Salahaddin, Kurdistan, N. Iraq
Sunday, Sept 3, 2006
After 10 lovely days in Denmark & Sweden, Frank and I set off in different directions: on Saturday I headed to Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, and Frank headed down to the waterfront to take a ferry to Helsinki. At Arlanda, I joined a line of some 100+ Kurds and checked in for my first direct flight to Erbil. I had a bit of a scare when I read “Baghdad/Erbil” on my boarding card. But, no, the manager assured me, we were most certainly NOT landing in Baghdad. There was another interesting moment before we boarded the plane--an announcement was made and a sort of disgruntled wave seemed to spread through the crowd. It seems that the flight would be making an unscheduled stop in southern Sweden to pick up some Kurdish passengers who were stranded by another airline. As we boarded, one of the Swedish stewardesses remarked that I was not one of their “usual passengers”. Yeah, well, 150 Kurds--and me--on their way home...
But, despite a horrible head-cold and a long flight from Stockholm (five hours plus the stopover in Malmö), the flight was wonderfully uneventful. This flight represents a HUGE improvement of how we used to get to Erbil: flying to eastern Turkey and driving 7 hours (and spending who knows how much time at the Kurdistan-Turkish border.) Kurds feel very proud of these flights because they have finally found a way (albeit an expensive one) around the troubles caused by the Turkish border guards. When the flight touched down at 1:45 am, the Kurds cheered. The drive back to my hotel through the deserted streets of Erbil revealed that the building boom here continues unabated.
I spent today catching up with old friends (and nursing my cold). Now I have six more days to get all the news and gossip--and drink as much tea as I can.
I had a thought today about the idea of language being related to a place. Today, words I had not thought of for a year came floating back. It seemed only to be a matter of re-living certain experiences in a familiar setting. At a friend’s house today, the electricity went off--and I remembered “karaba nia!”--Kurdish for “the electricity is off!” This evening, as the heat cooled and the moon rose in the dusty haze, I remembered the words for “wind” and “moon” in Kurdish. A plate of fruit arrived and I found several more words--
Here it is hot, dusty, and starkly beautiful--cooling to 85 at night and up around 105 in the day time. It’s good to be back.
