May 22, 2004
I leave for the Kurdish-Turkish border in just 24 hours. Lots to do before that. Frank left a week ago and is now wandering about in Turkey waiting for me to join him in Diyarbakir (Eastern Turkey). In the next 24 hours, I have numerous good-byes to make, a brochure to print, stuff to get RID OFF, and my bags to pack. Before coming home on June 3rd, Frank and I will spend nine days travelling across Turkey to see the sights. I am excited!
Last week I had the chance to meet the family of an acquaintance of mine. I was ushered into the carpeted sitting room (for women) and there, in the corner, was a hospital bed. Under a blanket, with a towel covering her head, lay the mother of the family. Injured in the head and body in one of Saddam's bombing raids in IRAN, the mother has lain in that bed (and in others) for NINETEEN years. A complete invalid, unable to speak or care for herself in any way, she has been the charge of one of the family's daughters, a woman who never married in order to care for her mother.
Last week I also had a chance to spend two days with the family of another friend of mine. They welcomed me into their home, and took me on a long drive near the Iranian border through spectacularly moutainous countryside. When we finally reached our picnicking destination, one of the family members joked that they decided to drive this road that day "for remembrance's sake": in 1975 they came that way WALKING as 500,000 Kurds fled to Iran to escape Saddam. Only in the past 5-12 years have tens and tens of thousands of those Kurds returned from Iran.
What will happen to Kurdistan as the situation in Iraq continues to disintegrate? Will the country be split into three countries (Kurd, Shia, and Sunni)? Will the violence and instability spread to Kurdistan? The pressure that American officials are putting on Kurds to accept a lesser role in the "New Iraq" is said to be quite intense. These weighty questions are the ones I ponder as I prepare to leave this beautiful country and the many new friends I have made here. Trite to say so, perhaps, but this is a place of both incredible beauty and incredible suffering.
Finally, before Frank left for Turkey he took a drive to Southern Kurdistan to see some parts of Kurdistan that we haven't had a chance to visit. He took a guide for the part of the drive that took him through the still heavily mined area near the border with Iran.
I've attached some photos from his trip.
I've attached some photos from his trip.
1) Giant Kurdish flag flying from a truck above the city of Suleimania
2) Spring in the rolling hills of southern Kurdistan
3) Lake Dukan -- sorry I missed that view!
4) Frank with chopped up tanks (they are being sold for scrap metal to Iran)
And, for now, that's all from Kurdistan. 
