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. 

In the Company of Bats and Brits

Monday, 8/25/2008

And now after that melodramatic post, a calmer voice takes over. Yesterday, while we were shopping at the bazaar, we spotted a young, red-headed pale-skinned boy ahead of us. He could have been from Ireland, he was so ginger. An interesting fact I did not know until I came here is that Middle Easterners are considered “Caucasians”, same as white people. And in Kurdistan, the accuracy of this classification is most apparent; I see blue- and green-eyed Kurds everywhere I go. 

Balconies are almost as good as rooftops in terms of places to chill for hours into the night with nothing but drinks and each other's company- and bats. The skies above the apartments are busy with these creatures of the night zooming around night after night. It took a while for me to realize that they were not really fast birds or really large dragonflies. 

The characters in the school grow more interesting each day I spend in their company. The Brits have formed their own Club GB which has met every night this week to talk, drink, and chain-smoke for hours and hours. They have deigned to grant me, an American, a visa into their nightly ritual.

I just found out that one of my hallmates is a father of two. That would explain the ring! He stole away for a few minutes tonight to talk to his 4-year-old daughter on the phone. Later, he told us she liked to fall asleep over his shoulder, and tonight, I guess, she especially missed his shoulder. He took this job in Erbil because of an economical crises back home- whether personal or otherwise, I'm not sure. We see him differently now that we can add “doting father” to our characterization of him as the one who wears longs socks with his soccer shorts like a German. 

Out, Damn Spot!

Sunday, 8/24/2008

In Erbil, Sunday is the new Monday, as the weekend begins on Friday. So why am I awake at 4 in the morning? It all began last night, when I crawled into my beautiful pink bed after a nice, long cleansing shower and some evening sudoku (shape sudoku- man those are killer). I breathed a huge sigh of contentment as I snuggled under the cozy comforters and closed my eyes to the darkness of my room, when suddenly, a buzzing noise filled my left ear. 

“Oh HELL, no!” I yelled as I jumped up from my bed with bullet speed, “You are NOT going to eat me alive!”

But after a few minutes of sitting around uselessly with a makeshift mosquito swatter in hand, there was nothing I could do but crawl back into bed. I could not stay up all night trying to hunt down the little bloodsucking parasite. Tomorrow was the new Monday after all, and I had to get to work by 8 am. So I reluctantly crawled back into bed knowing full well what sort of consequences this act of capitulation would entail. A different sort of sigh escaped my lips then- a sigh of defeat and acceptance...the same sort of sigh that might have escaped the lips of the Son of God as he trudged up to Calvary ready to bear his cross.

The next thing I knew, I was being woken up by that same incessant buzzing noise in my left ear, except this time it was accompanied by a dull throbbing in my left hand and an itchy left foot and arm. I was so mad. As expected as these bites were, I couldn't help lying there fuming quietly in the dark, and unable to get back to sleep for fear of getting bitten again. I still had a good two hours of precious sleep left, so what was I supposed to do? I was bigger and stronger than the mosquito dammit. Filled with sudden determination, I marched out of bed, flipped on the light, and grabbed the makeshift mosquito-killer ready to kill. My keen hunter eyes scanned the room for any sign of movement and at last, I spotted it, a tiny evil black spot on the pure, white surface of my bedroom wall. I tiptoed over, slowly closing in on my prey, and after a moment of silence to gather up all the speed I had in me into my killing arm, I swatted the wall with a force that could have killed an elephant. 

THWACK! What a beautiful sound! I turned over the booklet and sure enough, it was smeared over in one corner with mosquito guts. 

“Yeeeah! That's what you get you little $#@%!@!” I yelled triumphantly. I could feel a bout of maniacal laughter bubbling up my throat and wanting to escape, but I suppressed it, knowing that while talking to a mosquito might be deemed slightly loony, a maniacal laughter would leave no doubt as to my lack of sanity. Nevertheless, the revenge was sweet. And gross. I made for the bathroom to de-gut my swatter, but as I was about to turn the bedroom doorknob, something black flew out of the green purse hanging from it. It was another mosquito!

