25th Blog



On Friday, May 7, three AUIS students accompanied us to an exhibition of Iranian life, brought to Sulaimani from Iran. One of the students speaks fluent Farsi, so could translate whenever we were trying to communicate with Iranians. (The border with Iran is less than two hours from here by car, so the cross-border traffic between the two countries is quite heavy.) Lots of stuff for sale, everything from books and DVDs to head scarves for women to knick knacks for one’s home.







The exhibition was a fascinating contrast between official hard line stances by the Iranian government, and the reality in Iran. On one hand, one young lady, in full head and body covering, let it be known that she wanted the Reform party to win in June of 2009, and that she demonstrated when they were robbed of the election. The Iranian consul to Suli was there and invited us to come to Iran. All very friendly. On the other hand there was an entire display set up by the Hezbullah, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite group in southern Lebanon, with lots of videos of gruesome war scenes of Israeli-caused atrocities in attacks on Lebanon. They cannot mention Israel without mentioning the US. There were vendors selling, in addition to lots of editions of the works of Ayatollah Khomeini, copies of anti-American, anti-Jewish books.

One fellow had a volume, all in Farsi unfortunately, of the documents found in the American Embassy at the time of its capture. Once people knew that we are Americans, most went to great lengths to talk about how we as people could be friends, but this book seller seemed to take a perverse pleasure in showing me this book, a sort of living proof of Iranian suspicions about America’s bad intentions toward Iran. Another vendor had copies of a collection, in English, of Henry Ford's articles from his own newspaper called the Dearborn Independent. The title of the book: The International Jew (The World's Foremost Problem).



I had long read that Ford was anti-Semitic, but this is the first time I actually read what he thought. He makes constant reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Jewish document forged in Russia early in the 20th century, and he even acknowledges that the book may be a forgery, but he says that it doesn’t really matter that it’s a forgery because the facts of the day are that the Jews are doing the very things that the Protocols say they are going to do. Then he goes on to quote the Protocols throughout his articles. Chapter titles like “How the Jews Use Power,” “Jewish Influence in American Politics,” “Bolshevism and Zionism,” etc. The book was edited in Iran and published by the Department of Translation and Publication, Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, in 1997. On reading the book, I can make two observations: it’s no wonder that Ford liked Hitler; it’s no wonder that Israelis don’t trust Iranians (or other people of the Middle East who still peddle the Protocols).

After visiting the exhibition, we went to a nearby restaurant for iced fruit drinks and conversation with the AUIS students and then walked with them along Salim Street, the main east-west street in town, until they turned off to the house where they live. We walked on to our apartment, a bit tired from being on our feet most of the afternoon.

24th Blog

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Dear Readers,

You will recall that in our last blog, we posted a story about a young man named Zmnako, a student at AUIS. Until a few months ago he was presumed dead in the gas attack on Halabja in 1988. Since writing, I have talked with him, and learned that on the day of the gas attack he was three months old and was left behind in the family’s home in Halabja. He was not discovered until two full days after the attack when an Iranian soldier found him and placed him with a family in Iran where he grew up. (See last blog for details.) He is a wonderful, gentle, young man who enjoys being a student at AUIS. See below for a picture of him kneeling next to the Halabja cemetery memorial marker that bears his name.




Since posting the last blog, we went with a group of faculty to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government, for a two day weekend trip. It takes about three hours to get to Erbil, by way of a mountainous road, one section of which has very sharp switchback curves as the road snakes up and down the side of the mountain. (Oh! for a motorcycle in moments like that.) Erbil is larger than Sulaimani, and has a larger expat community. They in turn can support Western stores and restaurants that we lack around here. Erbil also has a traditional bazaar like Suli’s, but also has a large modern mall, complete with huge grocery store – the closest thing to a Super Walmart we have seen in this part of the world. There is also a combination bakery, delicatessen, and restaurant called Bakery N’More that stocks beef salami, sliced turkey, good cheese, and other foods that we cannot get around here. We bought some food, but not too much as we cannot use a large amount in the next month.

Erbil is widely known in the region as being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It is mentioned in some of the records of ancient Mesopotamian empires. There is a large circular flat top hill that rises perhaps 300 feet from the level plain that is now the modern city of Erbil, and on top of the hill successive generations have built fortifications, called a citadel. The citadel was actually occupied until a few years ago, and now is undergoing significant renovation. See next photos of the citadel from below. If you ever come this way, you must check out the rug museum in the citadel. While there we met a group of 15 brave American women who were involved in a tour of the region. Each had had to convince husbands and/or family that travel to this part of Iraq is safe. They were loving the experience.





