Windstorm

Either last Wednesday's wind was really strong or the construction of the pool's glass wall (constructed to protect swimmers and sunbathers from prying eyes - too bad most of the voyeurs are not at ground level but on the balconies overlooking the pool) was poorly constructed... or both.

Stay tuned for gorgeous photos of the lightning.

Erbil Explosions: news from Facebook, KIU & Ak

Yesterday, instead of spending my evening at home marking papers, I called up a few friends to invite them to meet us (I was accompanied by a Canadian couch-surfing guest) in Ankawa for a bite to eat. The reply came back negative - their employers had asked that they not spend time in crowded entertainment venues due to the explosions (!!!). The only news of explosions I had received lately was from a student posting on Facebook saying that some idiot threw a grenade somewhere near Abu Shahab over the weekend (nobody was injured). It was a bit alarming, but also just hearsay.

However, after discovering that my expat friends (who work for more cautious employers than I) were being advised to stay home, I searched for news of the blast online. I came up with two articles, neither from the usual sources:

KIU - the Kurdistan Islamic Union website
Second explosion in Arbil
An explosion in (the Family Fun game city) happened, hopefully there is no injury.
The captain Ashti in Arbil Asaish said to KurdIU: this incident was the result of the explosion of a stun grenade aimed at making horror in the hearts of the inhabitants of Arbil.
A source has notified KurdIU that there are many forces, security around the city of the Games for the purpose of investigating the incident and the cause of the explosion.
Yesterday, an explosion in front of the Abu Shahab Restaurant 2 without a loss happened.

Although it is invaluable to know that the intent of the incident was to strike "horror in the hearts of the inhabitants of Arbil," I was not satisfied with only this source and searched further. AK News coverage was the only other source I could find, stating rather that the explosions were aimed at undermining security...

But I am still waiting to find out what, if anything, will be said to me and the other employees where I work! Guess the fastest way to find out what's going on is... Facebook?

A stone house near the sea

Being both an itinerant and a bit of a pack rat is definitely not a happy marriage of qualities. My home is wherever I happen to be at the moment... but my stuff is scattered about the world in temporary storage (in a suitcase under a friend's bed in the UK, shoved into a nook in my mom's laundry room in Canada, in boxes in an attic somewhere in the UAE).

And then a collague told me about the stone house she bought in Turkey (see top photo. U's house - complete with pool - is located in the hills of Üzümlü just outside of Fethiye on the western Mediterranean coast of Turkey). Her dream was always to have a home somewhere on the Mediterranean. While I have never had such a dream, to have a stationary place to drop all my accumulation of junk would certainly make my constant shifting of jobs and countries easier!

Visiting U's place over Newruz has planted a seed in that part of my brain which continues to desire MORE stuff instead of wanting to tossing it all into the bin and move off in another direction free as a bird or a Buddhist monk. Mu (an engineer friend who could help this dream to materialize) has uncharacteristically agreed that one of my ideas isn't a BAD idea (!!!)... maybe partially because he liked my choice of location - not on the Med, but the Agean and connected to Greece and Italy by ferry (town of Alaçatı on the Çeşme penninsula).

Seems I have a few choices. The first is to buy a "ready-made" house (as Mu puts it). The house below is one in Alaçatı, but is quite likely out of any price range I might have... and doesn't even have a front garden.

The second choice is to buy land and build. (Below house also in Alaçatı).

And finally, there is the option to find an old stone house and remodel. I love the old Üzümlü stone house below. Would it really be so bad to have a place in the neighboring country to escape to every now and then?
And the big question, "Is this just an impossible dream?"

Ibrahim Khalil: The Iraq-Turkey Border

Travelling to Turkey overland from Kurdistan was one of the most memorable (if frustrating) experiences from my first year in Erbil. However, the process seems to have changed. Ordinarily, I would book a domestic ticket from Diyarbakir to Istanbul (or other desired Turkish destination for Friday late morning (or noontime). Then on Thursday after work, I would go home, sleep a few hours and start out at midnight. I would be at the border at about 3:00am and due to lack of traffic, be able to get through in around an hour and be at the airport in time to catch my flight.

Things have changed. Things have changed A LOT.

March 18-19: Iraq to Turkey
This Newruz break, we arranged tickets from Diyarbakir to Izmir to leave Diyarbkir at 2:00pm on Friday. On Thursday, we received a call from the Turkish-side taxi we had arrnaged to meet us in Zakho (Iraqi side) and take us through the border and on to the airport. "Come as soon as possible," he pleaded. We left work at 3:00pm on Thursday and went straight to the border. We sat for 8 hours on the border as the officials on the Turkish side took 20 minutes each for a never-ending string of cars queued for as far as the eye could see. Some of us had to go and beg/cajol at which point the officer told us to come through with the of mac trucks when there was an opening to slide into the truck lane. If that hadn't have happened, it is likely we would have missed our flight. We reached Silopi (on the other side) with only 3 hours to catch a nap before heading on to Diyarbakir and our flight.

March 26: Turkey to Iraq
When we arrived back (this time at Batman instead of Diyarbakir, our dis- gruntled driver was waiting for us - disgruntled because he apparently doesn't like to come to Batman (too difficult to find a fare on the way there. Nevermind that it cut nearly an hour off our travel time). Well don't worry too much about our driver, he found a method of payback. Apparently he had not yet gone for his once yearly road test and March 26th was the last day. We hung around the side of the road for about 45 minutes while he had is exhaust check, his tires rotated and a number of other small things done. More frustrating still is that we were just outside Silopi (see road sign)... less than 20km from the border.
We amused ourselves by taking photos of random things and remarking on how it was already like being back... almost.

Any people planning to cross overland are highly recommended to hire a car in advance. Some other foreign tourists we met on the border had been waiting in Silopi for over 3 hours unable to find a car willing to take them through the border for under $70 a piece. (We paid $150 for the whole car for a 250 km trip and the 8 hour border crossing). I guess people are less willing to make the trip now that the crossing is taking so long...

Newruz in Akre (what I missed this year)

I stayed in Kurdistan for Newruz 2007 and all I got to experience was the acrid smell of burning tires and a nervous anxiety for the children jumping over them.

The author of the Iraq chapter of the Lonely Planet recommends Amedi for the Newruz celebrations, but if I am still here next year, I will definitely opt for Akre. At sunset, people bearing fiery torches climb to the top of the mountain to celebrate the Kurdish/Persian New Year.
Thanks to Francesca for the photo.

The aftermath of Iraqi elections: a dangerous road

I mean this quite literally. (Sorry to all who thought I was going to finally make some sort of commentary on the political situation here. It would be impossible as I don't understand the conflicting views of what Allawi stands for - or the goals of any of the other candidates for that matter).

Anyway, back to my point: the roads immediately following the election were dangerous... at least for those of us who don't know them well. The photo above left was stolen from a news site and depicts Baghdad. However, in Kurdistan, the election campaign posters were adhered to street signs, including those over highways. Over Newruz, a number of us Erbil-based expats went to Turkey overland. On the way back, on those dark roads from the North, we were rather nervous about accidentally ending up in Mosul given that we couldn't read any of the signs! Although the posters have been stripped down, big streaks of glue and paper remain. A small thing to note here, but for whatever reason, we found it at the same time both surprising and unsurprising.

Later this year (with students' permission), I hope to share with you some of our students' conflicted emotions as they struggled with their own views on whether or not they really needed to vote, their trust (or lack thereof) in the system and their opinions of what their vote really meant.(Some of them are currently writing essays on surrounding topics).