Winterland

Although I had never heard of Hisham Zaman before, I attended a screening of two of his short films in the University auditorium, Bawke and Winterland. Luckily they were subtitled in English as the dialogue was in Norwegian and Kurdish. FABULOUS! And it was especially interesting to watch them with the Kurdish audience. Winterland tells the story of a man, Renas, who lives in an isolated, cold and bleak part of Norway (looks a lot like my mom's hometown in New Brunswick... even down to the shipping-news-like house). The story opens with him leaving his house to answer the phone ringing in the phone booth in his backyard - one of his parents... who incidentally call everyday to give advice. He, with the help of his family (via the phone), decides to marry a Kurdish girl whose photograph he has fallen in love with. She arrives and it is clear that for both, expectations have been less than met. There are some great comedic moments as the pair learn to make the best of what life has dealt. The crowd cheered as the Kurdish wedding procession (cars blasting Kurdish music with people hanging out the windows, whopping and waving scarves) winds its way down the icy Norwegian country road. However, it was really clear that the audience is mostly familiar with the Hollywood mainstream genre of film... and unused to deciphering symbolism. Why was the hero of the story so old. Don't you think it would have been better if he was young and handsome? Why did the couple destroy the phone booth at the end of the movie instead of just walking away? were just a couple of the questions asked.

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.

Taxi to Erbil (Wednesday, Oct 25)

If you ever have the chance to read the film by the same title, please comment here! My connection at home is such that I can't download anything and I often lose connection partway.

Anyway, so I am home safely. We started on our way at about 7:30am from our hotel in Diyarbakir. To be honest, I was a little eager to be back... as much as I had been enjoying the high living in our 4 star hotel. Our driver for the first part of the journey was the same driver (white minivan pictured) who took us to Hasankeyfe - someone arranged for us by Ahmed when he visited the mayor of Diyarbakir. This was one of the great parts of traveling as a group; the trip to the border is about 3-4 hours and $140 US. I think this would be the same cost as traveling alone by yellow cab. This time we took a different route that the way in- a route that seemed longer, but more picturesque including cotton and corn fields and the Syrian border. It was much like the North/South Korean border with two barbed fences with a no-man's-land protected by mines and military patrol in between. Syrian Kurdistan from this vantage point looked much the same as the Turkish side.

It was already about midday when we finally we reached the border and of course the customs officers were having lunch. As on the way in, we have to transfer to taxis with special permits for border crossing (you can't walk through). The taxis are $40 US to travel a very short distance, but they do all the paperwork for you, including photocopies of passports. So the taxi drivers all gather around the cusoms window jostling and fighting with each other... and when the officials do show up, the fight and jostle some more to be the first to slap the official on the back with one hand, shake the other and kiss on both cheeks. Many hands reach through the window and the processing starts. We pass through this and have our passports checked a few more times (although less than exiting Iraq) and continue on, stopping briefly at a point a little ways in for our own lunch.

We pass that area with the Iraqi flags flying and realize that it is essentially the point of the road closest to Mosul (maybe you'ver heard of it?). A sign indicates that it is only 20km in the another direction. We continue on. Who could have thought I would be so happy to see New CIty Motel. Home Sweet Home!