While in Erbil we went to the home of Rawa, one of Carl’s students from the fall term. In this home we met his lovely family: Mohammed, father, Shadia, mother, and Ramyar, Baso and Basya, brothers and sister. The latter two are delightful and energetic 13 year old twins. Mohammed has earned a Ph.D. and is the head of the physics education program at a university in Erbil, and Shadia is an elementary school teacher. They are in many ways the new face of Kurdistan: well educated and professional, but still committed to the family values of the Kurdish people. In traditional Kurdish style, we sat around a tablecloth that had been spread on the floor. The food was delicious, as usual. See photos below.





When Rawa picked us up at the hotel he was driving a late model Chrysler 300, and after being crunched up in Toyota Corollas for much of our local transportation, we were delighted to ride in an American car that felt almost limousine-like in its size and comfort. The car, it turns out, belongs to his older brother Ramyar who works for the American computer equipment maker Sysco which has an office in Erbil. That we liked it is a sign that perhaps we really should be coming home. Sorry, no pictures of the car.

We are now hunkered down for the last 5 weeks of classes, plus finals week. If all goes according to plan, we should be back in the US by the evening of June 11. This has been a long semester so it’s difficult not to wish away this last month. I’m sure we will end up doing some exciting things before we leave, we are just not sure what that is at the moment.

Thanks for reading. Sorry that we are running out of new experiences. If you are curious about an aspect of life we have not covered, feel free to write to carl.caldwell@auis.org, and we’ll see what we can do to get information.

23rd Blog

April 18, 2010

Since we last wrote, we have had two very different experiences. We saw our first Iraqi sporting event when AUI-S’ women’s basketball team played a team from a school from Karbala in southern Iraq, and the second was a visit to the town of Halabja last week-end. These two experiences couldn’t have been more different.

First, let me tell you a bit about the basketball game. One of the more important facts to remember is that almost all of these girls had never held a basketball or played the game until two years ago. Another important fact to remember is the team they were playing comes from a university that trains physical education teachers. But I cannot tell this short story without reminding you that we come from Indiana, the basketball state of the US. That all being said, let me say this game was the most entertaining game we have ever watched. There were times when it appeared to be more of a comedy than a sporting event because none of the players was particularly skilled at the basics of basketball. The score at half time was 10 to 8, with the opposing team on top, and most of the points earned from the foul line. The women from the other team were extremely physical and the officials didn’t always call blatant fouls. The stands held some extremely exuberant and loud fans who provided lots of cheers. Our women persevered and won the game in the end and there was great celebration including a fan party held for the women back on our campus. But the game had great symbolic value: in a part of the world that still struggles with according women full participation in society, here were 10 women on a basketball floor, playing their hearts out in front of cheering fans, fully valued for who they are. See picture below of our team in the huddle.



Where the basketball game was just good fun, the visit to Halabja was a very sobering experience. This is the city on which Saddam’s air force dropped hundreds of poison gas bombs on March 16, 1988, killing over 5,000 people and leaving many more with life-time injuries. At the time of the gas attacks the city of Halabja was actually in the control of the Iranians (this being in the time of the eight year Iran-Iraq war), so the first persons on the scene were Iranian soldiers. The number of dead was so large that the soldiers could do no more than to put the bodies into hastily dug mass graves in the city’s cemetery. See two photos below. The first is of one of the monuments on top of a mass grave containing 1,500 bodies. The second of a series of tombstones on which are inscribed family names. The stones are in place only to memorialize the families; no one knows in which mass grave the bodies are now buried.






This gas attack has always been a tragedy to us, but it is so much more real knowing some of our students’ families actually lived through this event. Events on the ground on that fateful day were so arbitrary. In the photo below this paragraph you will see three students standing with us; all are from Halabja. The family of one of the students fled in one direction and were saved because of the wind carried the gas away from them. The family of another of the students also fled, but in the wrong direction. The wind blew the gas toward them and they died.



One more Halabja story: in the museum dedicated to the victims of the gassing of Halabja, the names of all of the victims are etched in the glass walls of the museum. One name is Zmnako, noted in the photo below with green tape around it. Zmnako was an infant at the time of the attack, and in the chaos that followed, was separated from his mother. All had thought that he had been killed and his body put into a mass grave, so his name was placed on the wall. Unbeknownst to people in Halabja, he had been rescued by people who assumed his family was dead. He was placed into the home of an Iranian Kurdish family who adopted him. He grew up there and after the death of his adoptive mother, learned something of his background in Halabja. The good end of this story: after doing some research, he discovered that his birth mother is still living and as of a few months ago he has been reunited with her. The green tape around his name says he is alive, not dead. We can only imagine the disbelief and joy of his family in Halabja on being re-united with him. He is now a student at AUI-S.



Perhaps we are reading our students incorrectly, but our sense is that where they could be so bitter, there appears to be a willingness to move on and be part of a constructive future. We can only hope that their aspirations bear fruit in the future. The privilege of knowing them has certainly enriched our lives.

As always, thanks for reading. Feel free to send comments to our AUI-S email accounts: carl.caldwell@auis.org; carolyn.caldwell@auis.org.

Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010

22nd Blog.

After a fairly routine week of classes, on Friday, April 2, we joined four other faculty members in a day-trip to a mountainous area south of town called Qaradagh. Near this village, high on the side of a sheer face of rock, is an Assyrian era (7th c. BC) carving of a victorious king with hammer in hand and two vanquished foes at this feet. The climb to this area is a challenge, and in lawsuit-happy America would probably be declared off-limits for fear of someone falling and filing a liability suit. But the climb was worth it. The carving is imposing, if somewhat difficult to make out.



As interesting as the sculpture is, even more interesting is how on pleasant weekend days, Kurdish folks head to the hills with automobile trunks and truck beds full of all of the equipment necessary to fix whole meals. Wherever the land levels to a plateau, folks drive off the road, spread out blankets, and spend the day. Sometimes large groups gather, bring a small generator and sound system, and have a picnic accompanied by the dance music that everyone seems to enjoy. It was not unusual to see groups of people lined up to dance, and of course the beautiful Kurdish clothing was everywhere.

On two occasions we stopped to take in the sights, and on both occasions were asked by nearby families if we would like some tea – the very strong, heavily sweetened, variety that is popular here. On the second of these occasions we were asked to sit with an extended family, perhaps 15 people over at least three generations. Fortunately one member of the family spoke good English and so there could be some genuine conversation. It turns out that the patriarch of the family is in his late 60s, is from the nearby village, and has been involved since the late 1950s with the peshmerga – the freedom fighters who were such a thorn in the side of Saddam Hussein. The old man said two things: we thank you Americans for helping us to be free of Saddam; if you support Israel to be a state, why can’t you support a state for Kurds? Somehow we moved beyond the tension implied in the question and simply enjoyed the children. As the sole female of AUIS faculty, Carolyn was approached by the women in the group who wanted pictures taken with her. One of the grandmothers entrusted me with a 5 month old baby. See pictures below.







During the time we talked and drank tea with the family we could look down the hill to a large lake called Darbandikhan, the east side of which, we were told, is Iran. That’s how close we were to Iran.





As we made our way from Qaradagh to the lake we went past a new village that was built on top of an older village that had been gassed and destroyed by Saddam. A truly sad grave yard alongside the road contained the remains of whole families that died from the results of poison gas. Our driver indicated that 122 people in the village died. See next photo.



I (Carl) had thought that after returning to the US and getting reacquainted with our family, I might organize a tour of this area for some hardy and adventurous Americans. But I tell you that all-day travel around here continues to be a challenge. There simply are no public toilets anywhere, and restaurants as we know them are few outside of the larger towns. In spite of the lack of facilities, northern Iraq continues to be a fascinating place to live, and we continue to learn from new experiences each day.

Even as we write this blog, we have learned of the death of Robert Schleiger, one of Carolyn’s favorite uncles who lived in Loveland, CO. He battled cancer valiantly for the past year or so. Fortunately Carolyn was able to talk with him last week, before he slipped into a coma, and she could say her good-bye to him. This is the second of our beloved relatives to die this year while we are away from home. My Aunt Mary Sneed died earlier this year in Charleston, WV. Like Carolyn and her uncle, I was able to talk with her while she was still conscious, about a week before she passed away. We have had to grieve from afar.

On this Easter Sunday, we wish for all of you a meaningful day of rest and reflection on the meaning of resurrection.

21st Blog

The celebration of Nawroz has come to an end, the visit with my dad, Glenn, and his wife, Berny, is complete and was very good (see above picture of them standing in front of our apartment building,) our spring vacation is almost over, and we are heading into the final stretch of classes before we come home. We have eleven more weeks and it hardly seems possible we are so close to the end of our stay here.

Dad and Berny arrived safely but two days late after much trouble along the way. Berny’s luggage was lost and never found but she was a real trooper making do with things I loaned her along with an outfit that she bought in the bazaar. She said she still had a wonderful time and they both especially enjoyed the Nawroz celebration and the trips to the bazaar. (See picture of us having tea at the bazaar)


We couldn’t have picked a better time for Dad and Berny to visit.


The weather was sunny and we were able to take them to the mountains twice. The second of the mountain trips was very special because one of our students, Zryan, joined us and was able to talk with Dad and Berny in English and answer any question they had about the culture or his personal plans when he gets out of the University. His mother had made a wonderful picnic lunch of dolma (stew of lamb and stuffed vegetables) for us. You can see it in this picture.


It was delicious and I will take the recipe back home to fix for our family. See picture of our picnic as we ate in a pull-off area along one of the mountain roads.


