From Duhok back to The Iranian border, almost arrested near Halabja

The next morning I checked out of my hotel, had a last breakfast in the restaurant of the man I had never called, and then asked how to get to the taxi terminal. The guy in the hotel said, I should go to the Main Street, turn left and walk there. He balked at the idea of calling me a taxi. He said it was near, but the idea of dragging my suitcase down the street to some unknown destination did not appeal to me at all. Once again, unlike the gentlemanly Syrians, they did not offer to help. So I had them call me a taxi. A mistake as the taxi drove off with me in the opposite direction, seemed to go all the way around town, got stuck in a traffic jam, countless red lights, and finally, after a huge detour, or possibly, following a one way road , arrived at the taxi terminal. There were signs outside, listing Erbil, Baghdad, Sulaymaniye and a few other places as possible destinations. I walked inside, and asked the bullish surly man , once again mustached , and arms covered in thick curled black hair, to put me on the list for Sulaymaniye . Then I waited. Nothing happened. The room filled up with Kurds, one wearing brown Kurdish traditional clothes, all of them big, bullish and very very Macho looking. There were only one or two women, silent, in headscarves, accompanied by their husbands. I felt vulnerable and intimidated. The man at the desk was talking into his phone, his eyes looked fierce and unforgiving, the hair on his head was shaved very short. I decided not to talk to him. I waited. Finally I went outside, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, trying to look distant and unfazed. I waited. The clock ticked, nothing happened. A few people left by car, new ones came. It was now going on 13.30h, and I still had to go all the way to the border. Finally I stood up, went over to the desk and asked what was wrong. Why was there no car? He said, I was the only one who wanted to go to Sulaymaniye. I asked:"Ok, can I go to Erbil instead and change cars there? " he said, in that case, the taxi would be there soon.and indeed, two minutes later we were off. Me, and an older Iraqi who sat on the backseat. The car seemed to be brandnew. He did not drive past Mosul, he drove through small towns in the mountains instead. On the way he stopped at a butcher, bought half a kilo of meat and put it in his car. It could not be far from here, I figured. Then we stopped at a restaurant.
The Iraqi and I shared a silent meal of kebab and rice. Suddenly he looked up and said quietly:" I am from Baghdad. I am Christian." Utterly surprised, I asked incredulously:"You are Christian? Are there Christians living in Baghdad? " "Yes", he said , "there used to be 200000 of us, but now only 50000 are left, everybody else is gone. Al Qaida comes into the cafes and shoots us, because they serve wine." I looked at him sadly, letting his words sink in. Al Qaida was driving the Christians out Baghdad, I had not known. We finished our meal and went back to the car. I pondered the fact, how safe and quiet Kurdistan must seem to him, compared to Baghdad.
Some time after that we arrived in Erbil, and the taxi for Sulaymaniye was already waiting. A man took my suitcase immediately, walked off with it and put it into the trunk of a car. Again, like at Marivan crossing, I had trouble remembering which car in the row of cars that was, but I found it and we were off.

When we got to Sulaymaniye it was getting dark. The driver offered to drive me alone to the terminal for Panjwin, for a charge that was half the price from Erbil to here. I was surprised but agreed, there was nothing else I could do. At the next place they arranged a car for me, made me wait quite a while, and then a Kurd again dressed in salwar suit , started driving. He said it was late, it was dark now, and I should just take the car alone. It was a bit more expensive but not much. But after about 15 minutes his mobile phone rang and he was asked to come back. He made a u-turn and took me back to where I came from. Then he stopped, lifted his big heavy body out of the car, and started a screaming row with the other driver and almost got into a fist fight with him on the street. I had no idea what was going on. Then the other driver, a young man, in normal street clothes, no salwar baggy pants and kummerbund, got into the car and we were off in the same direction again. He did not explain. One checkpoint. I was asked for my passport, this time, then we drove on . He said, he would take me all the ay to the border instead of Panjwin because it was so late now. After 11pm passed, some lights appeared in the distance on the right side of the road. He pointed at them. "This is Halabja", he said. Tjhe place where Chemical Ali had gassed and killed thousands of Kurds, I knew that . The friend of my Iranian friend who I had met in Sulaymaniye had shown me the pictures. the long rows of dead, wrapped in white body bags. The famous photo of a little boy jumping over the bodies and running away which had been mistakenly shown in the news about Houleh once, and been attributed to Syria, before the real photos came out. This was the place where the tragedy had happened. The driver explained that Halabja had two parts, old and new, the bad and the good part. Then we came upon another checkpoint and were stopped again by the Peshmerge. Again, I had to show my passport. The soldier asked the driver where I was going. He said, to the Iranian border. The soldier turned to me, gave me a sharp long look from his black eyes and said, I sould come out of the car. I had to follow him in to the police station. He gestured that I should sit down on a couch, while he sat at the desk, leafing through my passport. "Do you speak Kurdish?" he said, "Kurdi?" "La", I said, no . "Arabi?" "Qalilan"- a little. He looked at me from under his dark brows. "Ism?" - What is your name? I told him . "What is your profession?" "Are you married? Where is your husband? Do you have children? What is the name of your child?" "Where are you going?" "To Panjwin, and then to Iran." "Why do you want to go to Iran?" "I have friends there. And I have a flight ticket from Tehran." "Tell me the names of your friends. Where do they live in Iran?" I told him. I told him the name of my Kurdish friend. The other officer seemed to say:"What kind of a name is that?" and the soldier explained that it was a form of some other name they knew which seemed to appease him somewhat. Then I told him the name of my friends in Tehran. How I knew them. He asked, if the man was a doctor, I said, no, an engineer. He seemed satisfied. Then he leafed through my passport again, shook his head and muttered:"Look at all these Turkish visas she got, she has been there so many times..." Then he got up from behind his desk, my passport in hand, walked around it and came towards me and sat down next to me on the couch. He stared me deeply into the eyes and snarled:"Shughl!"-Tell me your profession. I clenched my jaw, ruffled my brows, and resolutely took my passport from his hands. Leafed through it, opened the page with my Syrian visa. "See this visa?" I said. "This is from the embassy of Syria. Here it states my profession, in Arabic!" and held the open passport under his nose. He read it and after a few minutes decided to let me go.
We got into the car again. Drove for 15 minutes, another checkpoint. The driver stopped. "Where are you going?" the soldiers wanted to know, kalashnikovs strung over their shoulders. They looked at me with curiosity, in the semi dark of the car. "To the Iranian border." "Where did she come from?" "Duhok." "Why didn't she take the airplane from Erbil?" Exasperated , I rolled my eyes. Is this so f...g unusual to be a woman in a car in the night, driving towards the Iranian border? Was this place of such ill repute that people chose to fly across it? Was this nothing but a smugglers route, used by the odd Kurdish tourist? The driver explained something, they tipped their hats, and we were off again.
Then we approached the border. By now it was 1.30am, and I wonder if the border guards would be there at all . They were not in the building where I had received my visa for Kurdistan before, but instead in the back of the building. The driver and I walked down a long hallway to find them. Again I had to explain that I wanted to go to Iran, and after some checking they gave me an exit stamp. But then the officer came out with my driver to our car and said:"You cannot go there without hijab. You have to change your clothes, can you do that?" I opened my suitcase, took out a sscarf, put it on. They looked at me quizzically. "You can't go like that, you have to cover yourself completely!"  Appafrently my long blouse was still too tight, the sleeves only reached below the elbows. I took out a loose long orange Indian shirt, pulled it over my blouse, and I was covered in two layers now, down to my wrists and half way down to my knees. They said, this was ok now, and I should take my suitcase and go over to the Iranian border post. I said goodbye toi the driver and started walking. But then they called after me:"No , wait, we have to make sure..." They came after me, and shouted for the Iranian border guards to come out and meet them. All the guards gathered oin the middle of the bridge that led across the river between the two countries. The Iranians looked at my passport. "It is ok", they said . "Mush mushkila?" the Kurdish Iraqis asked, incredulously? "Really? No problem?" "Mush mushkila" the Iranians said, "She can come" The Iraqis smiled happy smiles of relief, the driver waved at me, and they walked back into the dark. I entered the Iranian border post. In here it was warm, the officers looked well groomed, graceful, slender and considerably less macho than the Iraqis. They were friendly and charming, and I felt really happy to be back in Iran, and left out a long breath of relief.
And indeed there was a bus, waiting, at this ungodly hour, to take us all to Marivan town and Sanandaj and the bus was full, too. Suddenly I was surrounded by Kurds who all wanted to invite me into their home in Marivan, to get some rest, have tea, get some sleep, before I go to Sanandaj. But I knew that my friend was waiting for me. I was hours late, after the long wait in Duhok, the interrogation and near- arrest in Halabja, and texted him with the phone credit he had kindly sent me that I would arrive at some time before 4 and 5 in the morning. Again! Like in Tehran, I had to rely heavily on the kindness and tolerance of my Iranian friend to come out and meet me, the lone traveller, at some crazy hour, to take me to his home.

 

Crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan - via Marivan and Panjwin from Iran, the way almost nobody takes

http://www.gomapper.com/travel/where-is/panjwin-located.html

After a lonesome breakfast in a men's cafe in Sanandaj where it seemed like I arrived first and was served last and had no idea how to complain about that as my Farsi was so limited, I paid the grinning, blue eyed, friendly Kurd of my cheap hotel where all the rooms' wondows seemed to be facing the hallway instead of the street, took my suitcase and left.
A Kurdish friend had booked a bus ticket for me and now I bravely took a taxi to the terminal, not sure what to expect from this day...
The man at the desk of the bus company demanded to see my passport and printed me a ticket from his computer, and we waited on this chilly morning for the bus for Sulaymaniye, Iraq, to arrive, a  small motly group of people seated on a bench, all Kurdish except for me, the only foreigner. And  then we were off, on our way to the border. I got a seat by myself but soon the young man from behind my seat asked if he could join me. His English was limited, and rather odd, but he kept trying to keep up a conversation with me and asked me one question after another, even though I could barely understand him.
We drove North and the bus headed int the mountains. Not quite as spectacular as driving directly through Howraman vally as I did two years ago, but still, spectacular enough. My Kurdish friend sent me sms saying, we would see a beautiful lake. We drove by it and the man next to me explained that the lake had a high sugar content. "Shirin, do you understand?" he said. Shirin means sweet in Persian, I knew that, but what was he trying to say? Exasperated, I texted my friend for an explanation, and he told me that the lake's water was pure and drinkable, and came from many springs at the bottom of the lake.
Finally, the bus took a turn to the left, passing through a small town where we stopped. I managed to buy some juice, with my poor Persian which consisted of a few words and a handful of phrases now, and plenty of gesturing.
After that we approached the border, and then a long, tedious and complicated process started, getting out of the country. At first our passports were checked. But we did not get any stamps, apparently this first check was just to take a look, to see whether we had the necessary papers or something.
After that we all had to get off the bus, take our luggage and line up and wait, in the heat, on the road that led past a booth. The process was very slow.  Finally it was my turn. The immigration officer opened my passport.
"Where is your visa for Iraq?" he asked. "My visa for Iraq...?" In my mind I remembered that silly phone call to the Iraqi embassy where some Chinese sounding woman explained to me in rude broken English that nobody ever travels to Iraq and tourist visas do not exist, and if I did not believe her, I should send a fax and ask her superior to call me back the next day.
"Yes, where is it?" he demanded to know, "you don't seem to have one in your passport?"
"I don't have a visa for Iraq, I don't need a visa, I am just going to Kurdistan..." I said helplessly.
"You go back to Iran!" he told me.
My guts heaved and contracted. "But...I don't need a visa! I can get two weeks at the border, I am European!" I protested.  He looked at me. Then he stamped my passport with an exit stamp and gave it back. "You go Iraq" he said, and waved me away, with an air as if I was now entering at my own responsibility and was likely to end up being stuck between two countries. Timidly I walked on, filled with anxiety and desperately hoping that what I had read on websites was true, that the rumour about the law changed was untrue, and that the Kurdish officers would accept me with my EU citizenship as a visitor for 14 days. If even the Iranian border guards did not know of this possibility? Next I was pointed toward another small building that looked a bit like a luggage deposit, and here I was asked if  I spoke Kurdish. No. Arabic? A little. The man started talking to me in a hard rough Arabic dialect that seemed totally incomprehensible, I did not recognise a single word or anything that even sounded much like Arabic. I was being asked to open my suitcase, I knew that, but what else, I have not the slightest idea.

