Halabja Monument and Peace Museum

On our mini trip to Halabja, we visited the Halabja Monument and Peace Museum, which showcases the images, films, and documents that represent the chemical gas attacks. The gas attacks mainly took place on March 16, 1988, and killed over 5000 people in just about an hour. Many people were still sleeping, some were on their way to school, some were making breakfast when Saddam Husseins army dropped the chemical gases on the town. Some civilians who live don the outskirts of town managed to escape on foot, but they were still affected by the gases and have illnesses or defects related to the chemicals to this day.

The monument we visited was paid for the Kurdish Regional Government, and is an impressive figure seen as you make your entry into Halabja.

In the first part of the Museum, we see haunting exact replicas of the scenes found the morning of the attack, including the dead men, women, children, and animals found on the streets.

In another room, the name of every single known victim of the attacks was written on a black marble on the walls.

The museum also dedicated some space to discuss war stats and peace.

The outside of the museum features some beautiful views of the city of Halabja, as well some not so beautiful views of military tanks used by Saddam Hussein and his men during the attacks on the Kurdish people.

Narinjla Visit

Some of my fathers family live in the city of Halabja, the place of the chemical gas attacks in the late 1980's that nearly wiped out the whole city. Since then, it has been beautiful rebuilt and expanded, and now houses many Iraqis fleeing from the current crisis caused by ISIS terrorist forces.

We traveled to Halabja to visit some family and see some sights for the weekend. My oldest cousin is the electricity minister in the Halabja area, and has a lush orchard in a small mountain village called "Narinjla" 20 minutes outside of Halabja. He has fields of cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zuccini, okra, watermelon, and most beloved to Kurds, pomegranates, figs, and grapes.

We then spent the hours leading up to iftar time picking fruit and vegetables, swimming in the pool they had installed to ward off the summer heat, and preparing food inside the small, fully furnished house they have built on the property for overnight visits.

Once iftar was only an hour away, we fired up the grill with wood from the orchard. We made traditional lamb Kebobs, grilled tomatoes and peppers, and chicken made on a "Saj", a rounded, iron pan like grill, used to cook food directly over a fire.

Slemani After Hours

We have been in Sulaymaniah (Slemani) for a few days now, and my first impressions are how crowded its gotten, how hot it is, how there are a ton of new buildings, bridges, and freeways that were no there just a few years ago.

Since it is Ramadan, we spend our days fasting, and since its WAY too hot outside to go our during the day while we are fasting, we tend to stick indoors and take a lot of naps. We have been visiting difference close family relatives every day in different parts of the city, which is a good way to see how the different social classes are living, and what state the city is in.

Since we cannot go out much during the day, we go out at night. Since most people fast, they often don't open the cafes, bakeries, restaurants, stores, or bazar shops until after breaking the fast. So the new social schedule is from 7pm to 3am. We were quite happy about that, considering the fact that there wasn't much to do in the US after dark that was Islamically sound. You can only watch so many movies and bowl so many games.

Last night we went to an area on Slemani called "Saholaka", which translates to "The place of the ice" because there used to be an ice factory on that street decades ago. Now, the street is filled with high rise malls, office buildings, banks, restaurants, and outdoor food stands and carts. This area is especially alive during Ramadan, when people are in search of late night snacks.

Some of the most interesting carts were the ones with fresh sun flower seeds that were fire roasted in a weird contraption on the cart itself. A cart with a cucumber like vegetable called "troze" that is eaten with sumac and salt, and not available outside the Middle East, and carts with freshly roasted mixed nuts local to the region.

The Adventure Continues...Three Years Later

I am currently sitting in the highly impressive and modern Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, waiting for our connecting flight to Sulaymaniah, Kurdistan. I am ecstatic to be returning to Kurdistan this summer, and have planned a six week trip full of trips to historical sites, war crime museums, forests, mountain resorts, modern architectural wonders, lots of time with family and friends, and most of all, to volunteer at a refugee camp for displaced Syrians that fled after the gruesome war. Most of the refugees are still living in tents, with the few possessions they managed to carry across the border. Going from vacation time to volunteer time will surely be a shock each time, and will hopefully remind how good I have it.

It is very exciting that our visit falls on the last two weeks of the Holy month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. It will be wonderful to hear the Athan for all five prayers, eat the specialty Ramadan snacks, and attend prayers at the many beautiful Masjids.

For this trip, my parents and little brother stayed home in the US, so it will just be my sister and brother and I. It will be a little difficult to navigate Kurdish customs, etiquette, and language without my parents' help, but thats precisely why they even let us go. They want to make sure we have a stark sense of where we came from, without them being there to explain and simplify everything for us.

It was definitely a little nerve racking to be coming at this time. As many people know, the terrorist group ISIS or ISIL has take over large parts of Iraq, and have plans to conquer more. So far, they have not attacked or attempted anything on Kurdish soil, and it will likely stay that way due to the power Kurdish forces protecting the borders. But still. Do keep our safety in your prayers please.

Doha from the sky

Germany

We stayed in Germany for less than a day, with my cousin and his family. My cousin is Kurdish like me, but his wife is German. He has lived in Germany about ten years, in a little town near Koblenz. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koblenz)

Flying over Germany, seeing the clouds below you rather than above you never gets old:

My cousin told us some disturbing things about germany. Apparently a good chunck of Germany sympathized with Hitler, and thought he had the right idea. They dont like Non-Germans living in their country. In some parts of Germany, there are hate crimes and homicides towards non Germans regularly. He said some friends of his in those parts of Germany dont go out at night, for fear of not returning home. The German police have tried to combat it, but the sheer number and disguise of these people is too much. My cousin said his town was fine though. In some parts of Europe they are still not used to Muslim women wearing the hijab, so we got a few more stares than we are used to.


The town:

My half German cousins:

The autobahn we drove on, no speed limit!

Windmills everywhere:

We got back to Frankfurt airport, this is part of an expansion, its a terminal designed like a ship:

Our flight took off at 1:05 pm, and on August 12th at 8:30 pm we arrived back in Columbus.

Leaving Silemani

On August 9th, we headed west towards Arbil, or Hawler, the capital city of Kurdistan. Our plane took off from the airport there at 4:30 on August 11. The drive to Hawler is very scenic and beautiful, it made the three hours a little easier to bear.

This is one of the most notorious prisons in the region, its a U.S. prison for Iraqi terrorists, located an hour west from Silemani:

This is a part of one of the largest bodies of water in Kurdistan, called Dukan:

We took the trip with two of my cousins, Hamawand and Zana. Hamawand got a really sweet SUV that we rode in, and my other cousin Zana drove the pick-up with all our suitcases:

These were little vacation cabins on a mountain overlooking a small town that many people come to vacation for, its a very beautiful place:

Leaving the town:

Houses in the neighborhood we were staying in, in Hawler:

This is a mosque in Hawler, one of the last things we saw before leaving the city:

2 days later we were off in the sky looking down: