Bazar 1

Bazar, in Kurdish, means marketplace. Every city and town in Kurdistan has a main Bazar, where literally everything you could want, you can get. The Silemani marketplace takes up over a dozen streets, and a couple of square miles. You can find electronics such as the latest model call phones and USB drives, to shoes, to sweets like baklava, to baby chicks being sold as pets, to cologne, to air conditioners, all in the same general area.

Things here are relatively cheap, downright a steal in some cases. My little brother has been asking for a pet his whole life, so we got him one here. We got him two beautiful birds, each for $8. I'm pretty sure I saw something like that in the U.S. for over $80 each.

Treating animals well is not a top priority here though. Some of the conditions of animals being sold for pets in bazar are appalling. Here we saw baby chicks being sold for $1.50. They weren't normal chicks though. Using food coloring, the chicks were pained all the colors of the rainbow in order for little kids to bug their parents enough to buy them.

They also have juice shops everywhere, along with sweets. The juice of the country is called "mawizh", a delicious purple drink made of a variety of grape grown here in Kurdistan. I looked forward to drinking it the four years I was away, and every time I go to Bazar, I make sure to drink some. The taste is unreal, unlike anything I've had, still. Orange and pomegranate juices are also served, all in a rectangular container that keeps the juice running through a refrigerated cycle to keep them cold.

The bazar consists of shops called dukans. The owners or keepers of the shops are overwhelmingly men, even those that sell such things as ladies undergarments. I visited a jewelry dukan today, where I bough a ring made of surgical steel and pretty black crystals for only $1.50, which in the U.S. would have probably cost over $!0.

Making Bread

Flat Bread, or Naan, in Kurdish, is a must have in every meal. Its eaten in every meal, in different ways. For breakfast, you dip the naan in yogurt, or roll it up with some cheese and marmalade. For lunch, you eat it along with your rice and soup, and for dinner, you roll it up with a kebob. Many homes still make their own naan using a variety of equipment. In the villages, everyone makes their own naan. Its an intensive labor work which requires mixing dough, kneading dough, shaping it into balls, then beating it flat, then cooking it on something called a Saj. When I was in Byara, my dads village, I caught my aunt and her sons wife making some for the week:

Azadi Park

It's been 12 days since I left my home, and I've spent about 6 days here in my old hometown Silemani. Been here six days, and been to Azadi park 3 out of 6 nights. Azadi park is like the social center of the city. Its divided into two parts, one has amusement and carnival like rides: Ferris wheels, a roller coaster, bumper cars, carnival food, boat rides in a man made lake, and much more:

The other part is designed like a huge garden with hundreds of spots for picnicking and taking walks. They've even imported tress's costing thousands of dollars from Dubai.

The history of the park is what struck me. Back in the time when Saddam occupied Kurdistan, Azadi Park was the site of mass burial graves, live burials, and torture chambers. If he suspected any Kurd of unloyalty or treason, or just because he felt like it, he would take them there, and torture them to death. He did it to two of my mothers cousins. The soldiers beat her cousins so much and so hard that their guts and kidneys were visible, then they took bleach and spilled it on their insides. Only then did they finally die. Their crime? Posting posters of Kurdistan and being proud to be Kurdish...on a Kurdish street in a Kurdish village.

One of the torture chambers has been converted into a museum, inshallah I'll make a post about that when I go. Once kurdistan got its freedom from Saddam in 1991, one day after I was born in january, the newly established government got together and made a plan to erase all the things that Saddams Bath party had done. They took the places with the worst memories, and made them into the happiest places in Kurdistan. Azadi Park is one of them. Azadi, in Kurdish and Persian, means Freedom. Pretty fitting title I'd say.

Behind the mountains

The city where I am currently in, and where I was born, is called Silemani, or As-Sulaymaniya. It is surrounded on all sides by tall mountains, a part of the Zagros Mountain chain that runs deep into Iran. I always wondered what was behind these mountains, and how it looked. Today I found out.

We are currently staying at my cousins house, my fathers nephew. He has a wife and 3 kids, his wife is a teacher, and he himself is a taxi driver, like 40% of the male population. His name is Ashna, but we all call him Ashna Shet, which means Crazy Ashna. He gets himself into the worst situations and makes the worse mistakes and acts like the biggest loser, hes basically the entertainment of the family, and everyone loves him for it. He knows every nook and cranny of this country, hes been all over and loves to party. Here is where he took us today, about a 30 minute drive from Silemani:

Halabja monument

Halabja is where Saddam Hussein killed over five thousand Kurds and destroyed a whole town in just a few hours. Men, women, and children were killed in cold blood merely for being Kurds. There are numerous museums and monuments all over Kurdistan to commemorate those that lost their lives, and this is one of them, the actual graves of some of them, right in the middle of the city where it happened:

The Kurdish government gives monthly salaries to all the families who lost a loved on during that tumulus time in Kurdish history, and the effects of the chemicals still live on today. Many of my family members live in Halabja, and we have over 6 people in the family who are infertile because of their exposure to the chemicals.


