Another Change of Scene

Once more I find myself thrust from my life in England and placed into another society with different customs and different habits to that of my own. Having spent a lot of time in Syria I don’t think Spain can be any more foreign than Syria was to me, but there have been certain things which I’ve noticed whilst spending time here.

After leaving Syria I came back home and did a few useful things, such as work experience, whilst I tried to sort things out. I didn’t have any idea what kind of a job I was going to do in Syria. To be honest, the Spanish department in Durham hadn’t really sorted it out very well. Week after week I was getting information from the French department appearing on my DUO saying that there was another placement going, yet the Spanish department were keeping very quiet about everything.

I soon decided to pop out to Spain for a week and see what I could find. I booked a cheap Ryan Air flight, booked a hostel, shoved some clothes in a bag, and then off I went for 6 days. I translated my CV into Spanish and printed a few copies off and then went round looking for jobs. Near my hostel was an Arabic restaurant so I thought: “Hey! This looks like a good idea!” After going in and introducing myself in Arabic I realised that not only could they not speak very much Arabic, but I couldn’t speak ANY Spanish. I knew what I wanted to say but whenever I tried to say it then Arabic words just came out. I eventually got my message across and handed over my CV, telling him to let me know if they needed anyone. I haven’t heard back from them.

I then moved onto something which I was more suited to: Bar work. There was an Irish bar right in the centre of Madrid which had a “Staff Needed” sign outside of it, so I went in and enquired, but because it would be another month before I could actually start the work they told me to come back then.

And so here I am: back in Spain after month of working in the bar in Durham. I had a piece of luck when I popped over to Spain for a week a month ago in that I met up with my old Spanish exchange: Enrique. I got paired up with him about 4 years ago and we’ve been friends ever since, occasionally talking to each other on Facebook. Having this connection means I’m currently staying in his family’s house in Madrid while I look for a job and accommodation. I literally cannot thank his family enough for their kindness while I’ve been here. They’ve helped me get back into the swing of speaking Spanish and they’ve also given me some wonderful food. I have rediscovered a love of mine that I had when I was here 4 years ago: Gazpacho. For anyone who doesn’t know this cold soup, it is delicious. I don’t know whether it’s because they’re amazing at cooking it but it’s so tasty and so perfect for this hot weather.

The family is another part of Spain which I love. Again, I don’t know whether it’s only because I’ve been really lucky, but I love the way this family works together and they really make me feel part of it. When I got here I was frustrated because I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, partly because they speak so fast, but now I’ve been able to understand most of what they’re saying at the dinner table.

I also love “Carmela” who I understand to be a sort of nanny/maid/grandmother figure who is clearly loved by all the family and even at her old age she cooks the food and clearly cares about all of them and it’s a beautiful relationship that the family has with her.

As for work, I returned to the Irish bar and handed in my CV, then I was sent to go and see “Felix” who was the owner of several different bars and cafes around the area. I ended up waiting for 40 minutes for him, then had a small chat, after which he told me to turn up at midday on Friday, which is tomorrow, so I THINK I’ve got a job but I’m not 100% sure. We’ll have to wait and see.

As for the future: I expect I shall be working most of next week. I’m also trying to watch as many Almodovar films as possible in preparation for my Contemporary Spanish Cinema module next year. I watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre this morning which was strangely interesting and I’ve got Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios which apparently is VERY amusing. I’m looking forward to it.

At the end of this post I think I have to thank Enrique and his family so much for everything they’ve done for me so far. Their generosity has been amazing and I hope that if they ever come to England I’ll be able to do the same for them in return.

6 months ago  /  Notes

Rumours and Exaggerations

Living in Syria this year has certainly opened my family up to a lot of stress, mainly due to the current upheaval of Middle Eastern governments in a bid for democracy.

Syria’s modern history is very much like the surrounding Middle Eastern countries where they have a facade democracy that’s been put in place for a long time and people are used to it. When Bashar Al-Assad’s father died at the start of the 21st century he left the presidency to his son. At this time Syria wasn’t a very modern place with almost no access to the internet and an economy that was starved of growth due to the lack of economic freedom. People used to have to travel all the way to Beirut in Lebanon to properly go shopping for stylish clothes or the latest gadgets. This all changed however when Bashar came into power, bringing economic and social reforms that made Syria bloom into an economically stable country by Middle Eastern standards.

Currently, due to the many calls for change in the Middle East, Syria is under threat by some people in opposition to the government with many small protests popping up all over the place. Most of these protests are not as people would think: a call for proper democracy, but instead a call for Bashar and his government to make more social and economic changes in Syria and to cut out corruption amongst officials.

However, there have been several large protests in the border town of Deraa. In talking to many different Syrians in this matter I have been able to see a wide variety of ideas and facts as to why this is.

Firstly Deraa is a border town, meaning that it’s very much open to outside influence, weapons are easily smuggled in and people can come across and create trouble there. Also, Syria has a variety of cultures and they don’t all get on, so one thing I’ve been told is that Deraa is filled with the people from a culture that doesn’t like Bashar’s ideologies. Another thing I have been told is that when Bashar came to power in 2000 he was challenged for the presidency by a close relative and the people in Deraa are the ones who think Bashar shouldn’t have come to power.

