The Unexpected

Friday 8/22/2008

Silly me. I came to Erbil fully prepared to accept that I wouldn't be doing any drinking for an entire year- this being a Muslim region- and one of the first things we do is make a pit stop in the Christian neighborhood of Ainkawa for an alcohol run. The street where we made the stop was littered with as many alcohol shops as Montmartre in France has sex shops (ie: every 2 paces), and it is seriously seedy at night. How seedy you ask? During our stop there, my hallmate Niroj and I nearly got picked up as prostitutes by dirty old Kurdish men! It seemed not to have mattered that I was dressed in my scrubbiest jeans and a sleeved shirt. If you merely stand on a sidewalk for an extended period of time, you can get mistaken for a whore waiting for clients, rather than just two innocent girls waiting for the rest of their group to return to the shuttle. 

The funny part is, if it weren't for Niroj, who speaks Kurdish, I would have had no idea of the entire situation. There I was just standing at the edge of the sidewalk next to her, obliviously eating my orange sorbet. I was so into my sorbet that I barely noticed these middle-aged heavy-set balding dude exchanging words with my friend. and gesturing to his car. Suddenly, she exclaims:

“Oh my GOD, those men think we're hookers!”

I paused with the little spoon raised to my open mouth. “What? What men??”

Apparently, N. had returned his “Choni? Bashi?”, the customary Kurdish greeting, and the dirty man took that as a sign that we were there for more than just shopping and ice cream. (What is with dirty men and their ability to extrapolate sexual desire from a simple greeting?)

“Ware, ware (come, come),” he said gesturing toward his car, and that was when I was unpleasantly jerked out of my innocent orange sorbet fantasy into dirty reality full of dirty old men and their own dirty fantasies, ew ew EW! 

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More of the Unexpected

The availability of alcohol is just one of several misconceptions I had of this place. There is also the PDA. As expected, there is not much PDA between women and men in Erbil. On the other hand, we were told that the level of public displays of affection between men and other men here would surprise us outsiders. Not that they kiss on the lips or do full on tongue, but men are seen holding hands and kissing cheeks and it's totally acceptable and normal! 

Last night for instance, on the way to Ainkawa-Sahara “Mall”, I spotted 2 men greeting each other by kissing one another on the cheek not twice, not thrice, but SIX TIMES (we started keeping a verbal tally in the van when they reached #3)! Left, right, left right, left right...pause...left, right, left right, left right, and done! The strangest part was, notice that after kiss #3, they actually paused and took a moment to look around at their surroundings, and then returned to finish off their ultra-ceremonious greeting. Huh? Why did they pause? Was it so lengthy a greeting that they felt the need to take a break in between? Did they get bored in the middle of it, but decided to finish it off when they realized nothing more interesting was going on around them? WHO KNOWS! I'll have to continue making more observations on men-on-men PDA in order to solve this mystery. 

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I want fireworks at MY wedding! Today, we had tea and cakes at the fancy Hotel Khanzad which stands only a few minutes drive from the school. From the window, we could see a traditional Kurdish wedding ceremony taking place below, with a line of men dancing around in a large circle waving the Kurdish flag (red, white, and green with a yellow sun in the middle). Hm, it seems that men get to have all the fun in this culture. Fireworks burst high into the darkened sky from behind us as we drove off to return to the campus. Earlier that day, we also visited the castle that used to be inhabited by Princess Khanzad. It was small and austere inside- more like a barrack than a castle- and beige-colored geckos scampered across the walls, blending into its khaki bricks. The view from the rooftop was incredible.

The princess who occupied this austere dwelling was a famous 11th or 12th century warrior princess in Kurdish history who fought (and won!) battles against the Ottomans and others. There is also a modern representation of the Amazonian-like warrior woman in the PKK- the Kurdish rebel group that lives in the mountains up north and fights the Turks for Kurdish human rights. Women are said to make up 50% of the rebel group! Pretty impressive for a society in which men get to do the dancing and the PDA. Gender roles seem to be reversed here in Kurdistan.