The officer seemed satisfied and now I was pointed towards another building, 200m away. I wandered  down the dusty path with my suitcase. Here I lined up again, among a crowd of people crowding in front of an open door. Nothing happened for a long time. I looked around.I seemed to have lost all fellow passengers from my Iranian bus,  and was alone among strangers. Again, the only person who was neither Iranian, Kurd nor Arab, and, naturally, the only woman traveling alone. I decided not to give this any further thought, as I had once been shocked about being left behind without my luggage at the Syrian border near Tripoli, only to discover that my bus had driven 100m down the road where it was waiting for me to finish my border procedures. I was sure, our bus driver was doing the same. 

A man in uniform came out of the building, took my passport and a few others and disappeared inside. I wondered if they would process our visas without even looking at us? I waited. Time passed. Everyone stood in the sun, nothing happened. Finally, I was told to come inside, sit down in a row with others along the walls. In front of us 5 windows, of which one or two were occupied. The officers seemed to be on break. They talked to each other but not to us. After what seemed like 30 minutes or more, the officer finally pulled out my passport from under a pile of others and called me to the window. "What is your name? ...What is your father's name? You want to go to Iraq?" "Yes." "What do you want to do in Iraq?"  I shrugged my shoulders. "Turist" , I said, trying to sound as convincing as possible, still feeling low rumbling in my guts.  He leafed through my passport, like the Iranian officer had done, forwards and backwards. Then he stopped, read some of the visas . I waited, nervously . At last, he reached across his desk and with a heavy, determined "clonk" put a stamp into my passport. I exhaled, my shoulders dropped. "Oh my God, thank you, I am in!" I thought . He handed me back my passport. The stamp had Arabic and English which said:"You have to report to directorate of Residence within 15 days". I picked up my suitcase and ran to the nearest toilet. My churning, trembling guts now exploded with the huge relief of having it made past the authorities after arriving at the border of Kurdistan, Iraq without a visa, not being interrogated as a suspected spy, smuggler, journalist and whatnot on either side. OOOOOF!!

I now started looking for my bus, realising, I did not even really remember what it looked like, what company it was...I was kicking myself inside for not even memorising the name on the bus, but I found it. It was standing, among other buses, down that dusty road from the border booth. And it was empty, noone was there. I wondered how after all this time, I could be the first one to have gotten through the controls? There were two three other people, from other buses. Somebody brought bottle of water from somewhere and I begged him to give me some. It seemed like another hour until one of them showed up, and more time, until they were all there. Just like on the Turkish side, we seemed to spend the major part of this trip just hanging around at the border, waiting, even though it was not even very crowded.

At last the bus started driving, and we entered a green, mountainous area, and then my phone lost contact with Iran, and I was, once again, without a sim card I could use .