When do days turn out like you expect?

Today I decided to borrow Kendelyn the Photographer’s camera. Since I cannot visit the historic Christian community in Mosul, I decided to find one here in Sulaimaniyah. I had heard that there was an Arabic speaking Chaldean Church across the big street that runs through my neighborhood. So, I grabbed the camera, a journal and Hemingway and set out at 10 this morning hoping to find the church or to get lost. Either scenario would make for a good day. You can’t say you have known a city until you can say you have gotten lost in it.

Grabbing the camera, I wrapped the black strap around my wrist because I am petrified that I will drop it and walked east. Clouds of dust covered the city blocking the direct light from the sun, while managing to hold in the heat creating a sauna-like effect. I wandered around the neighborhood, walking slowly and trying to get a feel for the camera. The stone houses and walls (fences) that seem to be everywhere in the Middle East gave a sense of adventure to the morning stroll through the neighborhood. Receding further into the neighborhood, I began to hear a call to prayer. This would be altogether normal except there was no nearby mosque. I began to follow the sound and came upon a long rectangular tent with men inside. They were standing, sitting and drinking tea. I sat on a curb across the street to listen to the voice singing in Arabic. A few minutes of stares from the old men under the tent convinced me to continue my search for the Chaldean church.

Routine Tuesday Nights

Every Tuesday night the interns eat dinner at The Willingham's home. Cayla gives us a break from cooking duties and allows us to eat her consistently wonderful food. Today we planned on heading straight to their house after work, but they did not have water or electricity, which is sadly not at all abnormal. We waited half an hour at the office for their electricity to turn on, and around five thirty, I took my formerly black dress shoes out of the cabinet by the front door of the office and slipped them on my feet. We left the second-story office, walking down the "hallway" through the open air office building, and turned right to walk down the stairs. The first floor "hallway" passes right by a Turkish dessert shop that has an endless supply of baklava. We exit the back of the office building into a confused mixture of a parking lot, construction scene, and trash pit, and depending on the day the space looks more or less like any one of these. 

The seven minute escapade through backstreets and neighborhoods to the Willingham home always changes because I can never remember the exact route to their house. It makes life an adventure. Their house is the second floor of a two story building with uncovered stairs running up the outside of the building leading to their "front porch" or housha. That's where we ate dinner tonight. We had two blankets covering the concrete front porch with cushions lain on top making the floor as comfortable as a couch…with out the living room. It was awesome. There is no better way to wind down an in-office workday with an full evening picnic on a balcony….except to finish it with a cup of traditionally kurdish tea and some of the best dang oatmeal-raison cookies this side of the Euphrates!

Raison d'être

Today was like most every Thursday since I have been here. I woke up close to twenty minutes before the time work started, threw on a pair of pants and my last almost clean button-down shirt without a tie since it was Thursday, and started the walk to work. 

The work day progressed like most work days. The morning swiftly turned into lunch at Sara's, a local Kurdish restaurant. Many people think it is one of the best in the city, but I've heard that about so many restaurants that I am starting to think that the word "best" might not mean what I think it means.

I always order the "sada" at Sara, which is a bowl of rice and about four bowls of beans or soup that get poured over the rice. They tell me its very traditionally Kurdish. I consider it a great appetizer to the post-dinner tea.

The after-lunch work hours went as quickly as the morning, with lunch turning into 5 o'clock before I knew it. 

After work every Thursday we go to a English learning center and practice conversation with locals wanting to learn English. Its an easy way to meet very interesting people and a consistent place to see them weekly. 

This week John (fellow intern hailing from San Diego) and I showed up late. We walked in at the same time and kinda hung near the same people most of the night. There was one kurdish man whose name started with an "s" that I never actually caught who kept approaching us trying to monopolize our attention. He was not rude about it, he just made it evident that he was interested in speaking to us. Eventually, John sat down with him and I sat at a nearby table and started playing cards with a high schooler from new jersey and an 12 or 13 year old arab boy. I think they called the game Russian Poker. 

