance within a relationship that had potential to be something incredible. It is in our interest, I think, to avoid all that. Boundaries must be set in fixed relationships- ones in which both parties claim to love one another in that special way. To say 'I love you (as a good friend)” to others is fine, and they have a right to know it, but if you mean it in a more significant way, it's not so fine. 

Who I'll Be Teaching

Monday 8/25/08

Tonight, I witnessed an actual real-life tumbleweed. Man alive, we ARE in the desert! The wind was howling and dust was getting in our eyes as we sat out on the balcony trying to enjoy the night air. There was a late arrival from the UK, a tall, blond, lanky Englishman, and we had a bit of fun with him since he had no idea what he had signed up for when he put his John Hancock on that contract a week ago:

“If you find that your kitchen floor leaks, don't worry about it, that's normal.”

“Oh and if your bathroom floor floods, don't worry, that's SUPPOSED to happen when you take a shower.”

And “Can't really see the bats from down here, can you? Did you know we had bats here?”

His expression was priceless- eyes like flying saucers. 

There really is not much to complain about though.* Even wiping up the water from the kitchen floor every morning has become routine, like brushing my teeth, or taking out the trash. The people I work with are fantastic overall, with interesting backgrounds and personalities. I'm learning a lot about not only Kurdish culture, but also Lebanese and even British. They really are a totally different breed from Americans, these Brits. Anyone know what Marmite or Pimm's is? It's just something British people eat and drink, respectively, that Americans don't (or is it just me?). And now, I finally know that “mince meat” equals ground beef. Why would you put ground beef in a pie??

Oh, and the job job: I found out I'll be teaching kindergarden- English and math- as well as grade 2 math. So far, I've heard some serious horror stories about teaching KG, but I figure I can do anything for a year. I can live in Iraq for a year! 

*Take note: this statement was made before the job job actually began. I've learned that the same problems that don't bother you when you are relaxed and unstressed can become a real pain in the ass when you are exhausted and in dire need of sleep and rest.