Bomb Walls and the Citadel

Tuesday, 8/19/2008

Bomb walls are one of several means used to keep Erbil safe. They are thick cement walls built around the city, particularly around its important buildings like the Parliament. However, you may not recognize them at first sight as anything remotely connected with protection from enemy fire. This is because innocuous looking murals are painted over them to make them appear less intimidating. Pictures of flowers and smiling stick figure children and items related to Kurdish history and culture dance along the (hopefully) impenetrable cement surfaces. 

The city center of Erbil is a major contrast from Khanzad- the municipality that our school actually belongs to. There are huge parks and rows of highrise apartments, a huge exciting-looking bazaar overflowing with pedestrians, green spaces with citizens lounging around on them or playing soccer. And the citadel of course, which is the focus of the entire city. 

Most everything is built along two concentric circular highways around the citadel (kind of like Paris), and they call these two major highways 60 km and 100 km because those are the circumferences of those highways circling the citadel (from this info, and the formula C=2pir, you can work out that the distance from the citadel to the highways are about 10 and 17 km, respectively). There are also roads that radiate outward from the citadel. So basically, the city is shaped like a wheel with spokes and all. 

The citadel is an awesome and impressive, but ugly structure built high atop a steep dirt hill. The reason for its fame- and the reason why it's recently been turned into a World Heritage site- is because it is one of the oldest continually-inhabited cities in human history. The Medes- ancestors of the Kurds- lived there. The Assyrians of ancient Mesopotamia who spoke now-defunct tongues and wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets made their mark there. Literally! Archaeologists actually recently discovered ancient cuneiform graffiti along the inner walls that said (roughly translated): “An Assyrian wuz here.” Along with some grocery lists. 

Of course, now that the citadel is being turned into a museum, it has lost its title of continually inhabited city. I figured as long as one person lived in those citadel slums, it would be able to retain its title, so I magnanimously offered to be that one person. But the director said no, that was not part of the contract. So I'm staying here, in my spacious and cheery apartment. I guess I am glad...the citadel is not powered by AC.