Duhok

October 2, 2008

For this Eid holiday, six of us decided to go on a mini-road trip up to this city in Northern Iraq.

It took us 2.5 hours to get there (would have been shorter but there were like 10 checkpoints to get across), and along the way, we saw 53 Kurdistan flags, 32 donkeys, and acres upon acres of dry-looking mountain region. 

You could tell how close you were to Duhok by the color of the mountains: when we started out from Erbil, they were the usual light brown color, then they became a yellowish-brown, which darkened later into an Arizona red, and then as we were closing in on Duhok, actual green vegetation could be seen sprouting from these mountains. So if you ever go on a road trip up Northern Iraq and get lost, just watch for the color order of the mountains: if the spectrum goes brown->yellow->red->green, then you heading north; if it goes green->red->yellowish->brown, then you are going south. Who needs a compass really? Unless you are colorblind.

Duhok is a major contrast from Erbil/Khanzad. You don't see any of those tall, flashy mansion-sized houses in random fields in the middle of nowhere. I guess the rich businessmen and diplomats who have to live in Kurdistan don't choose to set up house in Duhok. It is a city built low in the valley, surrounded by fortress-like mountains that glow red in the sunset, with the Kurdistan flag perched proudly against one of the peaks, visible from practically any spot in the city.(Seriously, I have not seen such patriotism for one's nation since the weeks following the World Trade Center bombings.) As you drive into the city, you see hundreds of little pastel-colored houses stacked in crowded fashion like legos at the base of the mountains. 

In the middle of the city, there are two main roads, lined with hotels and little shops and eateries where you can either dine in or grab a shwarma (lamb on pita bread) to-go. These busy main roads split off into dozens of smaller cobblestone roads and alleys lined with old-style houses made of stone- the beginnings of what we started calling Legoland. As you go further toward the mountains, it begins to feel less like a (relatively) modern city and more like a village.

I did not get a chance to explore this older section of the city until the next morning. The day before, we spent a while searching for a vacant motel, during which we ran into Jala, one of the Kurdish teachers at our school

and made friends with some colorfully outfitted Duhoki kids

Notice the little girl on the left dressed in a Santa outfit. After we successfully procured a room, we went off to explore the heart of Duhok and hit up Dream City, the Iraqi amusement park franchise, where I saw a fountain that looked like a giant dandelion puff

and went on a rollercoaster with no safety bar. There was one major drop at the bottom of which I bashed my nose into the front of the car. At night, we searched desperately for a place to sit down and have a drink, but all in vain, for Duhok is a very conservative city: alcohol is forbidden, and there is no Christian neighborhood like Ainkawa in Erbil that one can escape to for a little respite from the harsh Muslim standards. (Isn't it funny how the Christian neighborhood has become the Red Light district of the Muslim city?) If you want to drink in Duhok, you buy your booze from one of the shops along the one little street that sells booze, and take it back to your home or hotel to drink in private. Like a true alcoholic. My poor friends whose night out would not be complete without having a drink or two or three in a booth with loud music and cigarettes were sorely disappointed by the lack of nightlife around here.

But then, our taxi driver saved the night. With me as translator (so you can imagine how long it took for his idea to get across), he somehow communicated to us that he knew of a great place to drink that was not our hotel. At least, that's what I thought he was saying. In Duhok, just a couple hours north of Erbil, most of the Sorani dialect I learned became like glasses to a blind man- utterly useless. Anyway, I told my friends what I thought the taxi driver might be saying, and so we bought our booze, piled back into the taxi, and hoped for the best.

10-15 minutes later, we were still in the taxi, but it wasn't until we left the main road and entered the highway that I started to worry. Where the hell was he taking us? I thought to myself. “Where the hell is he taking us?” my friends asked out loud, echoing my thoughts. It was nearly pitch black along the highway, there were no longer any shops or houses around, we were six foreigners in a cab somewhere in Iraq, and 20, 25 minutes later, we were still driving. “Halas (finished)?” we kept on asking the driver. He just kept signalling that we were nearly there. Um...but then someone noticed that the the night sky was filled with stars like freckles on an Irishman, and so I forgot about the current problem and enjoyed the sight of a night sky unpolluted by dust or city lights. The others were not so easily distracted however, especially when the driver made a sudden turn into an even darker road that sloped up and around as if we were going up a mountainside. Hm...

Soon, though, to our relief, he finally slowed down and pulled into this pitch-black grove of trees. We tumbled out of the cab, and stared breathlessly at the night sky, which was peppered with so many stars like you wouldn't believe! It seemed as if the entire Milky Way had made its home in the skies of Duhok. The only place I've ever seen a more brilliant showing of stars was at the campsite in Arizona during our summer 2006 road trip. As I stared and stared in awe at the twinkling display overhead, I wondered for a brief moment whether anyone was staring up at me and my planet in the same way. For me, the stars made it worth coming all the way out there, despite all the uncertainty.

