I shut the cab door and turned around. Facing the inside of the bazaar, suddenly, I felt like exploring, not shopping. Good thing there was an ancient citadel right across the street! I made a detour from bazaar to citadel, bought a couple of those shepherd bags from the tapestry shop underneath, and headed through the archway and up the stairs for what would be the last time, though at the time, I was thinking I'd be coming here at least a couple more times before leaving. As usual, there were a couple lone men perched on the edge of the flat top overlooking the city, watching the hubbub of the bazaar traffic below. The sky that day was a uniform, hazy white, so heavy with dust that the buildings along the horizon appeared smoky and gray.
I entered through an opening on the side this time. Fortress walls enclosed the path on either side and reached up to the sky. Treading this path, I came upon an old mud-brick wall in a permanent state of crumbling. Staring up at it, I realized it was not just a single wall, but layers upon layers of it. Underneath the crumbling parts, older layers of wall could be seen, as well as old doors and windows that had been built then blocked up later on. Some patches of brick were smoother than others. Some patches looked like old man's teeth, all crooked and leaving gaps and halfway pulled out. Bricks grew out in clumps from flatter surfaces like the mossy growth on ancient tree trunks. I couldn't believe it was still standing because it looked like a Jenga game that's been going on much too long.
I meandered like one of the citadel cats through some alleys with my camera, until I saw one of the guards walking toward me. I nodded agreeably as he gave me the usual friendly warning to not stray from the main road, and dutifully followed him back. About a dozen or so members of the pershmerga lounged around the circular podium there in their army pants, but as soon as they saw me approaching, their leader barked at them to get into formation and they started doing these hilariously lame, outdated exercises. I managed to get a picture of them while they were still lounging around.
Looking up from the picture, I noticed an ever-so slight brownish tint of the sky that had not been there earlier. Dust was gathering. It hit me then just how brown everything in here was today. The mud-brick buildings, the dirt ground, and now even the sky was reflecting an off-white tint.
I made my way up the main road toward the other archway in the back of the citadel, pausing to take photos of an adorable Creamsicle-colored cat lurking at the top of a railed staircase behind some old bricks and leaves. Seriously, it is the cats that rule this place now. Akkadians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks have come and gone, and now only the felines remain.
By the time I passed under the back archway, the dust had thickened so much the sky seemed to be dropping down on the city, the smoky film along the horizon having spread forward to turn the clear outlines of distant buildings into indiscernible shadows shrouded in mist.
I climbed up some old crumbling staircase along the right side of the citadel walls, over loose boards, stones, and mounds of dirt. There was supposed to be an amazing view of the city during sunset from a window up here somewhere. But even as I began climbing, I could see a guard out of the corner of my eye making his way toward me. Argh, since when have they become so annoyingly thoughtful of the tourists' safety? I sat down on a cement block and pulled out my camera, indicating to the guard that I was just going to sit here taking pictures. He seemed to be fine with that, though he lingered to keep watch. I'll come back another day and try to get up there, I thought. Of course that day never came.
Perched on the cement block and leaning against the old mud-brick wall, I watched as this one came to an end, the sun sinking slowly down from its lofty roost. Its gold light cast a yellowish hue over the westerly sky, diffused by the intense dust clogging the atmosphere that day. The entire sky seemed to glow with a soft, nebulous light. Strong gusts of wind blew that infernal dust my way. I shielded my eyes with my hands, and futilely tried to brush my bangs away against the direction of the wind. The winds were shifting, the air hung heavy. Gee, the day sure felt ominous. I toyed with my camera for awhile until suddenly, a fat raindrop splattered on it, and I looked up to see that the world had been drenched in coffee.
Or so it seemed. Brown, brown, everywhere brown! Muddy brown skies hovered over a muddy brown city with brown buildings and white buildings that looked yellowish-brown under the strange glowing light from above. I was impressed, but also, I had to get out of the rain that was about to be unleashed.
I ran down and took shelter underneath the arch next to a young girl about 12 years of age, but already as tall as me. Possibly, I have not grown since I was twelve. We huddled against the bricks and watched the muddy rain drumming down, heavy as pebbles.
Soon, though, the wind was sweeping the downpour sideways, so we were getting wet anyway. A soldier motioned for us to get inside the old security station. Grateful for the tiny, but dry shelter, we sat down on the old stone bench and sighed with relief- but I yelped and leapt up a second later because water was dripping down from the ceiling onto the bench where I sat. So we stood side-by-side, waiting for the storm to pass.
The girl's name was Raman, and she was visiting from Denmark with her grandfather. Raman dreamed of living in Kurdistan forever. The houses here were big and beautiful, she said, and nowhere else has she ever seen such beautiful things. I liked how she could say these things about her homeland even in the midst of a giant, disgusting mudstorm. A shattered window directly in front of me framed an old man standing under the eaves of a house across the dirt path, one hand resting on a large, yellow garbage bin, the other wiping the rain off his balding head. The old man was her grandfather, a school headmaster. The rain slashed down like needles past this viewing frame.
We watched the river of coffee flow and splatter past the doorless entrance. It reminded me of a time more than a dozen years ago, when I stood under the protective eaves of a storefront somewhere along the route to my aunt's house in Korea, watching a muddy river rushing madly by through the cobblestone street. Now that was a rainstorm. I had been exactly Raman's age, but unlike her, I remember being scared stiff by the torrential flood that looked like it could easily sweep me away if I tried to step into it to get home. All I wanted, though, was to get home, so I braved the torrents and blindly made my way back to my aunt's house eventually. I remember my lovely aunt yelled at me for not taking an umbrella. Hmph. As if an umbrella could have held back a rushing river. She must have been mistaking me for Moses.
This time, I waited. Quite suddenly, the downpour slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely. We stepped out of our tiny cement shelter, amazed at the transformation. Having dumped all its dirt onto the city below, which remained a murky, muddy brown, the sky looked positively cheery: light and clear and fluffy with clouds. Had it been a cartoon, it would have started whistling a tune. Had it been a deer, it would have started frolicking after a butterfly. How beguiling. Raman and I joined her grandfather and the few other tourists heading down the hill and out the citadel. Her grandfather invited me to their home, so I waited with them in the flooded streets for a cab, taking care to step upon the more solid islands of mud. The sun had sunk low and was glowing a pale orange, visible just over an old brick wall across the street. I followed them into the cab for an evening of ice cream and babies at Raman's aunt's house.
“If I had all the money and time in the world...” We ended up playing this game somehow. Raman said she would live in Kurdistan and help other people. Wait till she finds out just how many ways there are of doing that. How would she choose? Her younger sister would be a princess. Would that be a full-time occupation? I guess in this day and age, depending on which realm you're in charge of, being a princess might entail getting involved in politics on top of wearing the tiara and pretty dresses. In the old days in Kurdistan, a princess was also a warrior (Remember Princess Khanzad, the 12th century Kurdish warrior princess? The Yezedis, before the Islamic conquest, did not care much for distinct gender roles.). Her older cousin was studying to become a civil engineer, which sounds a lot less glamorous than Occupation: Princess, but in a developing region like Kurdistan, would be a hundred times more useful.
In the corner of the room, swaddled in blankets, the littlest sister, still just a baby, cried out in her sleep. I wondered what dreams had startled her from her tranquil slumber.
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