I hate mosquitos. I hate flies. I hate the entire arthropoda phylum, and they can all die horrible deaths for all I care. 

Cheap Shoes

The bazaar is dirty and cheap and an exciting place to shop, especially for shoes. For some reason, the Erbil bazaar has really cute shoes and I was tempted to buy a few pairs but stuck to just one for now that had pretty flower prints on the soles. These prints will come in handy when I want to make sand art with my feet.* It was my first haggling experience, and it was a successful one! I got it down from 8000 dinars (~$6.50) to 5000 (~$4.50).

*These cheap shoes are now broken. I think I should not have been running in them so much.

Running Marathons

One of the hardest parts about teaching is knowing that your success depends on other people.

I think God was laughing at me when he heard me thinking yesterday, “Man, kindergarden is going to be a piece of cake after 2nd graders.” I am utterly spent after the first full day of teaching, which included spending 4 whole periods with 27 4-5 year-olds, plus a period of 2nd graders. I came home feeling like I had just run a marathon, and the discovery that my AC was broken so that I would no longer have a cool haven to escape to was just the icing on the cake- if icing comes in tragic flavors anyway. As unkind as it sounds, I felt much better after hearing that other people's days were just as exhausting, and some were downright shitty from what I heard due to the ongoing chaos in the management department. Also, I was told that last year, one kindergardener cried for a month straight before she finally decided to shut off the ducts (either that, or she ran out of tears to cry). Whether this is a comforting piece of news or something that should worry me further is something I have yet to decide. 

The hardest part I would say is that while a couple kids are fairly good at English for their age, there are others who know absolutely no English at all and just babble on in Kurdish the entire time, or say nothing at all. For these kids, it's like starting at square zero. How do you make something out of nothing? How do you make a cake without the ingredients? It's like trying to cause a Big Bang, creating an entire universe out of absolutely no materials. “How many?” I would ask holding up one pencil. “Pencil!” they would all shout gleefully. “No, not 'what'; how many?” “Pencil!” they would shout with amazing enthusiasm. And that is when the pencil game was invented (more about that below). The scary thing is, I don't know if these are proper methods of teaching. What if I'm doing exactly what the experts say should not be done? I have no clue, I'm just entertaining some 5-year-olds man. And their parents are paying so much money for me to teach them well. This is the scariest, most burdensome part for me.

After sitting at my kitchen table with my usual can of diet 7-up, though, and mulling over the events of the day, and trying very hard to re-energize physically and mentally, I could feel my optimism returning because suddenly, I had this vision of the future where the little 5 year-olds knew how to speak and write whole words and sentences in English, and I look forward to this, I really do. The key to surviving any journey is focusing on what will be...this may seem like an obvious bit of advice, but it meant very little to me until today. Also, despite the criers, there were the other kids who actually chanted along to my stupid little diddies (a-a-a-apple, or 1, 2, 3-4-5!) and did all the motions and got really into the count-the-pencils game, so that's an encouraging start, even though they seem like such little things to be happy about. 

The count-the-pencil game was invented really out of sheer necessity, during the “How many?” “Pencil!” conundrum. I would take a pencil in each hand and hold up one or two, saying out loud how many there were. Heh. It was really cute when I hid both pencils behind my back and asked “how many?” Befuddled faces gazed up at me until I said “zero!”, and then they shouted with the usual exuberance “zero!!!” One important thing I learned today is that kids love to chant. It doesn't matter if you do it over and over again until you feel that they MUST be bored of it. They don't get bored of chanting. This could be a very handy tool for future lessons.

As for the second graders, they were angels today, especially compared to the other two days. There was still too much rustling and murmuring going on for my satisfaction, but what an improvement! Tomorrow, I will have to take matters into my own hands and divide them into groups myself if this “point system” is to be used at all. God sometimes I really hate systems. 

Bright Green Shoes

All issues float away when you've got bright green shoes on your feet. 