As the others found seats on the bench and rocks, and wasted no time in cracking open their bottles, I wandered further into the trees, stumbling over rocks and brambles made invisible by the dark. Eventually, the trees thinned out and opened up into a breathtaking panoramic view of mountains and cliffsides and a little patch of lights far far away, nestled between two of the large, shadowy mountains. These were the lights of Duhok proper, it turned out, where we had been a half-hour ago, searching high and low for a place to grab a beer and chill. What a surprise we had in store for us, though we had no idea then! Only the taxi driver had an idea, a brilliant one.

I woke up at 6 the next morning on accident (no one wakes up at 6 am on purpose, so it must have been an accident), and decided to go for a meandering walk alone toward the mountains. I wandered through rows of the aforementioned old-style houses made of stone, a man sleeping on his rooftop, a door with no house, leading into an overgrown wild garden, and a wild, grassy area with a sad little creak running through it full of garbage, and smelling like garbage. 

I paused for a long while at the houseless door that led into a garden because it made me think of the secret garden from Francis Hodgson Burnett's wonderful children's novel, and suddenly, I was feeling all nostalgic for my childhood and the countless hours I spent getting lost in imaginative, magical worlds that only existed in someone's mind. I wish I had brought my Harry Potter books with me! I thought to myself. I stood wistfully in front of that houseless door for far longer than anyone need ever stand in front of a door. Eventually I moved on.

Doors, as it turns out, can be fascinating objects. As I wandered through the old cobblestone alleys, I began to notice the distinct characteristics of the doors of these residencies in Duhok. They were short, hobbit-like wrought-iron (?) doors painted in various pastel shades like Easter eggs, and sculpted with patterns of either hearts, or flowers, or flowers made of hearts. Diamond or square shapes popped up every once in a while, but they certainly had a thing for hearts. Several of the houses had graffiti marks on their stone walls- mostly just the house number and arrows pointing in random directions and at random objects like pipes. But for some reason, a good number of them had marked their walls with a red heart shot through with a Cupid's arrow.

Observing all this graffiti made me think of the rock art anthropologists find in ancient caves in Egypt and other areas of ancient civilizations, and I began to wonder what anthropologists of the future were going to make of the graffiti of our times. Back in the States, they would uncover enormous, gorgeous murals like those you'd find in Philly, as well as the crass “fuck you” and other distasteful sayings. Anthropologists always interpret rock art as paintings of real events, and the animals, swimming people, and other objects as representations of things that the ancient artist had actually seen, touched, done, experienced. Why do they always assume this realism? Did human beings thousands and thousands of years ago lack the ability to fantasize and invent and to paint at a more abstract level? Imagine what wacky conclusions future anthropologists would reach if they assumed this same realism in our often fantasy-laiden wall art.

As I was walking around taking pictures of doors, the old village began stirring with life. 

An old woman saw me and invited me into her home. I was grateful for being given the chance to see what sort of life hid behind these doors that I loved so much, and so I followed her without hesitation through her own pale yellow door, numbered 11. We entered into a little courtyard with small rooms on either side- a kitchen, living room and pantry-type room to my right, with an outdoor sink, and a bedroom or two to my left. Straight ahead was a white, stone staircase that led to the rooftop. She showed me the soup she was cooking for breakfast, and then led me into the bedroom where her 24-year-old daughter was sleeping on the floor with the blanket pulled completely over her head. Her daughter, it turned out, could speak fairly fluent English! She had studied English in school, had read all the classics like Bronte, Hemmingway, and so on, and she was afraid of losing all the English she had learned because all her British/American friends had gone away so she had no one to talk to.

The two of us climbed the stairs to the rooftop, where it was warm and the view was of her mother

and of low rooftops extending as far as the eye could see. We chatted for a long while about her culture, about her dream of getting out of this country (by marrying a man who wanted to leave the country) where it was hard for a woman to get a decent job and be treated like an equal, about her brothers and her beautiful sister who married young and to this day cries because her husband won't let her go back to school. She showed me pictures of her sister's and friend's weddings, where the brides' faces were painted a ghostly mask-like white which I found frightful, but I guess the Kurds find beautiful. She told me about her friend who had a baby that was born blue and died 8 days later, though the doctors couldn't tell her what the cause of death was. At one point, she had a conversation with her neighbor who was hanging up laundry on her own rooftop. I asked afterward what they were talking about, and she said this woman had just returned from 8 days in the hospital because her baby was sick, and still the doctors did not know the cause of illness. She told me about how women here would get surgery done so they couldn't have any more babies, but they'd end up getting pregnant anyway, and often they'd return from the surgery with infections because the hospitals and their instruments were unsterile. None of these problems would exist, I found myself thinking, if they could just get out of this place. Help and cures were just a plane ride away, but to these women, a plane ride was an impossibility. Money was a barrier. Getting a visa was a barrier. Perhaps even ignorance of outside help was a barrier.

The problem is not just a women's problem. As I found out last night, there is an employee here at the school who has a son whose kidneys and abdominal muscles are failing, and there is nothing this man can do about it so he drowns his sorrows in toxic $5 bottles of whiskey. If he could just get his son to a modern hospital, his son could get a kidney transplant and have a chance at life. For people who have it, money may not buy happiness, but for these folks, money is the difference between life and death, and could very well buy happiness. What they need is either to get out of here, or have the competent doctors come in, but currently, neither is happening.


And so they carry on in places like Duhok.