The night went on and I talked with other people, but eventually I found myself back at the table with John and "S-kurd." 

The man was talking about his passion for learning the english language. He had only started speaking a few months ago and was already very understandable. He said this was because he had a background in reading and writing English. In the midst of this mundane workday and very simple surface level conversations, this Kurd said something that floored me. I don't even know if he realized it. He was talking and I was listening, which means I was really half listening while enjoying a wonderful lemon cake between sips of an Americano. In broken English he said something like this:

"if you don't have any thing to hope for, it is better to be dead."

He went on to talk about how he was telling this to his wife. Learning english was his purpose for life that kept death from being a better option. This man who has grown up in an extremely religious culture, honestly, full of virtue, honor, and seemingly life-valuing morals, with a wife and presumably kids, with a job, with time on the weekends to go to a coffeeshop, claimed that only learning another man's language kept death's appeal at bay. A mildly stimulating distraction served as this man's reason for existence.

Have we no greater purpose than to find a way to distract ourselves from real, boring life?

With the pace this man is on he will soon learn english and then quickly find that he has discovered the same bland, tasteless life in english. What hope comes from that?

True hope and purpose must transcend the decay of this moth-ridden world. May we all know it

foolish and out of focus

Today I was a poser. I felt it from the borrowed nikon strapped across the front of my grey v-neck to my brown, traveling loafers and stained brown corduroys to the filthy once white, now asphalt-grey baseball cap over my hair. Every kurd walking the streets of the Sulaimaniyah bazaar must have thought the bearded young foreigner looked like a seasoned photojournalist patient to capture the life of one moment and show it to the world. Fil Haqeeqa, a rookie picture-taker walked lost around a mass of whirling urban activity hoping that one image in a days worth of attempts would yield at least a single image that reflected the image captured by his eye. 

Foolishly I labor briefly and sporadically in the world of art and I hope, or even expect, to breath an icon into existence; something that tangibly brings life to the soul of the one who “reads the image” I have created. I fail constantly.

Hotel Alborz

I'm reclining in a wicker chair on a cushion embed with the dust of many storms as a dark complected man with a tray of cha weaves through the tables of the street side cafe toward me. He is bringing me a glass cup that will burn the tips my fingers before I even finish writing. All the street side cafes seem to be located under hotels. This is the Alborz Hotel. I'm becoming pretty fond of it. Its almost a retreat from work. Or a retreat to peaceful noise. The resistance of a strong wind and the 

I'm told the waiters and staff are mostly from Mosul. 

Mosul.

Every word evokes a mental image as its spoken. City names especially take on a character or personality.

The Euphrates divides Mosul. Its western bank is its hub, but the city has grown so that it now extends onto eastern bank. It has grown to surround remnants of the once famous Ninevah. 

More than water divides this city. For centuries Mosul has been a home and refuge for Christians. There seems to be some deep seeded connection to the land visited by the prophet Jonah. For centuries this place has been under muslim rule. They, too, honor the prophet they call Yunis, and there exists a nearly tangible link with this people and the city.

In the last decade many Christians living in Baghdad and other cities in the south fled their homes as they faced threats on their lives. They fled north to Mosul, the historic city with a constant population of christians. 

Again this decade, as the Iraq War began pushing insurgents and Saddam affiliates out of Baghdad and her surrounding cities, these refugees fled north, to the city of many of their families. To Mosul.

The city teems with juxtaposed faiths and ethnicities fighting to be heard and seen. And not only in metaphor; this is probably the most dangerous city in Iraq.  

It is a city burning with passion and vibrant with fear. A city so volatile its refugees flee here, to "Kurdistan." A city burdened with this kind of pressure releases stories like an exhale of oxygen. They are everywhere. To be written. To be changed. To be given hope.  

Mosul.

The Front Door

His name wasn't Scott

I met a man yesterday. "Scott." Its the english name he goes by. Scott is running.