The Next Page: Erbil — the Iraq you don’t see
Moustafa Ayad
ERBIL, Iraq — ‘They are soft, round and nice,” he said, rather matter of factly, as he shaped and gently cupped an invisible set of bulls testicles in midair while strolling through the park. Only moments ago, he and I had been patted down by a nice-enough-looking fellow before entering the gates of Sami Aburrahaman Park.
The conversation had drifted into food options in the area, and somehow crashed-landed into fried bulls balls territory.
“I have a feeling you will like them,” he said smiling a smile that creeps across the face of someone who knows much better. Only he was not being jokey or patronizing, he was serious. I mean, they have the same dish America’s Western states, Rocky Mountain Oysters I believe, but here in Iraq it seems like talking about eating bulls balls is much more dangerous. It was like international espionage only with a wee bit of carnival theatrics thrown in for good measure.
War just is not on my mind. I hardly see tanks. But the soldiers are here. Black Chevrolet Suburbans with thick glass, speeding around the highway, are here. Huge men in tan cargo pants, wearing black Oakley sunglasses, exist in droves.
So are what looks to me like remnants of a war that has wreaked havoc on the population of Iraq for years.
Yes, the tense political situation in the wake of the war is not ebbing. But in Northern Iraq — part of Kurdistan — it feels more like a gated community than just another postwar neighborhood.
Erbil is becoming a hub for contracting services throughout Iraq because of its security situation — only isolated violence after the fall of Saddam — and its importance as the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government. More than $70 billion will be invested in the region, exclaims International Fairs & Productions, the company that will host the 6th Erbil International Fair in October.
Unfinished concrete high-rise hotels peer over the desert, hulking above actual gated communities and government housing for bureaucrats and government workers. The secure communities have names like Italian Village and English Village, with villa-like domiciles that are the primary residences for foreigners staying in Erbil. Some villas, I’m told, sell for upwards of $500,000 — a testament to the infusion of dollars in the region, which has become headquarters for NGOs, oil companies and pharmaceutical companies that serve the rest of “unstable” Iraq.
There are historical, cultural or political events that have afforded this region peace, of course, and I am not writing to debate or even begin to decipher them. Instead, I write because there is much more to Iraq than war, instability and insecurity.
Of course, that is easy to say when you are five hours drive from where bombs fell on a Baghdad populace just 48 hours ago.
But, people still laugh, cry, tell incredibly dark stories and, oh yeah, try to get foreigners to eat fried bulls testicles. People are people, war or no war.
I was taking culinary advice from a gentleman who at 21 had been mistaken for dead in a head-on car accident with a minibus. He was thrown into the back of a truck with three other “dead” people going to a hospital for identification. He would wake up later — dazed, missing all of his teeth, brain swelling and a jaw broken in three different places — when his brother arrived and he faintly heard his voice. He would claim later that his brain injury might have been the reason he decided to translate for the U.S. military, risking his life to aid occupiers.
He told me the story as we were walking through a large park with children playing on massive jungle gyms. Men walking hand-in-arm with each other. Women dressed provocatively while wearing hijabs. We went to a restaurant within the park that serves beer and had outdoor seating. We sat on green lawn furniture dotting the massive expanse of grass that overlooked a man-made lake with gaudy, floating swans for lovers.
Drinking an odd combination of Russian and Turkish beer, we told each other dirty jokes. When I needed a bathroom break, I walked into the main dining hall. Pictures of families dotted the walls. A stuffed coyote added a hunting motif to what seemed like a wall of familial relationships stretching generations. Babies cradled in arms. Children smiling with large gaps courtesy of missing teeth.
For a moment, I lost myself staring at the wall, children and parents smiling softly in my direction. The guns, the contractors, the Suburbans had disappeared. People have survived — and with them idiosyncrasies of human life remain intact.
A night later, acquaintances insisted I go out for the evening with them. I boarded the Toyota Prado and stared directly at the two Kalashnikovs haphazardly stacked on each other on the floor of the SUV.
