Public eating banned in daytime Ramadan

It is always an additional culture shock (piled on top of the already sizeable back-in-the-Middle East culture shock) when returning to Iraq after the long summer holiday as the country is usually already well into Ramadan, the month of fasting. People are grumpy, work slowly and try to go home early if possible, shops keep unusual hours, women who normally do not wear hijab are headscarfed... and you have to search harder to find restaurants that are open. On the plane on the way back to Hawler, I picked up a newspaper and this was he first thing I saw:

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The Iraqi Ministry of Interior on Wednesday announced that it will ban eating in public places and close down restaurants and food stalls during daytime hours in the holy month of Ramadan. "Concerned authorities should take necessary actions against the violators," according to a ministerial statement received by Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI). The statement noted that all liquor stores will be closed down during the holy month. All restaurants and food stalls will be closed down from sunrise to sunset, with the exception of those inside factories, as well as student, first-class and tourist restaurants, the statement explained. Cafés are also included in the ban, the statement noted.

Ramadan is a Muslim religious observance that takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, believed to be the month in which the Qur'an began to be revealed. It is the Islamic month of fasting, in which Muslims don't eat or drink anything from sunrise untill sunset. Fasting is meant to teach the person patience and humility. Many scholars are of the view that competing in sports or exercise should be refrained during the daylight hours since it causes one to be more thirsty, and thus, less patient. Most people who keep fasts choose to exercise in the night after the fasts are broken.

http://www.iraqupdates.com/p_articles.php/refid/E2F-30-09-2008/article/35746

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Understandably, I was worried as I thought about how much harder this ban will make this year's return. No restaurants open during the day... NO ALCOHOL!!! That meant no late afternoon cocktail hour on my balcony.... and I thought I was living in a "secular" region.

Well, today is the beginning of Eid. Ramadan ends today and while everyone has been talking about how we are not aloud to eat or smoke on the street this year, I think the Iraqi ban had no effect on us here in "Kurdistan". We do not seen to fall under Iraqi laws at all as several of us went for lunches at Bakery & More... and with the restaurant on the second floor, there weren't even sheets on the window. At 10:00 am in Ainkawa (granted this is a Christian enclave) the only shop already open was a liquor shop! Anyway, this year was the first year I really participated in anything Eid-like. Last night we had a house full of non-practicing Muslims from Turkey who spent the night eating and drinking... and then before leaving, they taught me how to kiss all my elders' hands and press them to my forhead before asking for Eid money. I think my Turkish friends/neighbors are on their way down now for theirs!

Parking Ticket

Dr. F seemed amazed by the sight of this police officer writing a parking ticket on a side road in Ainkawa. When I asked him was he found so interesting, he responded that it seemed strange that in a region with no enforced traffic laws (other than, Don't try to cross city checkpoints with bombs on board), that the police bother to write parking tickets. I wonder how many of the ticketed parties actually pay? Those who have to renew their license in the same city that the offense was committed?

Culture Club

No this isn't a post about Boy George (if you are old enough to know who he is), but about the Chaldean Youth Center in Ainkawa. Another of Tiziana's photos. I am posting them all as she left today and I am most distressed. Anyway, I like this photo because it shows a kind of casual 'normalcy' I don't find in many public places in Erbil. Tiziana says that there are many of this sort of club where young people gather attached to churches in towns in Italy. On May 6th, when we went on our tour of the churches of Ainkawa, it was easy for us to explore the churches thanks to Tiziana. At one church where the guard didn't really want to let us in, despite pleas from our Chaldean guides, he reversed his decision when her heard she was from Italy. After all, she comes with a recommendation from the Pope!

MRTSHMONY SHRINE - May 6th, 2008

Above is a picture (by Tiziana) of the Mrtshmony Shrine in Ainkawa. After a walking tour (Tuesday last week), we ended up at the Mrtshmony Shrine. As luck turned out, May 6th was the day when all the Chaldeans travel to the shrine to pay homage to a woman who suffered for her faith under a tyrannical king who killed her 7 children in front of her before killing her. While we were there, the number of people kept multiplying exponentially, many of whom were distributing sweets to all gathered outside the shrine. Wonderful luck really to experience this. Although I entered the shrine, I could not image how to translate Mrtshmony into English and couldn't recall this story. If anyone knows more, please let me know.

Shaklawa... Finally

I had forgotten how long the trip from Lalish to Erbil is if you take the round-about road via Akre. Well, we stopped in Akre only to use the facillities and continued on our way down an impossibly small and bumpy, but paved road winding its way around the mountians. After about 3 hours, we reached Shaklawa.... finally! We didn't do much there other than watch Kurdsat News and have a late lunch. After lunch we went to buy honey and walnuts. The pictures below are of some locals we met on the way back to the vehicle.

We made friends with these gentlement while trying to photograph the birds flying to the nests perched in every nestable spot overhead.

