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The Traveller
The Traveller
biscuits known as
berengi
. I can’t take any of these home since
they crumble so easily.Take a bite and there will be as much on
the ground as in your mouth.Yellow crumbs are everywhere.
I leave the Iranian Kurds to visit their cousins in Iraq. Hidden
behind a car, I practice another national sport: exchanging my last
rials for Iraqi dinars at double the official rate.
For eight years, on both sides of the border, Kurds have been
on the front lines of the Iran-Iraq war. It’s in Iraq that I’ll get an
idea of this conflict that claimed over a million lives.
In Suleymaniyah I visit the Amna Suraka Museum, dedicated
to the remembrance of the oppression of Saddam Hussein’s
regime. In this very building, thousands of people were tortured.
Ghostly statues placed in the dark corridors provide a very real
shock to visitors.The hatred towards this regime is still tangible
I get talking to Lucky, a 40-year-old, retired Peshmerga or
Kurdish soldier.Three bullets shredded his left arm in a gunfight
with Saddam’s troops. He offers to be my guide, refusing any
compensation. For a Kurd, it would be shameful to accept money
from a visitor.We drive out to Lake Dukan. Its beauty is truly
awe-inspiring as a few boats criss-cross its surface. On Friday,
thousands of people come to take a dip in the pristine turquoise
waters. Not a single house, restaurant, or building in the entire
landscape… for now. But who knows what the future will hold?
Lucky, a retired Kurdish soldier, offers to be my guide, refusing any
compensation. For him it would be shameful to accept money from a visitor
Elderly tanks sit outside the Amna Suraka
museum (above); biscuits known as
berengi
;
a shepherd with his flock (above left); a closely
contested game of dominoes in a tea house (left);
the Jalil Khayat mosque in Erbil, Iraq (right)
