Erbil
I ended up loving Erbil as a city. In the morning, I met with Jan and chatted with him for a couple of hours. Jan is a soft-spoken Dutch gentleman. He has lots of travel experience and it was fun exchanging some stories with him. Jan is the kind of guy who has been to so many places and interacted with so many people that he can fit into any environment. In that way, he’s just like me.
When I looked out of the window of our hotel, I was surprised by how calm it was. Almost nobody on the street. I expected an arab city with its usual hustle and bustle. In fact, I realized that I also had not been woken up by the usual blare of the mosque just on the other side of the street. These were the first signs of Erbil being different.
I started out a bit hesitant, still unsure about being in Kurdistan/Iraq. I was exploring the city by myself and walking towards the citadel. One thing was sure, the streets were full of black/white/beige-dressed men, and only men. I’m used to being in male environments at work, in fact on most days I don’t interact with any other women. But it’s different if an entire city is like that. I felt strangely out of place. At least, today I had adapted my wardrobe. I was wearing Erbil fashion: white, gray, black :). Surprisingly, the few women that were actually walking on the street, were not wearing any headscarf, neither was I.
Another thing that surprised me is that people couldn’t care less about me. Being a white, light haired foreign woman, I stood out, but no one even looked at me or talked to me. Every now and then, a person would glance at me twice being surprised to see a white person. It was bizarre compared to other trips, but the fact that no one cared was actually something I immensely appreciated.
There are so many things I ended up loving about Erbil, so let me just highlight a few of them:
The bazaar. To be frank, I love any kind of bazaar. Always full of people and activities, it’s a great place for people watching. Like any bazaar, Erbil’s was organized into districts. The clothing area, the food area, the copper line, etc. Two areas that stood out as being different was the butcher area and the money area. At the butcher, people were selling heads of animals, brains as well as intestines. I looked at them with so much wonder and disgust. Little did I know that later during my trip I would have to taste some animal intestines….. The other area that stood out as intriguing was the money changing area. They had huge piles of foreign money (dollars, euros and others) sitting on tables and people would go there to change money. The whole setup seemed a bit strange to me as a single stack of $100 bills must have correspond to several tens of thousands of USD, just sitting around on a table. Obviously, I started questioning what was going on and if these were real bills. Being a tourist, I just glanced at it, snapped 1-2 discrete pictures and didn’t ask too many questions.
The public square and citadel: The main square in the city was full of men just hanging out on benches. It was amazingly clean, with nice flowers and fountains. There is a clock tower in one of the corners of the square that gave it a European look. It didn’t feel like the Middle East at all, rather it felt like the UK or some other nordic country. The citadel is a highlight of Erbil. Being elevated on a hill in the center of the city, it is impossible to miss it. It’s this citadel that makes Erbil one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In fact, the citadel is 4000 years old and the whole street layout is organized around it. Streets are named by how far away from the citadel they are. Sadly, the citadel was closed for restoration. I talked to every guard, tried every possible trick I could think of to get in. But there was nothing that could be done. Eventually a guard told me he would let me in the next day, but I was running out of time. So sadly I didn’t get to see this marvel of human civilisation. I’ll have to come back!
Erbil Parks: There is no doubt that the parks in Erbil were an absolute highlight. In many ways, those parks also reminded of a more promising/hopeful past.
I first went to the Martyr Sami Abdul Rahman Park. On the way, I passed the Kurdish Parliament which I expected to somehow look grand and beautiful like Parliament buildings in other countries. But it didn’t. It was a communist style concrete block with so many guards around it that it was impossible to get anywhere near it. The park is just behind it.
The park is gorgeous, set up for families to spend a relaxing afternoon. There are ponds, many different districts, and obviously many gardeners taking care of the flowers and plants. But it’s also a ghost park, mostly empty and most attractions being out of service. For example, the swan boats were lying on the shore, clearly not having been used for a while. Many of the fountains were out of service too. One gardener as he saw me approaching told me to hold on for a sec while he was turning the fountain on. It was a sweet gesture for the only visitor this park had probably seen in a while.
I followed the noise in the park which led me to the children’s playground. While every other section of the park was empty, the playground was fully alive. One thing that always strikes me about middle eastern countries is how well they care for their children. In so many ways, playground facilities in the middle east are a lot more elaborate, creative and numerous than in Switzerland or the US. This was also the case in Erbil. Next to the playground, a family was celebrating a wedding and invited me as a guest of honor for some pictures and snacks. It was a lovely afternoon.
The most incredible parks in Erbil though are the Minaret and most importantly the Shanadar Park. It’s a must see highlight for late in the afternoon. Like the Martyr’s park, the Minaret park is full of facilities that are out of service. For example, in the middle of the park, there is a hot air balloon that surely at some point carried people up and down into the skies for everyone’s entertainment. Now it is deserted.