Beer with Bahman Gohbadi

Photo by Corinne

On Wednesday last week, Bahman Ghobadi appeared in the auditorium of our university to show both a clip showing the making of his film Half Moon and the film itself. In between the two he talked about the film. The portion of the program preceding the film, which is not available yet in Kurdistan (only a lousy pirated copy of Turtles Can Fly can be purchased in the bazaar), took about one and a half hours during which hardly a word of English was spoken. Holding this event in Kurdistan in Kurdish, where the speaking of Kurdish is NOT forbidden, is clearly an event to be celebrated! However, there were Assyrians, Chaldeans, Arabs (and Kurds returning for Arabic-speaking regions) and a whole host of foreigners, almost none of whom speak Kurdish fluently.... and barely a word of English was spoken. Again, you may wonder why this is upsetting? The university where the event was held is an ENGLISH-medium university... and hence all those non-Kurdish-speaking people in the audience (and dare I say, those most familiar with Bahman Ghobadi's work?) were denied from hearing his message.

I asked one of the students sitting near me, a lovely girl (but one whose whisper is louder than the microphone-amplified voices of those speaking on the stage), to translate the first of the audience questions. The question was, "Why are all your films shot in Iran and not Dohuk or Sulemania?" I wanted to die. What a waste of time. The one film which is available here, Turtles Can Fly, is entirely filmed in and near Hawler - which (as we know) is NOT in Iran. During all of this, a member of the student council, and one with excellent English, sat smugly on stage... doing nothing but arrange his Kurdish clothes and smile at the TV cameras. I questioned him afterwards as to why he made no real effort to translate, but he merely said, "What? Did you expect me to translate into 4 languages? Everyone here speaks Kurdish." Although the languages of the students at the university indeed do total 4 or more languages, the unifying one is English. If not, why would they elect to come to an English-medium university? Our nationalistic friend who likely should be studying at a Kurdish-medium university (what does one so total inward-looking a person need with a degree accredited from the outside anyway?) further added, "Anyway, Bahman Ghobadi doesn't speak English and there was no time for translation."

Well, my anger at this has now dissipated as I received my chance to hear Bahman Ghobadi speak after all. I ran into him at the Deutscher Hof in Ainkawa this past Wednesday night (after a full week of ranting). He was accompanied by a female Kurdish singer from Turkey, a Kurdish director from Kurdistan (Iraqi) and a man who produced and distributes some of Hiner Saleem's movies- movies which he will try to bring me this June when he returns to Kurdistan. Bahman Ghobadi was surprisingly friendly and down-to-earth and best of all, we were able to chat without the aid of a translator since he spoke marvelous English!

Please watch for follow-ups to this story as we exchanged email addresses and I am hoping for answers to some of the questions I wish were asked at the filming at the University.

Thursday Night

This Thursday, I didn't join Vin at the Edge... and I didn't stay home alone watching TV or pretending to work. Mu and Pambette made dinner plans... and picked my house as the location. Mu came over to cook lamb chop stew. Didn't know there was such a thing, but it was delicious.
But before dinner was cooked, a mystery guest arrived. Tf had unfortunately locked himself out of his apartment and had to climb over my balcony to his own. But not to worry, he made it safely and came back with "the bar". Last week he stocked up in Ainkawa on all sorts of spirits).
And finally Pambette arrived with all the sparkling coversation and drama.
After Mu had just made us eat the second large helping, Dr. Z arrived just in time to see us clean our plates, but not to fear... plenty of Halal sausages and eggs. After this, he began the dancing. "Opa!"

Akre

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have already been to Akre, but I was only able to post picnic photos. I didn't really take any of the beautiful landscape (as I was in a foul mood for being forced to go and for not finding Lalish). And due to the incredible picnic traffic which led to us being stalled on the sides of the road with others who were entertaining themselves by blasting their car stereos and dancing beside their cars, I didn't actually see the city itself.
Below are a couple of pictures of the coutryside and one of the city nestled into its mountain. This time what I missed taking photos of (because we viewed it from our moving vehicle) were the large groups of women in their abayas. What was different about this scene is that the women were wearing something I had never seen before in Kurdistan... not exactly your usual burka, but instead there was a oval-face-shaped piece of black mesh sewn into the head-covering of the garments so that from any distance, the women all just looked like completely black ghosts floating around the city. In the peaceful country setting, the effect was a little unsettling. Were they attending some special function? Is this just a local custom? Why haven't I seen this in Hawler?

The Road to Lalish

This time last year I had just returned from North Kurdistan (Diyarbakir) where I spent a fabulous Eid break reveling in the fact that there was cake and coffee... and that there were women in the street. This year, some of that can now be found here in South Kurdistan. For instance, there is cake to be had at both Dilan Restaurant and Abu Afif- baklava bakery from Baghdad.
This year, although I had been thinking of crossing the border to Gaziantep or Urfa, what with the Turkish-army-amassing-on-the-border situation, I decided instead that this was the time to take the long awaited day trip to Lalish, the Yezidi spiritual heartland.

Meet the group of happy travellers: all first-timers to Lalish except for out driver (far right) and his friend (far left)... but funnily enough, the real guide was Dr. P, third from the left (next to me).

And this is where we stopped for a lovely brunch of half-cooked chicken kebabs and tea in the garden:

This next picture has no significant, but of all the silly pictures I took of nothing (in the excitement of finally being on my way to Lalish, I liked this one as I like the drawing of the truck. I remember arguing once in the UBC fine arts department that anything can be art if someone considers it to be so.

