Duhok and Lalish, Iraqi Kurdistan, in the middle of nowhere

  Duhok , Iraq

Unknown female tourist in the middle of nowhere, asking to go further

After Sulaymaniye and Irbil (described after this) I took a taxi from the Irbil "garaj" to Duhok, The driver was yet another bullish Iraqi, with mustache, gray stubble on his balding head and  long curled black hair on arms, chest and probably most everywhere else, a sporty car and an authoritarian attitude. His first act was to loudly tell me to stop smoking when I lit a cigarette, the second, when he caught me softly singing along Islamic lyrics with Maher Zain in my earphones, to demand that I hand over my iPod and share my music with everybody in the car. His big hand was held open next to my thigh and obediently I removed my earphones and handed over my music. He plugged his cable into my iPod, connected it to the car stereo and soon, with "Paradise" blasting out of the speakers, we were zipping along the gravelly highway towards the Northwest of Iraqi Kurdistan. He smirked. The three young Iraqis in jeans in the back seemed quite happy with the soothing swinging rhythms of the Arabic song. I felt them grinning after they found out what I had been listening to. 

The only thing they did not like among my music collection were kurmanci songs, probably because they were speakers of Sorani Kurdish or Arabic  and could not understand. 

We arrived in Duhok after dusk, at around 8pm, and the driver offered to drop me off at my hotel, after getting my phone number ("Call me if you need any help"). The Parlaman hotel , whether named after politics or the cigarette brand or something unknown, seemed past it's glory days. Described in Lonely Planet guide as "fast becoming THE backpacker hotel in all of Iraq" , it now seemed deserted, the poster they said was in the lobby, of GWB shaking hands with the Kurdish president , was gone, and I felt like I was the only tourist in the whole hotel, and probably in this whole little town. The man in the lobby spoke English, gave me the keys to my dead-cheap room (14$ for two , with shower, since there was no single) but he was soon to be replaced  by two young Kurds taking turns in shifts, who did not speak a word of English. Nor much Arabic, it seemed. It meant, they did not even understand my question about breakfast. "Fil Sabah, kam zaman al fatour,  min fadlak?" was all I could muster in my failing miserable Arabic repertory, but to no avail. "Fatour" was an unknown word in these realms, and produced only uncomprehending looks, making me wonder if I had it right. "Fatour is breakfast, hesap is bill, fatoura is also bill, not to be confused with fatoush which is a Syrian salad , isn't it? Isn't it? Why the hell does he not understand fatour if he is working in an Iraqi hotel? Is there any other word? Damn!" I was wrecking my brain, and resigned myself to eating in the restaurant. There did not seem to be a dining room in this tiny hotel anyway. 

It was badly constructed. The stairs were barely wide enough to drag up my suitcase and it took some coaxing to get the second young man from the reception to do it for me. My request was met with incredulity, but he did not protest when I insisted to be served by this sullen chubby lad. "This is certainly not Syria, where everyone is a gentleman and readily comes to assist a lady in distress" I thought, "oh well". Maybe they rarely see any women arriving here, much less on their own, like me. More misconstruction in my room. The window led out to a roof full of rubble and a water tank, and the toilet bowl was too shallow while the water pressure was too high. Every time I flushed, the water splashed all over the bathroom floor, which was thankfully tiled and had a drain, so it was always followed by passing the shower head over the entire bathroom floor to wash up. Appalling, but this is what I got.  The shower was next to the toilet, and I had to place my cosmetics out into the corridor in front of the door, or they would get all wet every time I showered. The bed had only one sheet and a woolen blanket, so I was glad I had two beds, and could pull the sheet off the other bed and use it as a cover. It was hot. 

I managed to find a restaurant across the Main Street, a minute from the hotel, and there i pointed to an image on the luncheon mat, and ordered kebab. Then I went back, and spent an hour in the lobby, sharing cigarette smoke with the young silent receptionist, and using his wifi to tell the world where i was. Then i went to sleep in my tiny room. It was simple but it felt safe, more or less. Even though I wondered where that rubbled roof terrace in front of my window led to. 