Bader, a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party, noticed and said, “Don’t worry, all of those in political parties must carry weapons.” He held a pistol he’d retrieved from beside the driver’s seat, pinched between two fingers like chopsticks. The gun barrel swayed and took a second look at me.
He spent the first moments of meeting me extolling the virtues of the Kurds. Our companion, a woman in her 40s, an editor of the children’s page in a local newspaper as well as a consultant for the education ministry, chortled, “I prefer to be a person who believes in the human, not the state, or a religion, but the ikliyahat of a human.”
The sensibility of the human: I nodded and smiled.
The restaurant that night was pitch black; the salad plate sitting directly in front of me was barely visible. It was like speaking with shadows.
After dinner, we paid a visit to “Family Fun.” This made me take the arsenal on the floor of the SUV much less seriously. Amid mini-golfing citizens, and children rolling within plastic balls that float on the water trapped like the boy in the bubble, we rode the “Family Fun” cable car. The cable cars come at you slowly but you jump on, like catching the bus in Egypt as a worker slows it down for you.
The three of us, trapped in the small tram, rose above the city and “Family Fun.” Groups of young men lounging on open grass dotted the expanse beneath us. A screen playing techno music videos thumped and displayed weird images of latex-covered women.
It was Disney World in a minor key. There we were, gliding and grinning over the expanse of Erbil.
On the flight to Erbil from Jordan, I sat next to a guy who was like a geriatric Jason Bourne, dressed all in black. He told me he was from Florida. Pensacola, he specified.
I decided to be personable. “Going to Erbil for vacation?”
He responded with a firm “no.”
I guess it’s not a funny joke.
“Business,” he said.
Apparently he had little time on this two-hour flight to use complete sentences. I did get him to open up, with my boyish, oh-shucks charm. He told me, “I work for the U.S. government.”
“Oh really, what branch?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
Back to not using our words, I figured.
We landed in what must have been a fierce windstorm. I could see it had briefly rained, a few drops, as we boarded the buses to head to the gates.
It was 3 a.m. The three Heinekens in Amman airport had worn off.
After an explanation of what Twitter was to a British businessman, and how he could use it as a personal newsfeed, I had to make a sloppy dash to the gate despite the fact my connecting flight arrived an hour earlier.
The airport opened only a few weeks ago. The $500 million spent on its construction showed. Its insides, sparkling white, seemed devoid of life, though. Lanes for visa entry were sparsely populated. Checking through requires a webcam close-up that the customs desk officer points in your face. Not like a jabbing, more like a scanning. I had to take off my Pittsburgh Pirates hat.
Later, in the hotel lobby, I would see slews of these Jason Bourne types, like my man from Pensacola — some fat, some muscularly defined, some short, some milling around the couches talking about building infrastructure and the appropriate contracting options. The only thing that set me apart, it seemed, was my non-reliance on private cars and security teams.
Erbil is surrounded by mountains. The city itself is a series of concentric circles, with the downtown encompassing the citadel and the old bazaar. The city’s main streets are named by their length. For instance 30th Street is actually 30 meters in length and is closer to downtown. They are currently constructing 120th Street.
Erbil’s people, the salt of the earth, are kind, hardened by years of war, and experts in poetry, politics and bargaining. (Forgive me if I make broad statements, but like any traveler with soft eyes, I’m making sense of the surroundings in gulps.)
I never thought I would see the day I would become a consultant or contractor. But ultimately I fell into a line of work to support media in a region experiencing growth pangs and spurts.
Now, I find myself walking the cramped alleyways of an old bazaar near the Citadel of Erbil, founded on the mound above the city during the fifth millennium BC.
Women were shopping for bras and panties. Swathes of cloth for sewing was strewn across tables. Sweets piled on top of one another, producing miniature pyramids, a bouquet of reds, pinks and greens from their coating in pistachios.
I cramped past men staring at the latest mobile phones. A child pointed at me and poked a finger at me. As I poked right back at him, he smiled.
Tagged in: Arbil, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi tourism, Kurdish culture, Kurdistan, Kurdistan tourism, Mideast vacations, The Other Iraq