And this last photo is where the real excitement started to build! Finally at Lalish - the sight of the distinctive conical shapes let us know that we have arrived and this trip is not going to end in the disappointment I experienced on my last failed attempt to get here!

The Ainkawa Gossip Network...

... is not as active as "Paddy" thought! In fact, it seems this very blog is a source of gossip. I am not sure whether to be be sorry or proud! Last Thursday at the Edge, the very friendly staff (please leave me a comment if you are reading this) went up to Paddy and asked about his little trip to the police station. He was a little unerved that the gossip travelled even to those outside the university. As he was busy trying to figure out who the leak might be, it slipped out that they read about the event here on "Daily Hawler". Oops.

In truth, it seems nights at the Edge are often getting me in trouble. The night somebody's butt erased all the Z's from my phone made me feel like an idiot earlier this week as I was unable to recognize the marvelous Dr. Z's number and ended up asking him (rather impolitely), "Who IS this?"

Happy Easter from Hawler

An altar boy carries a candle during Easter ceremonies in the Chaldean Church in Ainkawa, Iraq. Other services in the area were cancelled for fear of violence. (I don't think this is from this year, but CNN's picture was pretty).

So in response to an email from my mom, I wrote, "No, I don't think the Easter bunny visits Hawler," but that doesn't mean there isn't an Easter... Some of the Chaldean students, who incidentally speak Syriac (is this right?) which is closely related to the Aramaic Jesus spoke, are understandably absent from class today. I unfortunately am at work. But that is no excuse for me to have missed the Easter events as some of the staff visited Ankawa last Thursday to view 'the washing of the feet' (of 12 little boys- or was it little 12 year old boys?). Cy told me that I didn't miss much as much of the spirituality was ruined for her by the presence of machine gun toting guards surrounding the church and as the staging of 'the arrest of Jesus' was cancelled this year. I guess in comparison to the processions of Latin America... I on the other hand have never even witnessed the likes even of what took place here and certainly intend to go next year (if I am here).

Nawrooz Picnic (Picnic # 2)

On Nawrooz, I went on my second picnic of the Nawrooz break. This was an event I had really been looking forward to since my friend Mu had mentioned plans with someone I would like to call 'the Godfather' to go to Lalish. I won't write about Lalish here as unfortunately, we didn't make it. At 8:00 I was ready and waiting... Then we went to pic up K, his French wife and twin daughters. We also picked up another SUV as we needed more room for all his extended family and professor friend. Unfortunately, the friend was still in bed and we had to wait. Then the Godfather, in his own SUV, was busy fighting with his passengers and passport control, so we really weren't on the road to anywhere until 10:30. At least while waiting, we were able to shop... Mu wanted to decorate the car like everyone else's with Kurdish flags, but what he ended up with was a tribute to Rastafarians; green, yellow and red with a lion in the center. Ah well, he didn't decorate the car, but wore it around his neck instead. Then after another 2-3 hours of driving around, Mu gave up on trying to find Lalish and we settled for Akre... At least this way, there is more that remains for me to do in Kurdistan. Anyway, the photos below are not the best from the picnic, but I would prefer to post for now until someone else shares their photos with me.

This is one of K's twins, pleased to be the coolest one at the party.

K's brother, his wife and me. As much as I don't care for kebab... K's brother's kebabs were fantastic.

K's brother's wife and something that was surely delicious.

And this is Mk and Dk... Mk led the 'halai' so I was able to learn yet another form of Kurdish line dancing from Turkey... different from the one danced by students at Ruwandez... and different from the one danced the evening before with the Kurds from Iran.

Hospitality Club

Tonight we went to Ainkawa, the Christian district. It was too dark to see much, but it was different from the other areas. Local women were wearing short sleeved fitted tops and no head scarves. We went down some dark lanes to find the German restaurant/hof where we all had a pint of lager in ceramic beer steins for $5.00 each. This is fairly expensive seeing as you can get a 6 pack of 500 ml cans of Turkish beer in the shops here (like the one that supplied the Bordeaux for last night's party at A's house) for the same price. B says she doesn't attend A's gatherings anymore because unlike the rest of us idlers, she is busy studying about Kurdistan and writing in her journal, "Dear Diary, there is nothing at New City to help combat this incredible boredom..." (OK, now I am just copying G and making stuff up).

Anyway, this post is not about the neighbors, but is indirectly about the hospitality club. When I started to think seriously about coming to the University of Kurdistan, I started searching for people in the area with whom I could talk about the situation in Kurdistan - Is it safe, how is life for women, etc etc. When when I exhausted Skype, I joined the hospitality club and met M. M works in Ankawa as an engineer for an firm... Today we made our first phone contact and this evening after beer at the German place, we (G, B and I) walked to 'Happy Time' to eat and meet M. He explained about local culture a bit, confirming our suspicions that there is nothing to do in Hawler. However, we will meet again tomorrow at 10:30 and he will take us shopping for English books, pirated DVDs, and for me (Popeye) some spinach (which he claims to eat at least twice a week although I haven't seen it in the markets anywhere).