bumpy road to recovery

It has been a week since my surgery and 4 days since I have been back. The last few days everyone has been asking after me and telling me that I should be taking it easy. In truth, there is still a little more recovery that needs to be made, but a couple hours teaching doesn't really cause me much grief. I think the only thing I have really done wrong this week was to not stay a few extra days in Istanbul so as to avoid the rocky overland route back to Hawler. Ordinarily, I would fly Istanbul- Erbil direct on Atlas Jet... but all the seats were sold out until Wednesday, so I bought a ticket to Mardin instead. Getting a ticket to Mardin as a domestic destination was a stroke of luck as there are many flights to Diyarbakir, but Mardin-bound flights are infrequent. (If you look on the map above - top left corner- you will see that Mardin is at least an hour's drive closer to the Iraqi border.
In the Mardin airport, I was lucky to run into a Paris-based Baghdadi businessman who was going to Dohuk to visit his siblings in their new safer city. He was able to give me a lift, saving me $160.00 US. (In my delicate state I was willing to pay this exorbitant sum to go directly to the border rather than to do public transport to Silopi and transfer to the border from there.
The real issue regarding my travel, however, was not related to time or money, but rather to the road conditions in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. The roads are very poorly maintained... meaning potholes more jarring than the oversized speed bumps on the path to our apartment. Even though the driver carefully selected the side of the road to drive on by the condition of the asphalt, bumps or sudden swerves back to our side of the road (to avoid the oncoming oil trucks and mac trucks) were unavoidable. Needless to say, I didn't feel so hot by the time I got to Zakho. But at least from, Zakho, my fragile health was not in the hands (or cars) of strangers. In Zakho, Mu met me and drove me to Hawler (Arbil on above map). This was a long stretch, but not nearly so bad due to recently maintained roads and careful driving. Poor Mu. After dropping me off, he had to continue on to Sulemaniya taking the long route through Koya instead of passing through Kirkuk as the latter route is more dangerous after nightfall.

Anyway, I am sitting on my sofa now and wishing that I had delayed my trip back... or at least taken my camera with me as Mardin is beautiful. Above please see a picture I stole from the internet.

Saddam's Palace

On the way to Amedi, our driver got a little lost. After backtracking a few times, Tf confirmed that we were on the right path as he recognized a wall and a road leading up to one of Saddam's former palaces. Our driver was loathe to go, but curiosity got the better of us and we climbed the hill. This first picture is of Tiziana with a view of Zawita (?) in the background. I am not really sure where we are because there are a couple of destroyed palaces in the region; both somewhere near Amedi. The one below is the one NOT on the top of a mountain that had to be accessed by helicopter. The other pictures are various views of the palace itself. What a beautiful setting and how horrible for the Kurds living below this place.





Is it possible this is the palace in this article that was blown up while the media watched as a political gesture?

Dream City

On Friday night, after our trip to Halamata, Tiziana (who was visiting from Istanbul) and I went to Dream City. No, it is not an expensive half-finished apartment complex where the contractors ran off with the money. That is the "Dream City" in Erbil. This one was an amusement park in Dohuk. Dr. D, Dr. F and their respective families love Dohuk for Dream city, Mazzi Mall (a mega-supermarket containing a whole range of items not available in Erbil) and the Lebanese restaurant in Dilshad Palace Hotel. For me, Dohuk was attractive for its cooler weather.

I post this picture because only last week on Al Jazeera, a journalist in Basra delivered his report from a park in Basra in front of group of young people enjoying bumper cars. It was the first time in ages that people felt safe enough to congregate in a public place just for fun.

Halamata

I found a picture of an Assyrian bas relief in a kind of travel guide/hotel brochure I bought in a hotel in Sulemaniyah. Intrigued, I asked many people where this might be found, but nobody knew... My Kurdish friends could only read the Kurdish introduction and tell me that it was called Halamata and that it was dated at about 704 BC. I searched for Halamata online, but only found two sites which told me that it is near Dohuk (about 20 minutes actually). So this last weekend, I went to Dohuk to find that Halamata is located halfway up a mountain!

The above photo is of the peshmerga's hut on top of the mountain. We stopped here and one of the peshmerga came with us to help us locate the site.
Above is the other peshmerga watching us start the descent.
I include this photo only because I was rather taken with the wild poppies and the view of Dohuk from above.
Finally, we found Halamata! There were three sections each containing about 9 figures; 8 facing left, and one at the front who appeared to be receiving them... a king receiving the Gods? One of those internet source suggested that it might have been sculpted to commemorate a military triumph. The above photo is from the center segment.
A closer view of the right segment of the relief (this one taken by Tiziana). Here you can see that the gods (do the starred disks above their heads indicated that they are gods?) are standing on the backs of animals that appear to be part horse, part lion and I am not sure, but they might be winged. That source further suggested that the gods might include; Adad (a storm god - although I saw none holding a lightning bolt nor an axe), Ashur (god of war- holds an arrow), Enlil (god of the sky), Ishtar (queen of the night? goddess of love and war?), Sun and more...

Anyway, it is shame that someone had defaced some of the work with blue spray paint. One entire image in the left segment was painted blue. Why is it that people here are so uninterested? Is it because historic places not so interesting as potential picnic sites or modern buildings? Is it because these images are not Kurdish in origin? Anyway, I really wish that Mosul wasn't so dangerous as I want to see more; the Assyrian palaces in Ninevah for starters!