The next morning I went to the same restaurant for breakfast. Now an older man was there who slipped me his phone number, surreptitiously, asked me to call him and said, my breakfast was free. I said ok , thanked him and did not. In the evening I defiantly went back to the same restaurant, ate more kebab, at a discount this time, promised to call him in five minutes and did not. The next morning, when he started to complain, I told him:"I just want to eat in your restaurant" and he gave in. I am sure these men get turned down 50 times a year, they are used to it, and hardly expect otherwise. Though they take their chances with western women, and I was intent on proving them wrong about western women. 

I would, however, gladly have let down my defenses and misstepped with the cute handsome sun glassed young taxi driver the hotel guy arranged for me, but this guy did not ask,and neither did I. He just drove, in silence, keeping his long, jeans clad slender legs spread casually and held down the accelerator, he too spoke neither English nor Arabic.  He took me on a long tour into the mountains. I had bargained him down by 25% simply by hesitating and not asking the hotel guy to call back immediately, after hearing his price . After 10 minutes he offered a cheaper price, which was still disproportionately high compared to the hotel and the food, but this seemed to be the case in all middle eastern countries I have visited. 

I asked him to take me to Lalish. They knew where it was, at least, here in Duhok, and yet, he missed a turn and had to backtrack, it seemed, he rarely went there or maybe had never been there himself, before. Lalish is the sacred village of the Yezidi, a religious sect that is considered heretic by the others. Yezidism seems to be an ancient religion , a missing link between Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. They worship nature, the sun, moon and stars , fire and the fallen angel. In their belief shaytan is not the devil but the highest of the angels who bows only before God, not before man. He was thrown out of heaven for this, and spends his time crying and longing to go back. They worship the black snake

that stuck its head into a leak in Noah's ark and saved it from sinking. They  worship Tavuz , the peacock god-man, who spreads his tail and shows the whole beauty of the world. There was a painting of an Indian girl in a saree on their wall, holding a peacock on her hand. She reminded me of Saraswati , the Indian goddess of music, math and intelligence.

 

 

When we arrived at the village, a delegation from a Kurdish party was there , meeting their sheikh. I got out of the taxi and soon after the reception provided me with a free English speaking guide who showed me around and explained their customs and rituals. He was a school teacher. Afterwards we had lunch together, cooked by the women of the village, but when I asked him to invite my waiting driver, he told me that these drivers never accept their food and will not even touch their tea. It seemed, the Yezidis were treated as outcasts , and it saddened me. This peaceful little village, made of old, light brown clean swept stone, overhung by green vines and climbers, where everyone had to tread barefoot on the sacred earth,

 

how could they be ostracized as devil worshippers for praying to their crying peacock angel who refused to bow to man? Did not the Kurds who had been outcast by everyone around them have enough sympathy not to outcast their own? But this was the way it was. The Sunni Muslim drivers did not touch their tea. It could not be helped. He did not ask and we ate alone, just the two of us.

Then he took me to another room, to interview me for their website, and made me tell him what I knew about Yezidi and what I had learned now, after he had told me about their faith. It will appear one day on www.lalishduhok.com 

 

 

I walked down the sacred path with him, put on my shoes, and met my waiting driver. Then we went to Amediye, the walled town on a flat mountain top. I took many photos, but of course could not convey all it's unique beauty, which can only be done from the air above by plane.

 

We drove back to Duhok in almost silence, his stereo playing the same Mazyar Fallahi song I had in my iPod , Iranian pop. "Maybe this is why this guy is such a gentle soul, he listens to Iranian songs, who knows where he is from? " I thought to myself but did not ask. 

He dropped me off at my hotel, I braced myself for another dinner in the restaurant of the man who I had not called, spent my last evening with iraqi henna on my hair, and uploaded my photos. 

The next day I checked out, refused to walk to the garaj and took a taxi as I did not want to drag my suitcase down to street and get lost in a town where almost nobody spoke a language I could understand. 

It took me over an hour to find a car, at last I worked up the courage to complain in this room full of mustached aging macho men and the fierce looking manager who kept barking into his phone in Kurdish. It turned out, the problem was that I had asked for a taxi to Sulaymaniye where noone else was headed, and all I needed to do was change my destination to Irbil first of all, and a car was prodiced after five minutes, that　I could share with a man from Baghdad who told me on the way that he was one of the Christians still living there after so many others had left, as they kept being attacked by terrorists in locales that served wine. It took almost three hours to get to Irbil, and from there I headed back to Sulaymaniye and on to the border of Iran. But this is the stuff of another tale.