Sweets

I may have mentioned some of the customs here in Iraq, some of which are representative of the Middle East, and I apologize if I repeat myself. First off people bring you food. They bring you food if you are sick, they bring you food if you have a baby, get a new place to live, or if someone dies. When you return the dish you are supposed to put a little something in it. Either cook something in return, or put fruit or sweets in the bowl. You always take your shoes off when you enter someones house. To not do so is a big insult. When somebody dies you visit at the mosque for three days. Then after forty days the family goes to the cemetery. After that it is an annual tradition. If you get a new position, get engaged, get married, have a baby or have some good news you bring sweets. One of our legal coordinators today submitted the topic for his thesis and it was accepted. To share his good news and celebrate he brought sweets fresh out of the oven from Al Hamdany. Al Hamdany is originally a shop from Baghdad, but they have a branch here in Suly. Can I tell you how happy I am for that man. I am happy down to the ooey gooey honey that is dripping on my fingers. They wrap mahalabia, which is an amazing pudding, in pastry layered in honey and then they bake it and sprinkle powdered sugar (which melts into the honey) and pistachio on top. He brought them straight out of the oven and it was better then any crispy creme donut I ever had, even the ones straight from the oven.

The hills are alive

When I arrived in Iraq in August last year it was a barren desert. Everything was brown and it was so dry.  Today I looked out the kitchen window and the mountains were lush and green. It almost looked like Ireland.

Some days

Some days this job is rough. Some days I am confronted with a very near and devastating past. I had to edit a chapter today that was about the abuse the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam's regime. It outlined torture, rape, enforced disappearance, and genocide. It is hard to be an objective editor and ask for citation sources when the sentence is describing the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Marshlands in the South. People hid out there after the uprising in the 90's and so Saddam had them drained. An entire generations livelihood wiped out. Those who didn't die had to move. Unfortunately, that is only one example. My hope is that this book will shed some light on the past.

Iqama

There is an interesting divide between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. For example, in order to go to Baghdad you must have a visa. If you are an American or British citizen you do not need a visa to go to the Kurdish region. While living in Sulaimaniya you have to have a residency card, or iqama, that is issued by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Americans have ten days to stay in Iraq before they have to get the residency card. Six months ago, I went to the Directorate of Residency to get my residency card. Thankfully I was with a staff member who understood the process and spoke Kurdish because we would go to one room and get a form, then go to another room give the form, get another form and go to another room to give the form and give blood and get another form. Finally you end up in a room that looks kind of like the DMV, but there are no numbers or any sense of order. People would jump up and force themselves in front of the government employees. It was chaos. Let me back up and touch on that giving blood thing. They test for HIV. Having seen some of the living conditions here, let me tell you, the thought of having a blood test made me faint before they even took blood. Thankfully, it ended up being a very clean and quick process.

This time when I went we walked in and there was a machine that gave you a number. There were fewer rooms to run around and get forms. I had my blood test and it was quick. My staff member was so sweet because after the test he told me to sit down. He was just standing there and finally I asked why he was just standing there and he told me to rest. I laughed and said are you going to give me a cookie, I'm ok. Then we went to the DMV room and waited for our number to be called. It was civilized. I was amazed. Progress has come to the Directorate of Residency. Plus my residency card is good until the end of next year.

On a side note, one of our new project directors is over 50. When she went to get her card she did not have to do a blood test. Apparently women of a certain age just aren't doing certain things in Kurdistan.

Ana nebateya

I have no idea if that is spelled correctly, but that is what I say in Arabic when people offer me meat. I am a vegetable eater. Every time I tell someone I am a vegetarian they ask, "In Iraq-how's that working for you?" Quite well actually, except for the occasions when people try to force meat on me. I was worried that over the winter here the fruit and veg would get bad, but it wasn't too rough. Tomatos weren't quite as tasty, but there was plenty of stuff to eat. Now spring has sprung and tomatos are yummy again. Plus there are strange things popping up in the market. I'll have to take a picture and show you. I found something that has a stalk like rhubarb, but is kind of furry and has a top that makes it look like a sea anemone. I asked the guy at the market if I could have one so I could take it to work tomorrow and have someone identify it. Today I was trying to clean out the refrigerator and so I made a vegetable crumble. I threw a little extra garlic in (I mean come on-one clove) some mushrooms that were languishing in the crisper along with the onion, zucchini and tomatos and OMG is it good. Even with our oven that has no temperature control and started to burn the top before I could turn it down it is good. I made a swiss cheese omelet (cheese courtesy of the store in Erbil) with a side of dijon mustard and had a very satisfying meal.

I suggest you go clean out your fridge.

My excuse

"UN News Centre: You speak Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish. Have you been able to add Arabic to that list?
Ad Melkert: I must frankly say that I made an effort in the beginning, in any case to be able to start to read a bit of Arabic as you really feel like you’re walking blind if you don’t read the script – so I embarked on a very ambitious trek. But I soon had to give it up because so many things are on my plate there. You know, the strange thing of working in a place where you don’t have many other things to do, where your family and friends are not present, is that contrary to what you initially think – “Now I finally have time to read this book or take this language course” – you’re working and working and working and it never stops."

Full interview here.

'Nough said.

Impact

One of the challenges of doing what I do, besides the heat, dust, language barrier, and lack of good cheese, is justifying doing what I do. Occasionally I will hear stories, but they are usually small snippets of what people think. Today, I had three Sheikhs, who are clerics, from Mosul thank me. The Sheikhs from Mosul had been invited to go to a meeting with Ministry people in Baghdad and they insisted that they bring representatives of all the different ethnicities  in Mosul. They brought Sunni, Shia, Yazidi, Shaback, Turkeman and Christian Sheikhs. They were telling the people that they met at the Ministry that they learned from us how to be inclusive and everyone needs to be included in the peace process. I was trying to express my gratitude to him for doing the work that he is doing, but he said that it is his responsibility because he is Iraqi. He said for me to come and invest so much in their country meant even more. I'll admit that at that point I got a little choked up. Then another one of the Sheikhs said that they expected to make connections at the conference we held in February, but the connections started immediately when they arrived at the hotel with women who work at an NGO and clerics from Basrah and Baghdad. He said that they continue to talk and meet with each other and that meant a lot to him. He pointed out that this kind of communication and connection is an outcome and result of the conference.

He also told the story of how the Mosul delegation of Sheikhs made it to our conference. He said that there was a curfew in Mosul and that they tried to cross the Tigris to the other side of Mosul and after three hours of waiting they were denied. It is important to understand that Mosul is divided by the Tigris River and that one side is occupied by the police and the other by the army. They made many phone calls and finally a police car and an army vehicle picked them up and drove them out of town. He sort of laughed about it, but said it must have looked very bad for a group of Sheikhs to be in the police and army car. It took them ten hours to travel what normally would take 45 minutes. He said they had given their word that they would be at our event and he meant to keep their word.


I forgot to mention that while the Sheikhs were in Baghdad their hotel was bombed, thankfully no one was hurt, and they vowed to work even harder for peace. It is working with people like this that makes my work here worthwhile. It makes days like today, where the dust is so fine and dense that I can't even breath, exceptional.