Last week I took an early taxi from Suli to Erbil and as is my habit, I passed out more or less as soon as the doors closed and the engine was turned on. This is very useful not only for catching up on sleep, but also for getting through checkpoints. Now that I’ve lost the beard and have a Kurdish haircut, I can pass from time time as a very light skinned Kurd. In fact, the only thing that really gives me away are my clothes. If you put me in a pair of tight flares, healed pointy shoes, and shiny shirt, I’d become invisible. So, asleep in the back of car where you can’t see much of what I’m wearing, I pass for Kurdish and as I dream of vegetables and sugarless tea, I’m waved through checkpoint after checkpoint.
The main city checkpoints are more thorough, though, and I was woken up for an ID check. My blossoming Kurdish didn’t come in very useful, mainly because I’ve only really learned how to string insulting sentences together (thanks to my Kurdish male friends) and say that I’m hungry. As much as I wanted to show off that I’m really beginning to learn something in Kurdish, I decided against telling a Peshmerga with a Kalashnikov “I’m really hungry, you animal son of a bitch!”
All of a sudden the man sitting next to me came to my rescue in beautiful fluent English. Naturally we began to talk after we navigated the checkpoint and it turned out that he was a pediatric cardiologist. Strangely enough I’d just met an American college grad who was volunteering for an organization that deals with a medical problem in Kurdistan of children born with holes in their heart. Not surprising, they knew each other as my new doctor friend was researching the possible genetic reasons for this disease and seeing if it was linked to the tradition of family intermarriage.
Now, last summer when I was here I met another expat who worked for an NGO that flew Kurdish children to Israel to operate on this exact same problem. ”It’s strange,” I began to tell the doctor, ” but last summer I met a guy who works for an NGO that flies Kurdish children to Isra…”
“SHH!!! Don’t say that here!” The doctor yelled under is breath, his eyes darting around the taxi.
“What?” I whispered. ”Isreal?”
The doctor opened his eyes very wide, silently telling me, “YES!”
I was taken aback, but for the sake of my new doctor friend, I kept the “country which cannot be named” out of the rest of our conversation.
I’ve since followed this interaction up with a few Kurdish friends and it appears that there is just a general anti-Israeli sentiment in the region, founded on nothing more than ignorance and barrage of single minded television media. Kurds have nothing against Israel, they just don’t get shown anything vaguely neutral about the region. Not too dissimilar, I think, than Americans educating themselves about the world by watching Fox News.
In my humble opinion, this how you end with these bits of graffiti only a few blocks from each other:
Ignorance without spellcheck
The Kurdish Anti-Fascist League
Now, if all this graffiti is bringing you down I’ll give you these two other pieces to lift your spirits a little.
is stronger than the pwer of the fiste
Looking towards the future!
Stayed tuned to “Friday in the Market” in the next installment of Funny Little Stories. I’ve got one to blow your socks off!
