Kurdish Clothes and Hawar

My family and I spent the past few days in Halabja, visiting various relatives and seeing the sights. People here go on picnics that last all day long, where they grill meat and make tea on an open fire, and pick fruit while relaxing. Often times on these expeditions people wear traditional Kurdish clothes, which are three layers thick. For men, you wear silk or satin undershirt and pants, a sparkly beaded dress over it, and then a sleeveless vest over that. Most include a coined belt made of real gold or silver. My mom sister and I all had an outfit tailored:

We went to a place called Hawar, its a valley village on the order of Iran and Kurdistan, literally one side of the mountain was Kurdistan and one was Iran. The village is one of the only non Muslim area's in the country. We then stopped on top of a mountain to see the views:

This is me in green Kurdish clothes:

My mom and sister in theirs:

The food being cooked at another location, where we had lunch in the forest:

Mountains and Apricots

If you have not noticed yet, Kurdistan has a lot of mountains. Most of it not grassy, since the climate here doesn't really support natural grass. Instead they are dotted with green tree's that use very little water to grow. In the area of Kurdistan I am at, it does not rain almost at all from April until late August, but there are many plants and crops that dont need water to grow.

My cousin Hamawand is one of our favorite people here in Kurdistan, he is always willing to take us around and to explain things that we dont understand here, like business and the customs. He is one of the heads of a land mine action group, and has up until now helped removed over a million mines. He regularly goes to Europe to give lectures about mine removal and the like.

He told us the road will be very mountainy, its all climbing up hills and mountains, going up slopes, going down slopes, and all on the edge. This is one of the roads:

Even though you cant tell from here, at one point we were up at such a high altitude that we were level with the crows:

We had to cross a certain mountain chain, and as soon as we did, the tree's and life on the mountains tripled, I hadn't seen so much green since we left the U.S.!

My cousin was taking us to an orchard of his friend, where he grows apricots, pomegranates, berries, walnuts, and vegetables like zucchini, onion, okra, peppers, and eggplants. The apricots and berries were the only fruits in season, so we picked those. The orchard was in a very beautiful place, surrounded by mountains and dotted with creeks and wells with natural spring water. The road to the orchard is not even a dirt road, and its between other orchards, so the ride down there was bumpy and rugged:

The "door" to get inside the orchard:

My cousin "opening" the door:

Grape vines to a ton of organic grapes:

Apricot tree:

Biggest zucchini I'll probably ever see:

Can you see the lizard?:

Onion Picking!

Red berries

Mountain break:

Premature Pomegranates:

Fresh watercress (a mountain/water grown green for those who dont know):

Pepper plants!

Mountains!

On our way back, we saw the smoke from a mountain on fire:

Kurdish flag in a town just outside Silemani

Kurdish Food

My uncles oldest son had us over for dinner tonight. He and his wife live in a detached apartment on top of her moms house. They had a large balcony area, and we ate dinner there out in the open, this was the view at sunset:

This is the dinner we had:

Kurdish Greens, eaten like a dressing free salad:

Cucumber salad with olives and lemons:

Chickpea Soup:

Okra stew:

White rice with pasta and ground beef garnish:

Red Rice, the color is from tomato paste, it tastes better than it sounds!

Baked Chicken:

Figs picked from the downstairs tree:

Foreigners and Chinese Food

If anyone knows me, they know I love food, cooking is one of my favorite things to do. I especially love America because the choice we have in food in the U.S. is amazing. On one street we have Chinese, Indian, Burgers, Pizza, and coffee. One thing I dislike about Kurdistan is that there is not much variety with the food. Typical Kurdish food is white rice, some sort of vegetable stew you eat with the sauce, and chicken or meat on the side. This is what we have 95% of the time when we go to someones home for dinner. For fast food, they have pizza (a bit different from American pizza), a gyro type sandwich called guz, and burgers. This sums up what I have had to eat the more than 3 weeks that I have been away. Not much variety compared to what I used to have.

Guz:

Thats not to say there isn't more variety. My cousin tells me there is a German restaurant, a few American like places, and a few chinese places. I love Chinese food, so my mom, my sister, and I went to one of the places we saw. As soon as we walked in, we were ushered to a table in the back, and given menues and ordered our food. Now this is not typical American Chinese food, this is real authentic Chinese food, so it was a new experience. Once the waiter left, we looked around, and saw that everyone else there was male, and that they all had an alcoholic drink in front of them. We soon realized this was mostly a bar, and the chinese food was just something they did on the side. My mother was very upset, and wanted to leave immediately, but we had already ordered food. Drinking is pretty common in Kurdistan, although women dont typically drink.

