Sully Trip Part 1: the Living & the Dead

Road trips never fail to bring out the finer facets of our selves that we often miss under the cloak of privacy. Whether that trip lasts two weeks, less than a week, or even a mere overnighter like the trip to Sulaimaniyah that I just returned from this late afternoon, you end up spending an abnormal portion of your time with the same people with little space or time to call your own. 


In that short span of time, you have a constant flow of interaction with them, so that they become like mirrors for your own soul. After all, what are we defined by, other than by our own actions and our reactions to other people's actions? For instance, if someone is being loud on the bus, do you react by ignoring them and slipping on a pair of headphones, or do you get so angry that you very nearly punch them in the balls (or throw them into the Dokan river if you happen to be around that area), or do you find the loudness simultaneously comical and appropriate for a road trip, or do you join in on the loud reveling? Believe me, we had all of the above reactions on the bus trip to Sully, a major Kurdish city to the southeast of Erbil.

This particular trip was a school-organized event, and nearly all the teachers that lived on campus decided to go. 19 teachers stuck in a bus for 4 hours- I don't know about the others, but I found the prospect exciting. At the very least it would be an interesting 4 hours on the road. Road trips are one of my favorite forms of travel. The excitement of loading onto the bus with everyone and knowing that we're going on the open road, settling into the cozy spot that will be yours for the rest of the trip, the random singing and chanting that breaks out along the way, the comfy silence that settles in as your travelmates drop off to sleep one by one, and staring for hours out the window and losing oneself in the vast landscape that is speeding by at god knows what speed. 


Usually I love just staring out the window for hours, but on the way to Sully, I was sandwiched between two of the Lebanese teachers, and so instead I ended up learning a good number of Arabic phrases that may or may not be safe to say at the airport. 

“It means 'how are you',” claimed the Mouth, with what little innocence he could muster. “Swear to god!” he added as I eyed him suspiciously. Of course, what it really meant was “I have a bomb”. But don't worry. By now, I've learned which of the Lebos I can trust, and which are thieves and liars. They even taught me how to say “thief” and “liar” in Arabic, which could come quite in handy in Egypt. (”50000 egyptian pounds for this? You little thief!”). 

...The 4 hours passed quickly enough. Every once in a while, I caught a glimpse through the khaki curtains of the enormous, endless chain of brown mountains that define the landscape of Kurdistan. Sometimes they were like jagged cliffs; every once in a while, the soil turned an iron-red; and at one point (right before the series of hairpin turns I think), we saw real snow covering the tops, where there had been no snow the last time we went to Sully. But mostly, the mountains were coffee-colored, smooth, and dimpled and carried on for miles and miles and...


We made a stop at Dokan River- one of the few rivers that traverse this dry, mountain-desert region-, where we chucked rocks big and small into the skimpy waters, and breathed in the unexpected smell of seawater. I was amazed when I realized how much I missed the water- standing by it, smelling it, hearing it rushing and trickling by. Like classical music and bananas, water was another thing that I experienced anew after months of its absence from my life here in Iraq. Honestly, the things we take for granted...

We managed to reach the hotel without anyone being drowned or thrown off a cliff or kicked in the balls, tossed our bags into our rather nice hotel rooms (with actual toilets!!!), and split off to go exploring. It was early afternoon, around 1 or 2 pm. I taxied it with a couple others to the bazaar but we got separated quite early on, and I ended up walking alone through the bazaar's main street with no real destination or agenda in mind besides purposefully getting lost. I've discovered through my previous travels that this is the most fun way of exploring unknown lands. Really, just chuck the guide book into the hotel room along with the bags, pick a general direction, and start walking. You'll find yourself getting immersed and absorbing, rather than “touring” and maintaining that camera lens-separation between you and the land and locals. Oh my god, I sound like a freakin' guide book! Have mercy...

Only half of the shops in the open-air market were open because this was a holiday week, but it was a beautiful day, and there were plenty of locals milling about, enjoying the sunshine. I saw them thoughtfully feeling the fabric of a horribly clashy skirt or a glitzy, shiny shirt (the clothing style of the Kurds is not subtle, needless to say); I saw them bending over a tray of silver jewelry for a closer look; I saw them grasping hands and exchanging kisses and greetings as friends recognized each other. I saw bakers kneading dough, peshmerga in their army attire having tea outside a teashop, and a group of men dressed in the old-style Kurdish outfit (a dull brown, gray, blue, or green one piece baggy potato sack jumpsuit with a cummerbund wrapped around their middle) standing around in a semi-circle in some sort of smithery, and watching as the smithy worked his machine.

I saw younger men wearing modern suits, younger women wearing jeans and skirts with fashionable knee-high boots, and I saw young couples holding hands openly and shamelessly. Sulaimaniyah was a different city altogether, heart and soul- one could see this just in the way the younger women dressed. Besides the dress, though, Sulaimaniyah is much closer to the idea of a city than either Dohuk or Erbil. There is a real urban sprawl of buildings and it feels vibrant, and the people are more natural, open, and free. Because of this relative openness and naturalness, I myself felt more free and liberated as I walked about in the open, though while in Erbil, it had never occurred to me that I was feeling trapped in any way. 

At some point, I made a turn away from the main bazaar street, and then kept walking south toward the tall red, jagged mountains that surround the city like a fortress. Eventually, the shops peetered out and the street turned residential, lined on either side with gated, fairly nice stone houses built so close together they were nearly stuck to each other. Kids played out on the street. They didn't look rich, or even “middle-class”, but from the looks of their homes, they were better off than those who lived in the residential alleys that snaked through the bazaar area. I stopped at one of the doors to try to read the sign (something doctor), started chatting with the women hanging around there, and ended up going into their home for a cup of tea- and to play with their adorable 4-month old baby. Baby Anoush, like all Kurdish babies, already had her ears pierced and ornamented with real gold earrings that reflected beautifully against her baby-smooth porcelain white skin. I lingered for about half-an-hour before I set off again, my purse laden with candy from the generous women. 

By this time, I knew where I wanted to go. As I was walking through the residential street which rose steadily higher and higher the closer I got to the mountains, I had noticed in the distance a plot of what appeared to be tombstones cropping out by the dozens out of a plot of land that rose high (around 6 feet, I would hazard a guess) above the level of the street. This was where I headed next, though god knows why. Why did a cemetery draw my fancy? I dunno...why not explore the scenes of the dead as much as the scenes of the living? Later, when I told the others about my destination of choice, they were baffled. A cemetery? How is that cool? They didn't get it...Wasn't it obvious? Yet, I couldn't give them an exact reason. It was no tomb of King Tut, no majestic pyramids here, no famous legends or myths associated with the dead of Sulaimaniyah, Iraq. 

No stash of jewels or mysterious hieroglyphs. Only beautiful Arabic script painted in calligraphic black ink onto the arched headstones that capped either end of the humble rectangular-shaped coffins. I crossed the busy street, finally arriving at the odd destination, and climbed the stone stairs that led up to the dead. By now, the light was beginning to fade into that golden late-afternoon look, but it was still plenty light outside, and cars and people still bustled about. Yet as I weaved slowly through the dying grass, studying the colorful stone tombs, each infused with shards of pastel colored glass and topped with a little grassy plot of its own, I felt a slight chill anyway. Dozens and dozens of decaying corpses were lying just six feet under my plodding feet, and the idea was just every so slightly creepy. I was alone, but if I had seen a single living person then, standing in the cemetery with me, I think I might have screamed. I began walking off the grass, westwardly, along the edge of the raised cemetery plot, placing one foot in front of the other like a tightrope walker, and I passed through the rest of the cemetery in this manner, until I reached the end and jumped down onto street level. 

Lo and behold, another cemetery plot stood before me, and another after that one. Lordy, there sure were a lot of dead people in Sully. I opted for the streets this time rather than wandering around above dead people, and soon I reached the next street crossing, and beyond that, I could see the top half of the golden sun setting sleepily behind the mountain tops. I crossed the street and ran up the wide dirt path, chasing after the setting sun. Guess what this dirt path led to? MORE TOMBSTONES. Lord, you just never think about how much space the dead take up. I climbed up a pile of rocks and checked out the view. To my left, the dirt path sloped downward, leading eventually to a space for the living this time. The sun set amazingly quickly behind the shadowy mountains that towered majestically over this space for the living, while to my right was the full moonrise, the lavender sky, and the jagged red mountains towering majestically over eastern Sully. In front of me lay the tombstones, and behind me lay acres of junk. It was the biggest junkyard I had ever seen, with piles of car skeletons and other unidentified rusting objects just...rusting. 

In a week, I'll be in Lebanon, and a week after that, I'll be in Egypt visiting a much more famous set of tombs. All I could think of though, as I stood there between sunset and moonrise and surrounded by dead people and rusting junk, was how glad I was to be here in Kurdistan before its transition from “developing” to “developed”, before the rest of the world got a chance to lay eyes on it. But even once the region opens its gates to tourists, will they be able to see the things I've seen? How much of its hidden beauties will be forever buried under the influx of modernism? How much of the mountainous landscape will be littered with incongruously built houses and “malls”? How much of the seamless transition from field to sun-splashed sky will be abruptly interrupted by a colony of suburban American-styled houses like the one just behind the school? How many of the old bazaars will be torn down and replaced by modern shopping malls filled with franchised stores? 

Don't get me wrong- the bazaars are filled with cultureless crap, imported goods, cheap jewelry, tacky trinkets, and ugly clothes. But the form and function of the bazaar- its labyrinth-like structure with old walkways, the lack of doors, the dirtiness, the noise, the shouts of “yek hazar, yek hazar!”, the smell of baking dough and shwarma spices wafting right onto the streets, the sight of turbaned men in potato sack outfits rolling huge carts of fruits and vegetables through the crowd, the shoe-shiners shining away right on the streets- these images are worth preserving. Currently, rumors flow about that the bazaar at the citadel in Erbil will be replaced by a huge shopping mall. I hope it is nothing more than a rumor, or a mangled half-truth. Perhaps the old and the new can co-exist? For the sake of the Kurds and what little of their old culture they seem to have left, I hope developers work just as hard to preserve as they do to develop. 

For now, though, the old world and its ways and rituals still remain. By the time I returned to the bazaar, night had fallen and of course, even here in “liberal” Sulaimaniyah, all the women had disappeared into their homes and so some of the men stared a bit more leerily as I walked by. The bazaar at night is like another world, romantically lit with streetlamps, lights from the stands, and the occasional bonfire, and still bustling with energy and people. The only shops that are still open at night are the groceries and food stands. Along Sabun Keran Street, I passed by cart after cart selling shwarmas and kabobs and tea, with the men standing around in their potato sack outfits and checkered headscarves, eating the food right there at the carts and chatting with each other and the owner as he dug his hands into the large pile of raw ground meat and stuck it onto the stick for the next kabob. I passed by a fruit cart where a group of workers stood around a roaring fire in order to keep warm in the chilly night. I stopped for a minute and joined the small ring around the fire to warm up my freezing hands before moving on. It was nearly time for the group dinner that the school was providing for us that evening.