Saddams Bath party are the ones that carried out the chemical attacks on the Kurds:

Tucked in Between the Mountains

June 22 2011

This morning we left Halabja and headed to Byara, the village where both my parents were born, and where my father was raised. He loves that village very much, and his fondest memories were there. The village is a 10 minute straight road, and a 10 minute mountain road from Halabja. ten minutes after we left, we made a stop at a small village in between Byara and Halabja, called Bakha kon, whose literal translation means "old orchard". It is the burial place of sheikh Hussam al Deen, one of four very influential and brilliant shiekhs from that area, and some of the most influential of that time. With their deaths, even news channels in places like yemen and the gulf countries mourned their deaths.

The grave of the sheikh we visited had built an Islamic college there up in the mountains, and he trained future imams and sheikhs for decades to come. He did many charitable things, including opening a free bakery with his sheikh colleagues. The old college buildings still stand, and people visit them in flocks daily to make dua, including people from Iraq, like the owners of this van, whose license plate says its from Baghdad!

The old college was perched on the side of a mountain, where right beneath it an orchard of pomegranates and berries was. The old college used to be surrounded by a bustling village, but in the 1980's Saddam Hussein and his army destroyed the entire area, including that village and dozens of others. Even though all the other buildings had been destroyed, this one had remained intact.

Inside the old college building is where the Sheikh who taught there is buried. He is surrounded by the graves of other sheikhs that greatly influenced the area, most of which are his pupils. We found interesting creature on the Masjid pole as well, sorry for anyone scared of spiders!

June 21, 2011

I'm sitting in a lush garden of the home of my cousin, my uncles daughter on my fathers side. We are in Halabja, the town that Saddam Hussein obliterated over 20 years ago. The city is now a bustling array of cars, new buildings, and smooth, impressive roadways. Its come a long way from the run down mud buildings and dirt roads I saw four years ago when I was here. The government has invested a lot of money into this city, and its quickly progressing towards a more modern, established city.

The cities of Silemani and Halabja are nestled between vast mountain ranges on both sides, so whichever way you look, your view will come across tall, majestic mountains bigger than you can imagine, no wonder this is the place that Noah's ark stopped at. The mountains are spotted with dark green tress's: otherwise they are sand colored sea's of rolling hills and mountains. The tree's themselves are fascinating; they don't get water for over half the year, yet they are still green and thrive.

Before we got to Halabja, we stopped at a picnicking spot nestled cozily between a mountain hedge, where after a mountainous road only designated drivers and jeeps can take, you come across the biggest waterfall in Kurdistan, and Iraq. We didn't got there today, the car ride there was about a half hour through dangerous mountain terrain. We just hung out in the lower area near the entrance, where the flowing stream from the waterfall rushed past us.

We eventually made it to Halabja, and settled at my cousins house. My other cousin, Zana, who is an English teacher here, took my sister, brother, and I to a supermarket to get "american" food for us to eat in the next few days if we don't like something, like the lamb head stew that we are rumored to have tomorrow for lunch. The pickings weren't much, we got some ramen noodles, pasta, pasta sauce, canned mushrooms, and diet coke. Next tot he supermarket there was a sweets shop, where I got us all Kurdish rice cookies,one of my favorites sweets.

I have been in Kurdistan for four nights and 5 days now. My family arrived at the Arbil (Hewler) airport on June 16, 2011 at around 4 pm. There was my cousin Dasas, who is a captain in the Kurdish military, an important job that has caused him some trouble in the past, but more on that later.

The airport was big and airy, and our bangs once again went through security, but surprisingly, one of the guards that was doing our bags, didn't check them once he was we were hijbi's and just let us through, but they checked my dads bags in and out, and even took his camera out of his box. I guess his beard doesn't help. Kurdistan is very anti terrorist and anti Muslim group, there are virtually no men under the age of 60 with beards or even kufi's, and no niqabi's either.

We went straight to my cousins home in the middle of Hewler, and got settled. We spent two fun days in Hewler, where we went and saw the sights, including a multi million dollar mall/amusement park, that was unlike anything O'd ever seen. There was an ice rink in the mall, and the mall itself looked like a 5 star hotel, and had all the amenities of the West, only more elegant and expensive. Kurdistan does not have a money problem, this is probably the golden age, there are no poor people left. The government virtually gives out homes, cars, and salaries to everyone, all for meeting different criteria. More on all that later as well.

The past two days we have spent in my hometown of Silemani, the city where I was born, and where I spent the first 5 years of my life, and where I lived when I was 14 to 16. I did not enjoy my time here then, I didn't want to live here, things were very different than America, and we had already built lives there, so alhamdullilah we moved back after two years.

Now I am here again, but this time is different. The city has progressed enormously in the four yeas I've been away, and with the luxury of wireless internet, I am able to enjoy my time here, discover new things, learn new things, while still staying in touch with my loved ones and life back home. The trip is for two months, and already my mind has been blown by some of the things I've seen, I cant wait to see what else is next!