All in all what I’ve learnt is that most people love Bashar Al-Assad and Deraa is just a thorn in the side of what is otherwise a peaceful nation. Today is Friday and at 1pm when people come out from Friday prayers I might be proven wrong, but for the moment things look stable and I think they will continue to be so.

As for dangers to Westerners: if you don’t get involved and stay away from any protests then nothing is going to happen to you. Simple.

10 months ago  /  1 note

Feeling at Home

I guess if you spend enough time in one place you grow a sort of attachment to it and you feel a sort of loyalty towards it. I suppose that’s what has happened to me in Damascus. I walk the streets now with my mind a few paces behind me as I don’t really have to concentrate on where I’m going now, my feet know the way as they’ve walked the route so many times. Trips that used to feel like they took ages now seem to be extremely short.

Thinking back to when I first arrived I remember being so entranced with the places I was discovering, not really being able to put a full picture in my head of where I was and where everything was in relation to me. The hotel I first stayed in felt so far away from Old Damascus, however now I realise it’s 10 minutes away maximum. I guess it might be due to the amount of small places I’ve lived in where everything is no longer than half an hour away from the centre. Damascus however is a lot bigger than anywhere I’ve ever lived in and although I usually stay in the bubble that is the Old City, I’m able to appreciate the size of it when I have to travel to university or to an astroturf pitch to play football with some of the locals.

There are some things I’m still not too confident with at the moment such as the service taxis, as I still don’t really know where they all go. Hopefully I’ll be able to work it out before I leave in just over a month.

In a way I’ve probably become a lot more confident with travelling this year. I really didn’t want to come out here expecting myself to “find myself” out here as that’s such a cliché, however I have learnt a lot more how certain things work out here and I’ve really learnt a completely different way of life, and, dare I say it, a life that probably suits me a lot more than the hectic lifestyle of back home.

I’m probably going to miss Damascus when I finally leave as I’ve become accustom to the people and their friendliness here and I’m not looking forward to going back home where everyone is cold to any strangers they meet, whereas here they invite them in for tea or coffee and food, free of charge of course.

It’s also been really weird living without brands out here. I mean you do get things like KFC, coke, pepsi and things like that but you don’t get massive shopping chains along the streets, they’re usually just family shops that have been in the family for generations. I’ve created several rapports with different shop owners along my street and in particular the foul bil leben shop owner who is always happy to see us and knows just how we like our foul…

I suppose what this post is about is that I really feel at home in Damascus now and I’m really going to miss the things that make this place unique.

10 months ago  /  0 notes

Northern Iraq Part 6: Gali Ali Beg, the Amidiya Sunrise and the Journey Home

The final leg of my journey begins with a trip to Gali Ali Beg: A place which is highlighted in Lonely Planet as being the highlight of Kurdistan…

We were more than slightly disappointed.

We woke up at 9ish and got ready for Ahmar to pick us up at 10, this involved showering and grabbing a quick bite to eat. Then we all hopped in his car and went on our way, with Adam and Will complaining about my snoring from the night before. We soon arrived in Gali Ali Beg which was admittedly an impressive road leading through the mountains, and we stopped off at the supposed highlight of it: the Bekhal waterfall.

This place was FILLED with Iraqi tourists, who all started to take photos of us, mainly because of Adam who is tall with long ginger hair, a rarity in the Middle East. The waterfall itself could be impressive if not for the dingy boats that fill the pool beneath it and the metal barriers and restaurant surrounding it. It kinda spoiled the whole “beautiful nature” aspect of it…

Ahmar then took us to Sulav in the mountains so we could complete our journey. For this he took us back to Lalish and took the route from there which had some stunning views of the mountains and beautiful cities on the way. We also got to see the sunset over the mountains on the way there which was stunning and eventually we rolled into Sulav and found the only hotel there.

The only hotel there was more like a squatter’s house. There was no key to the door of our room, which the owner of the hotel assured us was alright, the beds had stains on them which looked very suspect and the toilets… oh the toilets… there was only one that was working, even though it was just a hole in the ground, and a colony of spiders had nested above it with all the flies that had swarmed the toilet and strayed too high trapped in their web. Never pleasant…

We went to find a place to eat, taking our valuables with us due to the lack of a key, and got ripped off in a restaurant which, like a typical mountain restaurant, charged us double what it should have cost for our meal… But feeling fed we decided to go to bed early to wake up early and go to Amidiya in the morning. We fell asleep with my bed blocking the door so no one could get in…

Luckily we slept without problems, I had a bit of a freaky dream thinking someone was grabbing my arm through the window next to my bed. We woke up around 5:30ish and dragged ourselves out of bed and started a long walk along the road towards Amidiya which we could see in the distance.

Luckily along the way a car came past which we flagged down and it gave us a lift up to Amidiya so we could be there for the sunrise and we just made it in time. We had a couple of cans of beer left from the night before so we sat drinking them whilst watching the sun come up over the mountains surrounding the town and we managed to get a few nice pictures of it as well.

We then walked around the town and watched it slowly wake up, first with the bakers, then the people buying their bread for breakfast. We wandered over to the other side of the city and checked out Bab Mosul which is featured in the Lonely Planet guide and made quite a few nice pictures.

After being given some free bread by the locals we walked back down to the road and hitch-hiked back to Sulav. When back in Sulav we decided to do a bit of hiking in the hills behind it, as we’d heard it was quite nice. We walked up a path next to a river into the hills and then attempted to make our way up to a cave before getting freaked out by the thought of wild dogs, so we just relaxed half way up the hillside and had another beer.

Eventually we headed back to our hotel and Ahmar picked us up and took us to another waterfall on our way back to Dohuk called Aynseiri, or something like that, which was another tourist tap, but luckily we got there just before a bus load of people arrived and blocked the place up. We arrived in Dohuk and went and grabbed ourselves some Kurdish trousers from the market, which are ridiculously comfortable, and then went off to Zakho ready to take the final step in our journey back to Damascus.

In Zakho Ahmar paid for our lunch which was chicken schwarma and it was probably the best one we’d had since being there. We then said our goodbyes and gave him the rest of the money we owed him, then we caught a taxi across the border, this one being much cheaper, only costing us $45. The reason why we soon found out.

We stopped off at the duty free on the way through the border and we went inside and looked around. Adam purchased a large bottle of Jim Bean whiskey with a pack of cards attached and I managed to find a mug that said “I love Kurdistan”. We then headed back to the taxi and waited for the drivers. Eventually they came back from the duty free and told us that we had to say that the bags of cigarettes were ours and that we needed to tell the guards.

We of course weren’t having this and told them that we didn’t want to lie to the guards, unless of course they brought the price of our taxi ride down. They really weren’t impressed with this and started shouting at us in Turkish and someone nearby translated for us. It appeared that they’d brought religion into this and they were saying that Adam had brought alcohol into their car and it was against their religion.

In the end we just gave up. It came to the point where the bags were taken out of the car and we all said the cigarettes were ours and that was that, we were sent on our way. We soon reached another check point where the whole car was searched for smuggled goods. Unfortunately my camera bag was searched and they found my pack of vitamins I’d taken with me and cut the lid off so I could store money in there. They were quite confused as to what these pills were and I could feel a few months in Turkish prison coming along. Luckily we managed to persuade them that these pills were actually what it said they were and we continued on our way into no-man’s land.

We then reached the Turkish duty free and they went in and bought even more cigarettes, stuffing the other ones into every single crevice they could find in the car, including rolling up a few cigarette bricks in their prayer mat. Religious indeed… The funny thing is that the whole system seemed to be set up so they had lots of time before they went through the border check and they didn’t even hide that they were shoving cigarette bricks into the mud guards and into the lights…

FINALLY we got through the border and away from them and caught a bus from Silopi to Nusaybin, our trust in Turks somewhat destroyed from the border crossing. Sorry if this isn’t true but Silopi just looked like a complete dump, filled with people who would rip you off at the nearest opportunity.

We eventually reached Nusaybin and we got a taxi from the bus station to take us to a cheap hotel: Petrol Palace Hotel. This was actually quite a nice place AND it had free WiFi. We popped downstairs and grabbed a bite to eat from the place next door and they gave us a really nice schwarma, better than any schwarma we’d had in Iraq or Syria. We then went up to bed ready to get up early the next day and get a bus back to Syria.

In the morning everything went fine, we had a really nice soup for breakfast and they got to the border for when it opened. It was quite funny, we’d all decided to run down the track to the border and everyone else started joining in as soon as we started, laughing along the way. We got through the border quickly and without fuss, except being ripped off by taxi drivers on the other side, and we got to the bus station to take us home.

We got dragged into this bus company’s office and they sold us cheapish tickets back home. Unfortunately we didn’t realise this was going to be on something only slightly bigger than a mini-bus. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. Luckily we had two stops but I was wedged in the corner by someone who was wider than he was tall in the back of the bus with no way of falling asleep… Not fun.

9 hours or so later we got home absolutely shattered but with some brilliant memories of the landscape and some of then nicest people I’d ever met, but also some sad memories of places such as Amna Suraka and Halabja. I really hope I can return next year and spend more time there in places like Lalish and Dohuk.

(photos to be uploaded at a later date)

1 year ago  /  Notes

Northern Iraq Part 5: Erbil

The next morning we had a slight lie-in until 11 due to the small party the night before, then we freshened ourselves up and headed off to the Erbil garage to catch a taxi. This time we decided to brave it and go via Kirkuk as the road didn’t actually go inside Kirkuk it just passed the outskirts of it. The landscape was pretty boring though we saw a few oil refineries and three different armies (Iraqi, Kurdish and American).

The journey was pretty short and soon we arrived back in Erbil. We decided not to go to the Kandil hotel this time and we went to the Bekhal Hotel just around the corner. It was a reasonable hotel and was slightly more expensive than we had expected as Eid al-Adha had started. The beds were comfy but the toilet didn’t really work very well and the last occupant had left us something unpleasant behind.