It’s immediate neighbor, the Shandar Park though, is fully alive and a testimony of what all parks must have looked like at some point. It’s full of families picnicking on the grass, eating ice cream and kids running around and flying kites. It has an art gallery from which you can see a beautiful mosque. It has telecabines that transport people across the park. It’s truly an amazing place. I spent quite a bit of time there watching people, eating ice cream and enjoying my afternoon.
The modern side of Erbil: The reason I even went to the modern part of Erbil was because I wanted to see the Jalil Khayat Mosque. Istanbul’s blue mosque apparently was built after this mosque by the same architect. Turns out this mosque wasn’t anything special. It’s located at the intersection of the 60 meter street and the Shaqlawa St. However, if you keep walking on Shaqlawa St away from the city, you get to the super modern part of Erbil. It’s full of modern malls and so many stores that also exist in any European city. When walking in this part of town, it’s hard to believe that this is Kurdistan/Iraq. Although there is nothing special about this area, it feels so out of place that it’s definitely worth a look.
There are a few more attractions in Erbil. I also went to the Erbil Civilization museum which was far away and not really worth it. Although it did have 6000 year old artifacts, it’s basically just 3 rooms with a guard pacing behind you as you watch the various items.
The people: Kurdish people are incredibly kind and welcoming. Although most people ignore you, every so often someone would come to you to tell you how welcome you are. Teenage boys would shily ask for a picture with me. Men in their thirties would volunteer to walk me around the bazaar to show me various items. Various people who owned juice, ice cream or various other stalls would offer me items for free or give me two things for the price of one. The women didn’t really talk to me. Although once a guy was explaining various bazaar items to me, a woman who overheard the conversation corrected him on his explanation and scolded him for bothering me. It was a funny moment. This woman turned out to be a professor of medicine at the local university. In general, even though there were almost no women on the street, I was treated with more respect by the local men than I would have been at home or at my job. Nobody seemed to care that I am a foreigner or that I am a woman.
So after a very long day of walking around in the city, I went back to the hotel to meet the expedition team. I was planning to just take a taxi, but it turns out that this was almost an impossible task. Stupidly, I forgot to take the card from the hotel, and as much as I tried to tell taxi drivers where I was trying to go, they just had no idea what I wanted from them. So I found myself walking very fast, almost running towards the hotel. I got many perplexed looks from the locals as to why some western woman was running (!) in the heat. Believe me, people don’t run in the middle east…
When I got to the hotel, I found the expedition team already assembled looking over maps. It seemed like a great team: 9 people from 7 nationalities including the two expedition leaders: Jan & Phil. The people seemed to come from all walks of life, one person worked for a finance institution, another worked on construction sites, another owned several hair salons. What brought all of us together is the passion for the outdoors and the eagerness to embark on a new adventure.
Our two expedition leaders had a small surprise for us that evening. We were invited to a fancy dinner by a bunch of academics/politicians in a luxurious restaurant in Erbil. The dinner ended up being a feast. I isolated myself at the dinner table to be surrounded by Kurdish people. It was great fun and wonderful to learn so much about Kurdistan. One of the people sitting close to me was a leader of the Peshmerga army. He told me about the conflict with ISIL in the middle of Erbil city 8 months earlier. He carefully measured his words to probe my reaction, but the academic next to me regularly jumped into the conversation to tell me how scary it all was. The army person though was perfectly calm as if he was telling me about a routine quarrel between two neighbors. It was crazy to think that it would be up to the man sitting across the table from me to make sure ISIL doesn’t take over.
About an hour into the dinner, the foreign minister also joined our party. In general, I found it interesting to see that a lot of those politicians were academic professors at universities. This almost never happens in Switzerland or the US, and I’m curious about this model. I must say, I also wouldn’t trust many of the academics I know to lead a country.
Overall, it was a lovely evening. Because I isolated myself from the expedition team to sit in the middle of the Kurdish delegation, I was the only foreigner among a group of politicians. However, I was treated with the greatest respect and was given the warmest welcome. Many times during dinner, the local delegation emphasized that they were hoping for an independent, secular Kurdistan, that they were hoping to educate their boys and girls equally. They were unhappy, worried about the conservative forces around them. I can see in what a tricky situation Kurdistan finds itself. They dream of independence, but are tied to Iraq. They are a peaceful, forward thinking island surrounded by more and more conservative powers. They are a region of 22 million Kurds, but without a country. It’s an area that I encourage anyone to visit. It’s safe, warm, welcoming, modern, and surprising in so many ways. Kurdistan and its people definitely won me over.
To see more Erbil pictures, go here.
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