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.