We then looked around the citadel with a boy from Mosul who started chatting to us then following us around. The citadel wasn’t very exciting itself but it had good views of the city and some interesting architecture. Apparently one family still lives in there just so they can still claim it as the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world.

Out the other side of the citadel we saw lots of people flocking into this house and going up onto the roof, so we decided to do the same and I took a few cheeky pictures, that was until the police came and told us that it was mamnooa (forbidden). Whoops. We all then sat down on a wall overlooking the city and Adam chatted to the boy who had followed us round. The boy then got a phone call from a friend of his telling him that their mum had just died in a car bomb attack in Mosul.

We then headed off in search for Sami Abdul Rahman park, named after a Kurdish leaded who was killed in an Islamist suicide bomb attack on February 1st, 2004. We thought we’d found the park but instead we’d found a minaret park, where lots of families were gathered in their best clothes, and all the little kids were dressed up in suits for Eid. There was also some sort of telecabine across the park which you could pay to go up in. We decided against this and instead went out and found a taxi to take us to the real Sami Abdul Rahman park.

We eventually arrived and it was really nice with paths filled with flowers in bloom. We stopped at the park cafe for coffee and tea then noticed the pedalos in the lake next door to us and decided to have a go, which we did, Adam and Will doing the pedaling and me sitting back and attempting to do the steering and failing due to Will and Adam’s erratic pedaling (or so I claim).

After the park we went in search for another place we’d read about in the Lonely Planet guide: The Deutscher Hof: a bar run by an ex-German soldier deep in the suburbs of Erbil. This proved impossible to find… We spent AGES trying to find this place with people giving us conflicting directions. Eventually we stumbled across a man with his daughter in a residential area and we tried asking him if he knew where this place was. He didn’t but soon his father came out and told us to wait a second while he put his shoes on, then he got in his car and drove us there!

Eventually we got there, after probably an hour or so of trying, and sat down and ordered probably one of the most expensive pints I’ve ever ordered. I think my pint cost around $9, but it was definitely worth it. I had a really nice pint of schwarzbier which really hit the spot. For two months I’d had to put up with horrible fizzy lagers such as Almaza and now I had a nice schwarzbier to remind me what beer should taste like.

Our next expedition after this was to find a restaurant in the Lonely Planet guide which we’d tried to find on our first visit. I am convinced this restaurant doesn’t exist. Admittedly most places were closed due to Eid, but we walked for miles without success and eventually settled on a restaurant in front of the citadel instead and had a kebab.

We then tried to get someone to take us to Gali Ali Beg the next day and Tariq, from Sulemani, tried to get one of his friends to take us, but first of all they were going to charge us $250 which we really couldn’t afford, plus one of them was wondering around with a gun in his jacket which we weren’t exactly comfortable with. Instead we managed to get hold of our driver from Lalish, Ahmar, who agreed to take us to Gali Ali Beg and then to Sulav for $150 at 10am.

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Northern Iraq Part 4: Halabja and Ahmadawa

Our next trip was to Halabja, the scene of one of the worst atrocities to be committed by humans. Halabja is one of the sites in Kurdistan that really imprints itself onto the memory of those who visit it. On March 16th, 1988, over 5,000 people were killed and 10,000 people horrifically injured by chemical bomb attacks conducted by Saddam Hussein’s regime after orders were given by “Chemical Ali” that Halabja was a danger to Iraq.

We’d rung Tariq the night before and he’d said he’d pick us up at 9, so we woke up, got ready and then got in the taxi and headed to Halabja. It was actually really nice having Tariq as our driver as he spoke fluent English and we constantly had to get out at checkpoints and have our passports checked and he translated everything the soldiers were saying for us.

The Halabja Memorial is a museum dedicated to showing people the true extent of the attacks on Halabja in 1988. The first room you enter shows pictures of the people of the town before the attack, explaining how Halabja was culturally a lot more Western than most of Iraq, with many women not wearing the headscarf, a woman in charge, musical groups and an up and coming football team, all with the traditional mullets that so many great footballers had in the 80s.

The next room was a recreation of what the village looked like after the bombings, with bodies laid out as they were found in the village, with photos later on in the museum showing the historical accuracy of this room. It was horrible, especially when you looked past the falseness of the plastic models and put real people in their place.

We were told then by the guide, who Tariq translated for, that the town was bombed with normal bombs first, just so all the windows would be smashed and this was followed up by the chemical bombs. Apparently when the town first started to be bombed the people started to flee to Iran but the planes realised this and bombed the road and this is where most of the people died or were injured. Then people realised the road was being bombed and gassed so they headed back to hide in the town but the planed realised again and the town was gassed.

We were then taken into the central room where all the names of the people who died are written on the walls, though were were told some happy news that recently a boy who had been presumed dead had actually been taken off to Iran and brought up there and he’d been reunited with his mother after a DNA test confirmed his identity.

The central room was followed by two more rooms, all filled up with photographs of the deceased after the attack and the injured people in hospitals in Iran. One of these picture (see above) is of a man clutching his two baby boys, trying to shield them from the gas, but obviously failing. There were many different pictures like this, each with their own story, and the pictures of the injured people were so horrific that they made me feel sick. Even whilst writing this I feel shivers go down my spine when I think about what I saw in those photographs.

On leaving the museum we were given a book and a DVD on Halabja and we wrote in the visitors book our thoughts about what we had seen in the museum. We then asked the man who had given us the tour if he wanted a donation from us and he said that he didn’t want any money from us, all he wanted was to go back to our countries and let people know what happened there. I’m hoping in writing this I’m doing that for him.

We then got back in the car and went over to the graveyard where the mass graves of the people of Halabja are. At the entrance to the graveyard is a sign that says “Ba’aths members are not allowed to enter”, banning any supporter of Saddam’s government to enter. We headed inside and were greeted by the man who looks after the graveyard who told us that three more people had been found recently in a place nearby who were proved to have been killed in the Halabja attacks and they’d been bought to this graveyard to be buried.

There were also graves set out in the style of the war graves you find in cemeteries in France, where you find rows upon rows of graves with names on. The site at Halabja wasn’t as big as each grave had a family on it, not just one person, and you’d imagine that if they’d done it singularly then the graveyard would be five times as big.

That afternoon we headed off to Ahmadawa, the sights we’d seen and the stories we heard in Halabja still going through our minds. We stopped off for lunch and Tariq bought us these really nice goats meat wraps which were filled with grease and the floor in the place they served them was slippy from all the drippings. Watching Tariq I realised why as I saw the grease dripping off the end of the wrap and onto the floor. However I was too hungry and the food was too tasty for that to put me off so we gobbled them up, had some tea, then headed on our way again.

We eventually reached Ahmadawa which we had to pay someone in a Land Rover to take us up to the waterfall but the journey up there was great fun and the scenery was amazing and we got properly rocked about as we tried to get up to our destination, getting stopped occasionally by cows on the road…

The waterfall itself was pretty average but it was nice to see and apart from a group of shabab (lads) from Baghdad we were the only ones there. We knew we couldn’t go hiking here though as this was the place where the US tourists accidentally strayed into Iran and were taken hostage for spying…

Instead we chatted to the shabab who told us they were on holiday and they insisted that we took photos of them, which was a good laugh. It was really nice seeing such clean water though and the pools next to the waterfall looked absolutely amazing.

The journey back home was spent by Adam and Tariq chatting about Coronation Street and Eastenders, as Tariq wanted to be updated as he hadn’t been able to watch them since he left England. I promptly fell asleep and woke up when we arrive back at our hotel in Sulemani. Tariq then told us that he’d had a good day and that if we didn’t have the money and needed it for other things then we didn’t have to pay him, however we would have felt bad if we didn’t due to his kind nature and the help he gave us by translating things for us in Halabja.

That evening we popped back out to Sarchnar to try and find a place to eat Chinese but everywhere we found was too expensive, so we instead stopped at an American diner type place where we all got pizza, I enjoyed the free WiFi and we watched Eden Lake whilst eating, which it turns out is a horrifically graphic horror film.

Back at the hotel we had a few drinks then noticed some Americans out on the balcony next to our room, so they invited us round to their room and we ended up having a bit of a party in their room. They turned out to be from Damascus Uni as well so we chatted to them about their experiences in Kurdistan so far and they said they’d looked around quite a few places but they found it pretty boring, except when they went via Kirkuk and they saw tanks and burnt-out cars by the side of the road. Apparently they weren’t as impressed by the landscape of the country as we were…

We had a good evening none the less and had a few drinks with them before going to bed to get some sleep before our taxi ride back to Erbil the next day.

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Northern Iraq Part 3: Sad times in Sulemani

The next day we left the hotel as soon as possible. Adam claims he heard gunfire during the night which was probably fireworks. I decided to… borrow one of their blankets which was really nice and comfortable, Adam, albeit accidentally, stole the room key and Will stole part of the curtain rail which fell off in the morning. The girls left at the same time as us as they didn’t want any hassle when they left as they didn’t speak Arabic or Kurdish.

We took a taxi to the Sulemani garage and from there we negotiated a taxi to take us to Sulemani on the long route which didn’t pass through real Iraq as we didn’t want to die. This was a great idea as it took us over some mountains that looked absolutely awesome with great views of the town Dukan and the massive dam and lake next to it.

We were dropped off at the main garage in Sulemani and we got picked up by our next taxi driver, Tarik, who used to live in Manchester so he could speak English perfectly. We chatted a bit to him in the taxi and he gave us his number to call the next day. He then dropped us off at Hotel Chrakan and said he could take us to Halabja the next day for 80,000ID, so we said we’d think about it and then said goodbye.

We then checked into the hotel for $26 each per night which meant two separate rooms, and as I snore I got a room to myself. Another win there. The rooms were quite nice too and comfortable, which was a relief after the night before. As it was lunchtime we popped into the restaurant downstairs which served us a variety of dishes including kebabs, schwarma and salad. This was all really good food but they decided to rip us off at the end by overcharging us and saying we had to pay for the salad even though we didn’t order it. Majnoon! (Crazy)

We then walked to the Amna Suraka (Red Security) museum which was where Saddam Hussein tortured and maimed countless numbers of Kurds during his purge in the 80s. It has now been turned into a museum to remember the people who died there during Saddam’s regime before it was overrun by angry Kurds in 1991.