As soon as our food came, we quickly ate it and left. The food was delicious, we had fried green beans with garlic and soy sauce, a chicken dish sizzling in its own pan, spring rolls, and fried rice with cucumber and sesame oil. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the food.

There are a lot more people from foreign countries are coming to Kurdistan and working as construction workers and maid, while the chinese have come and open massage places, acupuncture places, hotels, and.... brothels. This is one of the hotels the Chinese have helped build:

The past few days have been a little lazy so I havent had much to write about, but today I went out more and discovered some more. This country has some beautiful architecture. In America we tend to like basic, modern, non flashy buildings, I think we are more of old money. The Kurdish government gets money from the Iraqi government, because its still technically connected, and the Kurdish government also sells the petrol that the country naturally has. It has invested billions of dollars into infrastructure in all the major cities in Kurdistan. More and more European companies are investing their money in Kurdistan, and the Arab countries do the same. Tourism in Kurdistan has grown over 500% in the past 5 years, and it shows. There are tall, flashy hotels on every street, and they always seem to be filled to capacity. Most of the tourists are Arabs.

Kurdistan is new money, and they love showing it off in the flashiest ways possible. Half the cards on the roads here are between $30,000-$80,000, and the average home price in the city is $250,000. While driving around, I took so pictures of buildings and homes, more on this to come later on:

These homes range from 350k to 600k.

Midday Outing

Every single day that we have been in Silemani, we have gone to the Bazar with someone or another. My parents are out of town for a few days, my sister and brother and I decided not to go because there would be no internet for 4 days, and we wanted to kea in contact with our lives back home. Miraculously, they let us stay. So everyone in the home now is between the ages of 15-23, which naturally means we have a lot of fun together. We have pillow fights, hand wrestling matches, movie viewings, and late night outings every day.

Today my sister, brother, and I went to bazar alone. Whenever we go with people they are always in a rush and we want to see everything up close and take our time. We stopped first at a little lunch joint to get "British" style pizza (served with mayonnaise):

We also ordered burgers, but the burgers had chicken in them as well. Kurds like their meat.

We then went to an electronics store. They had DVD sets of a whole shows with all their seasons for $10, Video games for Xbox, PS2, and Wii for less than $2 each, and tons more. The section I was most enthralled by was the computer programming merchandise. You can buy photoshop, windows 7, the latest anti-viruses for PC's, and tons more I've never heard of, for only $1 each:

We walked around for another few hours buying random things just because they were so cheap, and we ended our day by going to the only place we know which serves frozen cappuccinos. I am not even exaggerating, but these frozen coffee drinks at this shop taste better than anything I've had at Starbucks, Caribou, or anywhere else:

Mini trip to Said Sadiq

Yesterday around 4 pm my family and I departed for the town of Said Sadiq, about an hour and a half's drive from Silemani. My mothers first cousin lives there, along with his wife and their 10 (Mashallah) kids. These are by the way the most well behaved and disciplined kids I have ever seen. The house runs so smoothly and efficiently. The kids range from age 4 to 24 years. One of their daughters, who is 20, is married to the uncle whose home we are mostly staying at.

He is 23, only 3 years older than me. He's one of my favorite people here. He's 23, takes care of his ailing and old father, even though he has 4 older, more established brothers. He married at 22, and works tirelessly every day to provide for his family. He is an amazing Muslim, and is the best husband I have ever seen. He says that whenever he gets paid, for the first ten days he takes his wife out everywhere, all the best shops, all the best restaurants, and buys her whatever she wants, all until his money runs out. Then they live on potatoes and egg's until he gets paid again! They both like the arrangement, and he says he wants to enjoy life before they have kids and have to be responsible. They are best friends, make each other laugh, always joke and play around, and respect each other more than anything. Inshallah Allah S will reward them.

Anyyyywhoooo, here are some things I saw as we drove into Said Sadiq:


This is a military checkpoint, theres one before any big town or city, they check out the car and its occupants, and if theres only one male in the car, they usually ask him to step out to inspect the car and him:

These are homes built for the families of the men lost in the civil war in Kurdistan about a decade ago:

Many old men sell very random things in order to make a living. Most sit on a chair on a corner or street and sell stuff from a cart, like this old man selling peanuts:

When we arrived at my cousins home, we sat out in their garden on persian rugs laid out on the grass, while my cousins wife made us tea in something called a samawar:

My cup of tea!

Sometimes tea is drunk without sugar in it, and is served with homemade sugar cubes that you place in your mouth and drink the tea with: