A volley of curious gazes converged upon us as soon as we exited the car, in the middle of a bustling street in downtown Soran. This city, hosting some 125,000 inhabitants, is the major population center within the remote, mountainous region of northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan. Needless to say that it’s not a touristic hotspot.
We weren’t originally planning to stay there; didn’t even know it existed until we drove past it a few days earlier on our way to Mount Halgurd. But since it was too late to continue further, and we definitely needed a shower and some proper rest after three nights of sleeping in the tent, we were tempted to find a place to settle for the night. We thanked the kind man who’d driven us there and proceeded with this mission.
This story is an excerpt from my book "Backpacking Iraq", wherein I recount my journey through this misunderstood and fascinating country. The entire book is available to read online for free. But if you'd like to get it on your e-reader or as physical copy (and, doing so, support my creative activity), you may check it out on Amazon.
There wasn’t a single lodge within a range of fifty miles from Soran appearing on either booking platforms or Google Maps. There was only one hotel we’d noticed along the road, some way back from our current position, plus another one we could see in some distance ahead. We inquired in both and checked in to the one whose owner proved more receptive to bargaining.
As expected, the room was very basic. Its door locked only in the sense of requiring a bit more force than a pushing finger can produce to open. It contained nothing other than two single beds with enough free space to walk beside them. The contiguous bathroom had a hole in the floor for a toilet and a plain pipe sticking out of the untiled wall for a shower. But on the positive side, it had a large, translucent window overlooking an animated street, and the staff were friendly. Anyhow, we didn’t spend inside any more time than needed to leave our stuff and went out to explore.
About an hour remained till sundown, and the barren surrounding hills had taken on a pleasant, warm tint. The streets were busy with vehicles and pedestrians. The latter, as usual in this part of the world, were almost exclusively male. Many of the older ones wore a distinctive grey outfit complemented with a patterned, black-and-white turban that must have been characteristic of the local culture.
Everyone noted our foreign presence and expressed their attention with a gamut of reactions, ranging from furtive peeks and modest smiles to elated cheers and honking bursts. A couple of guys who knew English stopped us for a chat and insisted on offering their selfless help well beyond the point of us explaining that there’s nothing we need.
Having wandered through various crowded markets and quiet backstreets, the nightfall found us loitering over two cups of tea at a cute traditional teashop. After filling our stomachs up with a kebab and a load of syrupy sweets from a street vendor, it was time to sleep before tomorrow’s journey.
Our next destination was another unplanned one… When we posted a public request on Couchsurfing, looking for accommodation in Erbil, we received a very earnest invitation from a guy in Sulaymaniyah: the second-largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since we had a couple of spare days before our flight to Baghdad, we decided to pop by…
Another thing our hotel lacked was outdoor space or any smoking area. So I had to have my morning coffee and fag sat on the shaded curb of the still-closed vegetable stall across the street. Then we packed and hit the already scorching road.
It was a long, sweaty walk to that random field on the city’s outskirts where the map claimed was the bus station. Worse than the pointless toil was that we now had no clue where the correct location could be; and even worse that, even if we met a human in this deserted district, it’d be too much to hope for them to understand our tongue. But as I contemplated the problem, a big jeep pulled over out of the blue, and a fond lad behind the window punctually asked us in English whether we need help. He went out of his way to drive us to the terminal, which turned out to be a petrol station.
To our luck’s continuity, a minivan was right about to depart. We somehow crammed ourselves among the other passengers and the luggage and began our trip. Our luck dried out when we reached Erbil and learned that the buses to Sulaymaniyah leave from a different terminal on the opposite side of the city. We took a cab there, had lunch in a cheap grill place, and boarded a new minivan to our final destination.
It was dusk when we slowed down in a broad, congested avenue leading to Sulaymaniyah’s center. Upon this very first impression, the city looked much different from what my imagination had envisaged. From its conspicuous, lit skyscraper to its tidy streets and posh shops, everything around suggested a level of neatness and affluence that I hadn’t foreseen.
Faint twilight lingered in the sky, and the city’s artificial illumination was taking over when we stepped off the bus. As instructed by our soon-to-become host, we stopped a taxi, called him up and handed the phone over to the driver, and sat waiting to be brought to the place he would pick us up from.
I had already experienced the admirable hospitality and generosity of the Kurdish people. But Amin, our host, meant to elevate these notions to a whole new level. My hunch, that he’d insist on even paying the taxi driver, proved right. Hence, so did my provision to pay him before the end of the ride. Amin waited for our arrival with a banknote in his hand.
He was a noble-mannered man in his early thirties. His American-accented English was excellent and his general education broad. He was an engineer by training and had made it big with his own construction firm. We sat in his fancy car and drove to his place in the upscale suburbs.
He lived on one of the loftiest floors in one of two twin residential towers. A tall barbed fence enclosed them and vacant land neighbored them in a great radius. A uniformed security guard greeted formally as he raised the boom barrier for us to enter the premises. The lift zipped through the stories.
The apartment was huge and brand-new, smelling of fresh paint. It was just weeks ago he’d moved in and determined to put his extra space to use for hosting weary travelers, of whom we had the honor of being the first ones. He showed us to a bedroom and let us test the king-size bed while he nipped off to see to some business.
He soon returned with plans. We were going to meet two of his pals and booze together. But first, we ended up doing something else that I would never have imagined…
One of his pals was a physiotherapist. We drove to pick him up from his clinic. He asked whether we were experiencing any joint problems or anything. Sophie was under treatment after a cat bit her finger some months ago. I, well… my knee complains from time to time ever since I undertook that ligament reconstruction surgery following an endless succession of injuries. He offered us a free session—electrotherapy and all—and prescribed a regimen. I must admit that, like it usually goes with me and routines, I gave it up before even starting.
Besides a soothing one around my knee, the physiotherapy left me with a sensation of emptiness inside my stomach. While the doctor was readying his office for closure, we said we could do with a quick grub. We had in mind a shawarma or something. But Amin instead led us to a palatial restaurant across the street and ordered a glut of delicacies which he didn’t even touch himself. Even after employing my famous appetite at full capacity, I felt embarrassed to leave behind a table replete with leftovers.
As if this wasn’t enough, after filling a few bags with various imported beers and spirits at the liquor store, we entered the snack shop next door and purchased a quantity of food that would cover an entire squad’s daily ration. And then we lounged in Amin’s living room, drank but a couple of beers each, ate nothing, played some music, and fell asleep over Netflix.
Sophie and I had made it to the bedroom. The guys were sprawled unconscious on the carpet when I got up, rather late in the morning. They woke and rose by degrees while I was having my coffee on the balcony, staring at the mountainous tranquillity beyond Sulaymaniyah’s sparse purlieu. Amin’s buddies got ready sluggishly and set off to work. Amin was even slower and took us out for breakfast before going to the office.
We sat in one of those typical of the area, extravagant breakfast parlors where wealthy locals like to spend the better part of their days’ first halves. Our table didn’t lack surface, yet we felt pressured to clear the plates fast and free up space for the waiters to place the new ones that kept coming incessantly. We slowed down after the last ones arrived, forcing in whatever nibbles we could store for anticipatory lunch and dinner like camels.
It must have been almost noon when Amin determined to start his working day. He drove away, and we walked off to explore the city.
Our first stop was the Amna Suraka Museum commemorating the Anfal Campaign: a genocide carried out by Saddam Hussein’s regime against the Kurds in the 1980s. During that time, the building functioned as the headquarters of the Interior Ministry’s intelligence (i.e. Saddam’s butchers) and a prison, where an unreckonable number of innocent people perished. It also held as the government forces’ last redoubt during the 1991 battle that ended the terror regime in the city. The victorious Kurdish troops and an angry civilian mob summarily executed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and policemen on the spot.
A lone old guard stood by the museum’s entrance and welcomed us in for free. The grim building’s outer walls were shabby and bullet-marked. Timeworn tanks and artillery batteries littered the courtyard. The interior featured various exhibits: historic photographs and films, chattels of refugees, dummy representations of torture, protracted name lists of killed humans, and a so-called hall of broken mirrors composed of 182.000 glass shards symbolizing the estimated number of the genocide’s victims. A newer addition also memorialized the Kurdish nation’s latest strife against the Islamic State… Having got enough of a chilling dose for one day, we walked back out to the sunshine.
Sulaymaniyah’s center was teeming with life. Vendors crowded the pavements before the modern buildings, selling anything from books to live poultry. Like everywhere around the country, people earnestly expressed their delight to see us.
Following a long ramble, we perched at a little cafe’s outdoor table to gaze at the brisk traffic. It was a high-end street in front of a classy mall. Haves and beggars frequented the wide sidewalk. In no time, after a first one passed and earned a coin, we found ourselves encircled by a whole gang of destitute refugee boys. I think that, more so than in hope of gain, they stuck around to satisfy their curiosity about our foreignness. They made for fun company, and all of us made for an interesting spectacle for the passers-by. Meanwhile, another unfortunate, decrepit beggar lay flopped on a piece of cardboard a few meters away, soaked in his own piss with his pants lowered, barely noticed by anyone.
Late afternoon, we took a taxi home, intent on relaxing a bit before meeting Amin for our last night in this city.
Sadly, Amin didn’t show up in the end. He wrote to let us know he got admitted to the hospital for a reason he assured wasn’t serious. He told us not to wait for him and suggested that we go check out Salim Street.
That was the city’s nightlife hub. A mile-long array of outdoor restaurants, teashops, and shisha lounges occupied the broad promenade. It was hard to meander through the crowd, let alone find a seat in any of them. Plenty of hotels seemed to cater to Iranian tourists who flock there to enjoy the liberties their country bans.
The bars were in the darker backstreets. We ended up in a hipstery beer garden where we had a couple of drinks while waiting to get hungry. But since we were still full from breakfast, we went straight for dessert and returned home. We had to travel back to Erbil tomorrow and prepare for our trip to Baghdad.
Photos
View (and if you want use) all my photographs from Soran and Sulaymaniyah.