We started taking pictures of the place just outside and then some undercover policemen came over to us and started to question why we were taking pictures of it which was slightly scary, but luckily a man in a big car who spoke English came over and we explained to him what we were doing and he explained to the policemen and then everything was fine, apparently a celebrity lives near there and they were worried we might be taking pictures of their house. He then drove us round to the main entrance of what is now the Amna Suraka museum.

Unfortunately due to the forthcoming Eid the place was closed, but the driver had a chat with the guy at the door and we were let in to wander around as we liked. We headed over to the main courtyard where a variety of tanks and military vehicles were left to rust after the prison was overrun. We then looked around the place where we could see into the gutted buildings that had bullet holes strewn all around them.

An tourist group of some American teachers from Abu Dhabi meant that the actual museum part of the place was opened up. This included horrendous photos of the torture the prisoners endured in this place lit up by red light in a darkened basement.

The next part was a corridor decorated by mirror shards and fairy lights on the ceiling to create an eerie atmosphere. We were then told that each mirror shard represented a Kurdish life that was taken and each light represented a Kurdish destroyed during Saddam’s reign of terror over the Kurdish people.

After that we saw a representation of a typical Kurdish home and told the story of a couple who were about to be married but they were taken out of their homes and tortured and were never seen again. We then went back out to the tank graveyard, seeing somewhat now the horrific nature of the place. We left the American tourists, who were at this point on the tanks pretending to shoot people, and headed back to our hotel, feeling somewhat pensive about what we’d just seen.

Later that afternoon we headed into the centre of town which was buzzing with activity. We’d heard tales of a legendary Chinese mall which our friends who’d been to Sulemani a month before had visited so we were keeping our eyes out for this. There were many big malls but we couldn’t find the Chinese one. We did however seen rows of turkeys lined up on the side of the street ready for Eid, and Adam commented that it was amazing that they could stay there without moving, that was until he realised that all their feet were bound together and were therefore unable to move.

We then found an Iraqi sweet shop which we went into and tried lots of different sweets before purchasing a range of them to take back home to Syria. They didn’t cost much but when we told the man we were British he tried to give us the sweets for free. However, feeling this would be slightly unfair on him we paid him anyway.

We then managed to find the Chinese mall which was filled with a ridiculous amount of shops selling absolute rubbish. From fake kevlar vests to “breast plumping cream” there was a lot you could waste your money on in here. I however settled on a toy of the dwarf Sleepy, except this one had red eyes and looked a bit more like Stoney. Amazing purchase. We then got talking to a Kurdish guy who told us he could find us someone to take us to Halabja for cheaper than 80,000ID.

Unfortunately this didn’t work out however he did write a note for a taxi driver to tell him to take us to a cheap restaurant, as most taxi drivers didn’t speak any Arabic or English. We sadly left the mall and headed off where we found a taxi driver who took us to Sarchnar district where we found a place called Snak Bar which served us chicken with lots of salad again. At this point I was getting a bit tired of chicken.

Feeling reasonably full we headed back and started to play some cards whilst drinking a few beers we’d bought before watching The Walking Dead on TV and then bed ready for our trip to Halabja the next day.

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Northern Iraq Part 2: Lalish (and a bit of Erbil)

By far the biggest highlight of my stay in Kurdistan was our visit to the small town of Lalish, which is the holy place for the Yazidi faith. The Yazidis have the reputation to be devil worshipers as they believe that God created the world and left seven angels in charge of it, the most important being Melek Taus, the peacock angel, whose other name is Shaytan, which is the name the Koran has for Satan. To cut a long story short Muslims think Satan fell from grace and the Yazidis think Melek Taus gained God’s favour. All a bit complicated but interesting if you look into it in depth.

We woke up confused that morning as we didn’t realise the time changes from Syria to Iraq so our phones automatically changed but our watches didn’t, so when our alarms on our phones went off in the morning there was mass confusion to the actual time. Eventually we got underway and we caught a taxi with some Australian girls we met the night before in our hotel. It was a bit squished but as Adam and Will are both skinny I got the front of the taxi all to myself and they were squished with the girls in the back. Win.

The countryside was interesting as you could see a lot of construction where ever you went as the country is very popular for investors at the moment. The rolling hills were also very beautiful, even at 150k/ph. Thrilling. During the journey I started talking to our driver, who luckily knew Arabic, and I found out that he was actually a Yazidi from Lalish which was extremely lucky for us. We eventually slowed up and rolled into Lalish.

