A Day in Kurdistan

12:01 AM:

Skinny Dipping in the Tigris River at the base of an 11,000 year old cave citidal.  Mesopotamia.  Birthplace of agriculture – ancestral mother of all civilization.  The river’s current of the fall equinox full moon slips through ancient dreams on the banks of history.  Sleep.

8:54 AM:

Tea.  My Italian and I laugh when our first ride casually slips a gun from one pocket to the other and tries to buy us tea. It reminds us of our ride a few days before who we had tried to convince to pose for a photo with the two machine guns casually pointed at the Italian’s head, but instead he bought us breakfast and tea.

I met my Italian in Istanbul a few weeks prior, a lost and lovesick puppy eager to escape the teargas and street battles rocking the city.  I was trying to trick him into taking my bike – he was trying to trick me into taking him hitchhiking.  He won, and together we zigzagged a wild 2,000 mile Middle Eastern odyssey on our thumbs and drank easily a hundred cups of tea- all the way down to Southeast Anatolia.  Kurdistan.

10:32 AM:

Tea.  Cities popping from the desert- cities made of the desert- cities that are the desert- cities so old they always have been.  Ancient stone houses, mosques, and churches the color of carved sand.  In the streets jumbled cobwebs of Arab spice merchants sipping tea, Turk butchers selling organ meat, Kurdish children playing rooftop soccer.  Tea.  We take a break from hitchhiking to climb the roof of a 2,000 year old Armenian monastery.   Behind the church row upon row upon row of white canvass tents- a fortified Syrian refugee camp where no one gets in or out – and the nasty feeling I’ve been feeling for days jumps back into my throat.  I’m disgusted by myself – drawn here to this fucked up corner of the world – what am I?  A conflict tourist, watching misery like zoo animals?  I’m ashamed – what am I doing here?  Is there some dark part of me that just wants to experience something scary, something dark, do I want to experience conflict??  Careful what you wish for…

12:10 PM:

Stuck on the Syrian border, the panic that first struck a few days ago in Mardin starts to come back- days of guns, sneaking through military checkpoints with illegal Syrian refugees, U.S. state department evacuation and rumors of helicopters being shot down have frayed my nerves – I want to go home.  When a minibus stops, we decide to take it.  We get frustrated haggling over the price- we want to pay the full fare like everyone else but they will only accept half price from us.  Turkish kindness.  I squeeze onto a sack of grain next to some of the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen and think deeply for the millionth time about burkhas and niqabs – what it would be like to be a woman living in a veil, what it would be like to be a man growing up not knowing what a woman looked like…  Tea.  Trying, trying hard, not to judge- trying to be culturally understanding- but actually just feeling like its pretty fucked up.

3:18 PM:

Off the Syrian border and onto the Iraqi.  Careful what you wish for.  Nervously holding our thumbs out as military helicopters circle around our heads and gunshots ring out from the Iraqi hills behind us.  A white van pulls over, and the passenger starts yelling at us – the very first non-friendly interaction we’ve had anywhere in the Middle East:

“What’s your problem!?  What’s your problem!?”

“No problem,” we say.

“Where are you from?”

“Italy and Canada,” we lie.

“Let me see your passports.”

“Uh… no?”  we say.

“No- ” he demands.  The back door of the unmarked van on the Iraqi border slides open and my heart drops straight to the ground –  three plain-clothed men with AK-47’s.  Stepping out with a pistol and dark sunglasses.  “Give me your passports.”   Fingers trembling.   “Get in the van.”                                    Fuck.

They turned out to be Turkish police – their credentials being a business card that just said ‘police’.  The captain – the loud screaming English speaker – forces me to sit next to him in the passenger seat, slapping my chest a little too hard to be friendly, spitting in my face as he squeezed my neck painfully and explained how upset he would be with me if I turned out to be a spy.  He had insane eyes.  Driving into the desert.

He let us go, even tried to buy us tea and pulled over a van and explained that the driver had “volunteered” to take us.  But the experience shook me pretty deep.  No part of it felt anything like the thrill of doing something dangerous on a train or reckless adventure.  It just made me feel stupid.  When that van door opened and I saw those guns… I experienced a crushing wave of helplessness and vulnerability.  I’ve never felt anything like that before – and if that’s what I was coming here to experience then I’m the worst kind of fool.  Maybe I deserve to get chased by that feeling for a while.

5:01 PM:

Tea.  The road from Sirnak to Siirt has to be the most one of the most breathtaking rides in the world.  Riding in the front seat of a truck with an amazingly gentle and kind PKK militant – the armed Kurdish group smearing the line between partisan freedom fighter and terrorist (depending on who you ask).  And in these dramatic peaks – these mind-blowing mountains – its not hard to see where fierce independence and pride comes from.  We sing along to partisan Kurdish songs by fallen martyrs and drive by Turkish tanks sweeping the hills for rebels.  We stop to wash and pray one of the 5 daily prayers of Islam and he bought us nuts and soda.