I started off the school year with a bang- literally, thanks to these new shoes I wore for my first day of school. They are these ultra-bright green netted flats that I bought outside a Korean supermarket back in WA, especially for my move to Erbil. Sure, it was not the most practical item to pack into one of my two suitcases, but I figured if nothing else, it would match my bright green and white striped tote bag. And so it did. From ankles on up, I was all miss professional with gray capri-length slacks and sheer black long-sleeve blouse over a black satiny tank top. But one look at my feet completely shattered that air of professionalism. Heh. I admit, it pleases me to think of the shocking effect it must have had on at least a couple people, like a good morning jolt of double expresso shot from Starbucks. Ah Starbucks...

Anyway, it turned out, even I was not immune to the shocking antics of my bright green shoes. I was standing at my locker in the staff room, and someone stood nearby with a pile of stuff in her arms. Inevitably, something had to drop- her roll of scotch tape in this case. It rolled along the slick floor like a lost wheel, and instinctively, I ran after it and stuck out my right foot to stop it, and BAM! My bright green shoes slipped from under me, and I fell mercilessly hard on my left lower back and arm. Man alive that hurt. If I were older, that would have killed me. If I had any pride, that fall would have shattered it. But I am 24, and have no shame, and so I merely hobbled away with a hand on my lower back. Hmph. Who invented circular tape anyway? 

Anyway, the first 3 days have been wonderfully chaotic and exciting. The kids made me forget whatever banal issues we had with administrative affairs, and I went home exhausted but happy. Sort of. I was a bit daunted by the task of controlling a roomful of rambunctious, confused 2nd graders. The poor things don't quite understand the concept of switching rooms for different subjects, and this new state-of-the-art campus must seem like a giant maze to them, and for all the appearance of organization that our program loves to project, chaos reigned that first day, as well as today. Books had not been allocated, the younger kids had no clue where they were supposed to be at which hour, nor which class; half the kids in my math class did not understand English and so clearly did not belong in my regular-paced class, but when I tried to ask them anything, they just looked at me like “no comprendo man (or whatever the Kurdish version of that is)”; there was a roomful of parent-less kindergardeners who were not supposed to have showed up at all that first day, and naturally a few of them were bawling in confusion and baby angst.

Needless to say, that first day, not much learning or teaching took place. Today, though, during my second math period, I finally said screw the role call, and I just taught whoever happened to be sitting in my class, and it was so fun! In retrospect, I perhaps should have taken attendance so that the kids that had run away or were in the wrong class could get sorted out by the supervisors. But regardless of what I should have done, the end result was that a lot of the kids actually seemed to be picking up the things that were coming out of my mouth, and though I have yet to figure out how to manage them with more authority, they listened to me noticeably better the second time around, especially when I threatened them with the detention sheet, heh. I'm learning how to be a hardass here! With a smiley face on my shirt and bright green shoes. When I walked into the classroom for the third session of math (supposed to be two, but I mixed up my schedule so they got an extra dose of math today, oops), and told them they had yet another period of math, they actually cheered. I was shocked. I really think it's the green shoes- they're magic!

At one point, towards the end of the work day, I peered into one of the classrooms in the upper primary building, and when I saw the attentive behavior of the older kids, and the chalkboard covered with more complex-looking ideas, I found myself wishing for a moment that I was teaching one of the older grades, especially 5th grade, which is when they start learning bits of algebra and even geometry I think. But I think I will enjoy teaching the smaller kids the foundational elements of their education. And there is nothing so endearing as adorable little second-graders throwing their arms around you in a big bear hug as if they've known you their entire short lives rather than a mere 2 days. Kids here are very affectionate. Tomorrow, kindergarden begins. More stories to come.

Angie's Choice (sorry, no Meryl)

OH MY GOD my AC is broken!

On the other hand, the kitchen pipe has pretty much stopped leaking. This is directly due to the fact that the AC is broken, and so the water that was condensing from it and had to go somewhere (why that somewhere had to be my kitchen floor is beyond me), no longer exists. So the nuts of it is, it's either the AC or a dry kitchen floor. 

I just can't win. 

Should a person have to choose between her mother and her child? Why should I have to choose between AC and...okay I pick the AC dammit!