The first strange thing about Lalish is that before entering the town you have to take your shoes off. Luckily it was quite warm at this point so it wasn’t too bad when walking around and it meant we got to air our feet after long drive from Dohuk. First of all we popped into the temple where we saw cloth being tied around the pillars. Ahmar our taxi driver explained that this was here for people to make wishes and that what the locals did was tie and untie a part of the material three times whilst making there wish and on the last tie they would make a knot so there wish would stay…. It gets stranger… We then explored inside the temple and found more things covered in material and also rooms filled with ancient jars, which were probably worth a lot of money, and pots of oil. Then we were shown some more traditions, all of which I shall label here:

• Throwing a coin into a hole: you get 3 chances and if you miss it means you’re unlucky.

• Throwing a rag onto a pillar: you get 3 chances and if you miss it means you’re unlucky.

• Putting loose stones in the street into a wall: you get one chance and if it doesn’t stay in the wall you’re unlucky.

• Hugging a pillar: if you can’t get your arms around it… you’re unlucky.

• Throwing 3 stones at one onto a pile of stones: one chance and how many you get to stay on means how lucky you are. No stones, no luck.

Apart from these traditions there were a few other small ones, such as not eating lettuce, stepping over the doorway (see above left) and not throwing away old bread but leaving it in a special room (see above right).

We were invited to lunch and to stay the night which we were definitely up for, though realising how cold it would be at night we declined the latter later on. Before lunch we’d sat down and had nargila with pumpkin seeds. They seemed to have a special technique for opening the seeds really easily which they tried to teach to me but I failed miserably. Then they swept all the seeds away and we quickly popped off to wash our hands in the stream that was flowing down from the mountain above.

The lunch we had was truly amazing: a mixture of tomatoey beans, pickled veg, cress, rice, chicken and lamb, served with bread. All pretty amazing. I got the usual thing with them thinking because I’m a big guy I need to eat more than other people, so it took them a while to realise that I was actually full and no I couldn’t eat any more…

After lunch we went up to the top of the hill next to the village where we were able to take photos of the village and the surrounding countryside which was truly stunning. The walk up to the top of the hill was a bit of a struggle. One of the locals didn’t make it and the others were ripping it out of me for being out of breath, even when everyone else was just as tired as me. Cheeky.

Eventually our day in Lalish came to an end and we headed off with out taxi driver and the Australian girls back towards Erbil, stopping off briefly at a place called Khanis where there were lots of prehistoric caves that people had lived in thousands of years ago which looked quite interesting. Unfortunately they weren’t accessible so we couldn’t look inside them.

We then went on our way, stopping off briefly in a small village where we bought a few cans of Turborg, a Turkish beer, which we all drank in the car, including our driver Ahmar. Legend. We then watched the sun set over Iraq whilst speeding along the road towards Erbil.

In Erbil the hotel which was recommended by Lonely Planet was booked up so we went next door to another one called Kandil Hotel.

Never go to this hotel.

It was $17 a night which wasn’t bad, but the room we stayed in felt like a storage room with piles of blankets and mattresses in it. Our beds were all dirty and all in all it wasn’t great. It did have a working shower and toilet though which was lucky. The Aussie girls next door didn’t have any more luck than we did. They had a bathroom light that didn’t work and the guy at the desk started trying to feel them up and kept on coming back to their room and making excuses as to why he had to go in.

We escaped for dinner and tried to find somewhere in the Lonely Planet guide which just didn’t exist. We eventually found a place next to the hotel which gave us a table then put a screen around it so no one else in the restaurant could see us. Slightly weird. Apparently it was because we had girls with us. What was even more comical was that they’d put a toilet roll in the centre of the table for use as tissues.

Eventually after the food we settled down in our rooms and told the girls if they had any problems and to knock on our door if they did. We then played some gin rummy and went to bed ready for a day of traveling the next day to Suleimani.

1 year ago  /  Notes

Nothern Iraq Part 1: A Long and Cold Journey to Dohuk

My next holiday came round quickly, and this one I had been waiting for. This was the holiday where I’d be venturing where many tourists would fear to go… Iraq.

Now whenever Iraq is mentioned people instantly think of Saddam Hussein, war and the quest for the “WMD”s. The fact is that Iraq is a gradually changing country, and as the birthplace of civilisation due to it’s geographical features it offers a lot to tourists from around the world.

Not all of Iraq is safe, and when I say I went to Iraq I strictly mean the Kurdish part of Iraq in the north where they have their own borders, government and security forces. Travelling around the main part of Iraq is not recommended due to hostility to Westerners, IODs such as roadside bombs, and the constant threat of terrorism. Northern Iraq, or Kurdistan as I shall refer to it from now on, is very different in that respect.

In 2003 when the combined force of the American and British army invaded Iraq and disposed of Saddam Hussein, Kurdistan was freed from persecution and the people there were grateful to the Western armies for removing Saddam’s regime which had tortured the Iraqi Kurds for a long time. This has made the people of Kurdistan love the Western countries for freeing them from this repression, making Kurdistan a very welcoming and safe place for people to visit.

Of course there is no denying that dangers still exist in such a country, but nevertheless it is a lot safer than visiting Iraq itself. Knowing this we all took precautions before leaving Syria. We all registered on the British Embassy’s “Locate” program so they could know where we were going and what we were doing. We also read up a lot about the country and made sure we knew what to do and say, such as not to call the country “Kurdistan” at the Turkish border as the Turks really don’t like that. We also took time talking to our friends who had been there the holiday before to find out about things to do and things not to do.