8:49 PM:

Tea, kebab, Tea, grapes, Tea, Tea.   I don’t want anyone the think that my time in Turkey was all guns, chaos and drama.  The truth is Tea that the defining aspect of this entire trip was outrageous kindness everywhere we Tea turned.  Hardly a ride went by that didn’t offer us tea- we hardly paid for a meal- we hardly had to wait for a ride Tea.  Turkish hospitality- like a busy barber in Istanbul who gave me two cups of tea, a free shave and closed his entire shop to walk me half an hour to where I was going just because I asked for directions – deserves every bit of its reputation.  But sometimes too much Tea and hospitality can be overwhelming Tea…      After the ride with the PKK fighter we took a short bus ride to what turned out to be a major religious pilgrimage town.  An old man on the bus who Tea spoke great English Tea took us to a sacred tomb where we prayed together.  Tea Afterwards he bought us Tea and Dinner, Tea, pretty soon all sorts of Tea people were crowding around force feeding us Tea Grapes, Tea, Tea, our host Tea explained that Tea the town had a free hotel where Tea the pilgrims Tea stayed TEA TEA TEA everyone handing us more Tea trying to show us on the map how to get places and Tea where Tea buses could be Tea found in the morning “I think we’ll just go camp,” Tea our host leaves to check on the hotel for us Tea Tea that’s when Tea people start really crowding Tea Tea Tea we can’t understand anyone Tea we’re exhausted Tea more grapes more tea people touching our maps trying to explain Tea things to us Tea TEA a glass is dropped and shatters next to TEA! me TEA! TEA! everyone cleaning it Tea TeaTEATea Our host comes back, he’s so sorry but the free hotel is full Tea Tea he bought us Persian rugs – he Tea fucking bought us hand-made Persian rugs – TEA Tea “Dude, we physically can’t take those with us…”  “No no!  Take the rugs!” Tea TEA Tea Tea – we need Tea to Tea escape the forced Tea feeding TEA- We try to go camp – “No no!” He won’t hear of it- he tries to Tea find us a Tea safe camping spot Tea before he Tea has to go catch his own Tea bus Tea we can’t Tea explaTEAin to him that TEA we know what we’re doing Tea The Tea people want us to sleep in their Tea shop Tea We just want to run away somewhere Tea He wants Tea to help us Tea set up our tent Tea we’re so tired Tea finally a guy walks up and explains in Turkish that he has a house with nobody in it that we are free to stay in Tea, this is acceptable to Tea our old man, and he Tea hands us off to the Tea beard guy.  I don’t Tea know why Tea it was not safe to sneak off to some secret place but its safe to stay with the first random stranger we find, Tea, but we’re just happy to Tea be allowed to sleep.

10:03

We walk through a dark jumbly alleyway maze to the guy’s house – a bombed out, dusty hot spider infested cement house with all the windows broken out.  Our new host leaves and we feel a little despair.  We don’t want to sleep here.  Our host pops back through the broken window and gives us a pillow.  We start to set up our beds on the floor.  Our host pops back through the broken window and gives us water.  We lay down.  Our host pops back through the broken window and tries to offer us tea.  “NO TEA!”  We tell him.

11:59 PM

I’m having a hard time falling asleep, and I realize our host is staring at us through the broken window.  “Hello!” I say.  He tries to explain something.  I get up to talk to him – he really wants me to come out and have tea with him.  I say no, he’s trying really hard to get me outside to show me where the bathroom is, I’m trying really hard to get him to go away.  He wants me to open the door, which I do reluctantly, he’s acting really strange, I’m having to be kind of forceful and rude with him, I try to shake his hand goodnight and he starts pulling me – suddenly every alarm whistle in my body starts going crazy and I slam his own door in his face.  I kick the Italian awake “Get up, we have to get out of here.”    My heart is racing getting dressed and packing everything up- we leave together and I’m clutching my knife.  We run through the dark windy streets.

Turkey and the disputed land of Kurdistan are amazing places, steeped in natural beauty and history (we accidentally hitchhiked right past both the Garden of Eden and the oldest temple in the world).   97% of our time there was incredible.  I have a strong new respect for Islam and I found some of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met.  But there were some tense days.  The day I just recounted was followed by an equally tense day when the truck we were in broke down right on the Iranian border at the cold foot of Mount Ararat (where Noah’s ark landed) in the middle of the night- our amazing driver who drove military trucks in Iraq and Afghanistan being visibly quite nervous explaining that these hills are dangerous – and a suspensefully long McGiver job… another story for another time…  but I think by the time we got out of Kurdistan, and then out of Turkey all-together, both of us were feeling completely worn out and a little bit crazy.  I never thought I would feel relief, safety and normality getting to an ex-Soviet country, but here I am.

I also want to give a big thanks to my Italian, who I had initially written him off as someone I was taking under my wing- but he quickly became the backbone of our operation and I don’t know what I would have done without him.