Homeward bound

And speaking of airports, I arrived at Erbil International Airport this afternoon to catch my Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna. Security is extra tight, as you might imagine at any airport in Iraq, but everything went smoothly until I arrived at passport control. "You did not check in with the residency office," the passport man said accusingly, pointing at a stamp in my passport. Sure enough, it said: Contact residency office within 10 days. Apparenty, every visitor to the Kurdish-controlled north is supposed to register with officialdom but this was the first time I'd noticed that stamp. And, as I told the man, customs officials hadn't bothered to point it out when I first arrived. He still seemed angry, and I had visions of being forced to miss my fllight and go back to Erbil. Then, I pointed at "United States of America" on front of the passport, smiled and said, "I'm American. Americans are friends of the Kurds." He grinned and let me go. I'll leave you with one of my favorite photos of the trip - a beautiful, peaceful view of Iraq that Americans rarely see.

Up, up and away!

After years of isolation, Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq now has two modern airports with international flights - one in Erbil, the Kurdish capital, and the other here in Sulymeinyah near the Iranian border. This family of eight was waiting to board a Friday night flight to  Istanbul - this was  the first time anyone in the family had ever flown.  They were going to Turkey to seek medical treatment for the elderly woman in the wheelchair. All domestic flights are handled by Iraqi Airways, which is usually hours late because of a shortage of planes. 

Lunch on the road

Today we stopped in the city of Qoya (aka Koya) to see Ali S. Ali, a prominent local resident who's big in the oil/gas business (I'll be writing more about Kurdistan's oil wealth in the paper).

Mr. Ali insisted we stay for lunch, and took us to a hotel on a hill just outside of town.

I could have sworn the place was closed - not a car in the parking lot, not a door unlocked, not a light on - icity - but after a few minutes a man came out
and escorted us into a dark, completely empty restaurant. ("Is there food here?'' I whispered to Avan, my interpreter).

But lo and behold, the staff - and there actually was a good-size serving staff - hustled together a delicious lunch of salad, lamb and chicken, followed by watermelon and, of course, tea.

Afterwards, Mr. Ali insisted we all pose for a photo together, which we were glad to do.

Qoya/Koya, by the way, is the home of Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president. Then it was on to Sulymeinyah (aka Slemani, Sulaimany and many other  variations), a major Kurdish city near the Iranian border.

High-fashion in hejab

The Kurds are Sunni Muslims but they tend to be more liberal in matters of dress than Muslims in other parts of Iraq. In Erbil, the Kurdish capital, you see many women in western-style clothing including snug-fitting jeans and tops. But many women still wear the traditional hejab, or head scarf. I found this display at the Qasary Market, the big covered bazaar in the center of Erbil where most people do their shopping.

A wonderful bird is a pelican...

his beak can hold more than his belly can!

Monkey see...

Fun in Dohuk!

I'm here in Dohuk, a major city in northern Iraq, where there's a surprising amount to do, especially when the sun starts to set and the temperature drops. Lots of parents and kids head to either Dreamland, an old-fashioned amusement park with Ferris wheel and other rides; or to the Dohuk Zoo. I  found the zoo a bit depressing - it's old and the animals are kept in too-small cages. But it was wonderful seeing smiles on the face of Iraqi children, like this family getting their (and my) first look at a rare white pelican. They moved to Dohuk a few months ago to escape the violence in their hometown of Mosul.

Better than Publix?

Kurds don't have huge U.S.-style supermarkets, but they do have excellent  fruits and vegetables that haven't been bioengineered into tasteless indestructibility. Many Kurds buy their produce from little street-side stands like this one in Erbil, the Kurdish capital. My interpreter invited me to lunch at her home today and her mother put on a  feast - green beans, home-made fries, tomato and cuke salad, stuffed eggplant, stuffed grape leaves, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed peppers, stuffed squash  - needless to say, I tottered away from the table stuffed to the gills. Speaking of squash, the hotel buffet last night featured a delicious item simply labeled: Healthy Soup. It was yellow - could it have been squash?

Papers, papers everywhere, but not a word to read

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Iraq has had a fairly  free press, though many of the myriad newspapers are associated with one political party or another. Papers from Baghdad are delivered daily to the Kurdish capital of Erbil, and literally sold on the street, as shown here.

Unfortunately, they're all in Arabic or Kurdish. Here's a business tip for someone - now that Austrian Airlines is flying into Kurdistan so often, why not bring in some copies of the International Herald Tribune? I'd gladly pay a few dollars to read an English-language paper, and I'm sure they'd be popular with other Western ex-pats living and working here.

Meet Sami

As every foreign correspondent knows, llife is a lot easier if you have a good interpreter and driver.  I've found an excellent team in driver Sami, shown here, and Avan, a young Kurdish engineer who honed her English by working for the UN and a big American contractor after Saddam Hussein's  regime fell in 2003

Sami, who lives in a mixed Christian-Muslim village outside Erbil, agreed to pose in front of this daunting stone staircase that leads to an ancient tomb atop the mountain. Christians say a revered Christian religious figure was buried there centuries ago; Muslims say the tomb contains a revered Muslim figure! Whatever the case, I wasn't about to spend an hour in the heat climbing up.

Avan didn't want to photographed. Like many Iraqis, even those in the safe, Kurdish-controlled north, she fears being targetted by terrorists who consider anyone who works with Americans to be consorting with the enemy.

Fill 'er up

I have yet to see a regular gas station here - it seems that most people buy from roadside vendors like this poor fellow trying to make a dinar and grab a bit of shade in 109 degree heat. It's definitely convenient but the downside is that the gas is often adulterated with water or kerosene.

My driver, Sami, always does a simple test - he sticks his pinkie into the container and if it (the finger) turns white for a minute, he knows the gas is good. But if his finger feels oily, he knows the gas has been mixed with something, and so he looks elsewhere.

The highest quality gas sold here is from Turkey can costs about 21,000 dinars - one U.S. dollar equals 1,255 dinars so you do the math - for 20 litres (a litre is about a quart.) 

Willkommen to Iraq

After two and a half years, I'm back in Iraq. This is my sixth trip here since 2000 but the first by air, not car. The Kurdish-controlled north is now stable enough that Austrian Airlines has four flights a week from Vienna to Erbil, the Kurdish capital. Mercifully for us white-knuckle flyers, Austrian's flights don't stop in Baghdad, where pilots have to make those stomach-churning corkscrew landings to avoid rocket attacks, but instead glide directly into Erbil to the soothing strains of Strauss waltzes.

The Airbus was almost full, with the usual war-zone assortment of journalists, aid workers, contractors, shadowy looking figures and locals, including Nasren Mahmood, a young Iraqi woman who has been studying in Paris since 1999. After getting her luggage, she still faced a six-hour cab drive to her home near the Iranian border. "I'm nervous,'' she acknowledged - both about the taxi ride and what she would find in a country so radically altered from the time she left.