We left for Iraq on Thursday evening, stopping off at Bab al-Hara for a quick dinner before we left with our rucksacks at 9ish for the bus station. We arrived at the Pulman bus station just before 10 and tried to find a bus to take us to Qamishli in the north-east of Syria, unfortunately we hadn’t realised that there were a lot of people trying to move around the country at this time due to the forthcoming Eid al-Adha so it seemed that there were no buses left. However with a quick chat to some of the people hanging around shouting place names we found someone who sold us tickets to Qamishli for 700SP (just under 10GBP) which admittedly was 200SYP more than it should have cost but it was worth it.

The bus journey was pretty long, 9 hours in total, and we had a brief stop-off at 1:30am somewhere near Palmyra. We had the occasional film on the bus but we mainly just tried to sleep, which turned out to be near impossible with the uncomfortable seats and the freezing cold air that engulfed every exposed part of our bodies. I was sitting next to your typical Arab with the headgear and everything who started to talk to me in Arabic and asked questions about me which eventually led to a question about whether I was going to convert to Islam. To avoid an awkward conversation I simply replied “inshallah” (lit. God willing) and after that he left me to sleep, possibly hoping he’d recruited another member.

The last few hours I spent watching the sunrise over the bland deserted landscape that you can only find in north-east Syria. Eventually we turned into Qamishli bus station at around 7:30ish and we headed to the cafe where we indulged in some breakfast: foul bil leben. This is another recent love of mine which I have every lunchtime. It simply consists of foul beans, chickpeas, tahini, a bit of garlic and yoghurt and it tastes amazing. Will and Adam, my fellow travelers both needed to use the local toilets after the bus journey but wished they hadn’t. What was even worse was that the person outside the toilets asked them to pay for “keeping it clean”.

We left for the border at around 8:15 which was supposed to open up at 9an and close at around 3pm (hence the overnight bus journey) but we managed to get through it reasonably quickly (for a Syrian border crossing), paid $20 for the Turkish visa, then headed over to the bus station in the Turkish border town of Nusaybin where we caught a bus over to Silopi at the border of Iraq for 10TL (Turkish Lira). The ride was more comfortable that the ride up from Damascus to Qamishli but the scenery was just as dull. We also nearly got foiled by some cheeky taxi drivers when the bus stopped half way between Nusaybin and Silopi who told us that we were in Silopi and that they would take us over to Zakho, Luckily we didn’t believe them and eventually we arrived in Silopi where we found a taxi to take us over to Iraq for $60, which apparently is the standard fare.

Now you’d expect the border between Turkey and Iraq to be quite hard but we made it through in about an hour with a quick stop-off for passport control where Adam was questioned on what we were doing in Iraq, but apart from that it was all pretty easy and straight forward. We soon made it to the taxi station on the other side where we found a taxi to take us from Zakho to Dohuk for $30. As soon as we left the border town we could instantly see the change in landscape with vast hills and windy roads up to Dohuk.

Dohuk itself looks extremely modern with smooth roads, traffic lights and tall building blocks; not the kind of things you’d expect from a country plagued by war and repression. We checked into the Parleman Hotel in the centre and went off to change our dollars into Iraqi dinar. We then tried the local food which was not bad at all. Pretty much like the food in Syria except with better bread and better pickled vegetables.

We popped off to the internet cafe to let people know we’d arrived safely then had a quick look through the bazaar, which was packed full of people and was just like any sort of market you’d find in the Middle East. We then headed off to Dream City. This is a place we’d been looking forward to since planning our trip and we weren’t disappointed at all by it. Dream City is a theme-park in the middle of Dohuk with a roller-coaster, go-karts and several other rides along with an indoor arcade. It was 2000ID (1000ID = around $1) to enter and the roller-coaster was 5000ID. The roller-coaster also seemed to be an exact replica of the G-Force roller-coaster in Thorpe Park and it was really good, if a bit short. The go-karting was great fun too with very little safety in place: no helmets, no pre-karting talk and no seat-belts. It was truly thrilling!

We headed back to our hotel room to drop off some stuff before grabbing some dinner and we bumped into a guy from New Zealand staying at the hotel who’d already been traveling around Iraq and told us about one of Saddam Hussein’s ruined palaces he’d been to visit which sounded quite cool. We then headed out and had some really nice chicken with rice for dinner and we got talking to our waiter who was telling us about how he was an actor and he loved doing Shakespearean plays which was nice, then he told us he was from Mosul and asked if we were going to visit Mosul, which is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, so we said no, explaining this to him. He then proceeded to tell us that three of his friends had died in a car bomb earlier that day and then he had to go off as he’d started crying. Slightly awkward and upsetting start to our stay in Iraq but we’d expected to encounter things like that given the country’s current situation.

After the excitement of the day and the chilling reminder at the end we headed back to our hotel room, buying a few beers on the way, and chilled out in our room playing Gin Rummy before heading off to bed ready for our trip to Lalish, the home of the Yazidi people, the following day.

1 year ago  /  Notes