At the street celebration of Nawroz, Berny said she felt as if she were walking with royalty because the locals kept asking us to have their picture made with them. We can only assume it impressed them greatly that we Americans had chosen to dress in local Kurdish dress for the occasion.




The evening was cool so the large bonfires along the street were a natural gathering place for people to stop and warm the hands. See picture of my dad watching me warm my hands by the fire.

Fireworks would erupt periodically and Kurdish dancing was available all along the way. At one point, we were standing there watching the women in one circle dance and the men in another circle dance when a Kurdish man came up to me and pulled me into the men’s circle. Carl joined me and we laughed and danced along with our local friends. I love the traditional dance. It is very rhythmic and anyone can join in the circle at anytime. (Even Carl can manage the simple two-step dance.) The leader always carries a scarf or beads and spins them in the air as the participants hold hands, step in unison and lift their shoulders up and down to the music. I felt very honored that I was invited to join the men’s circle.

Tonight we celebrated the end of the spring break with a party held by some students for faculty. As you can see below, almost everyone was dressed in beautiful Kurdish party dress and there was much dancing again. Carl and I are especially grateful to Shad and Kurdistan (first picture below,) the young people who took us to the bazaar and helped us negotiate the purchase of cloth and fitting by a tailor to have our outfits made. We continue to be so grateful for all we are experiencing and learning about this wonderful culture.

20th Blog

20th blog. March 17, 2010

As we posted our last blog, the citizens of Iraq were about to go to the polls in the second parliamentary election since the creation of the post-Saddam constitution. When we wrote, we did not have clue as how the polling process would take place. Would it be safe? Would it be violent?

As it turned out, the election was safe in most parts of the country. Unfortunately there were around 25 deaths in Baghdad, and while any death is one too many, the country was for the most part quiet. We understand from the press that about 65% of eligible Iraqis voted overall, and that about 75% of persons in the Kurdistan Regional Government area (where we live) voted.

On election day, we walked to a nearby hotel to pick up a guest of the university and in the process walked by a school that had been converted into a polling station. Large concrete barriers had been set up on either end of the street that passed in front of the school, so as to keep auto and truck traffic away from pedestrians walking to the school. Although there were soldiers guarding the street, they said nothing to us about passing in front of the polling station even though we clearly were not local and would not be voting.

We were amazed to see that whole families turned out, often three generations, with children in tow. Many were dressed in their finest Kurdish clothing, as if they were dressed to go to a party. One particularly touching scene was of a boy too young to vote, perhaps 12 or 13, helping an elderly relative up the steps that led to the school. The scene was one more reminder of the power of family, and of urgency that even, maybe particularly, the elder folks felt to exercise this right, given all the deprivations they have been through in their lives.

As we polled our students, they too voted in large numbers. For all but the oldest students, this was their first election. By our unscientific sampling, we would estimate that 75% of our students voted. All seemed to be proud of their deeply stained fingers, made that way by dipping a finger into stain after voting, thus discouraging people from going to a nearby place to vote a second time. I don’t know what the stain is, but even now, 9 days after the election, it is still in evidence on people’s fingers.

We do not yet know the outcome of the election, and even if we did, we suspect that it would take more than one blog message to explain the complexities of just the Kurdish part of the electoral process, much less the rest of Iraq.

We took no pictures that day, but we include below four excellent photos taken by one of the AUIS English language instructors who has a phenomenal eye for what the camera can do. (About the time I think I am getting half way decent with a camera, I see his photos and know I have a long way to go.) This young man is Chris de Bruyn, and you can see more of his work at this website:
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/brownbearphotography/. He submitted some of them to BBC news that included the photos on their website. Not a shabby place to have your photos made available, eh?

The only disconcerting part of election day occurred in the evening, after the polls closed, when groups of people anticipating victory for their candidates fired their guns into the air. I’m not talking about a casual shot or two. Rather, there was an extended period of maybe 30 minutes when we heard the frequent rat-tat-tat of machine guns and automatic rifles. The shooters were not aiming at anyone, just shooting into the air. But bullets have to return to earth and we were told that around 15 people were admitted to emergency rooms with wounds. No one, thankfully, was killed. One errant AK-47 bullet returned to the earth in the middle of the university where it passed through the sheet metal roof of one of the faculty offices. It hit the tile floor with enough force to actually break the tile and penetrate into the floor. Fortunately the school was closed, and no one was hurt. See photo below of the bullet.

As I write and post this blog message, we are awaiting the arrival of Carolyn’s father, Glenn Falls, and his wife, Berny Berquist Falls. They are supposed to arrive on the 18th and will be with us for a week. This weekend is the beginning of a major celebration in this part of the world, namely Kurdish Iraq and Turkey, and most of Iran. The holiday, called Nawroz, predates the coming of Islam to this part of the world in the 7th and 8th centuries, and probably is a tradition that came from Zoroastrianism, the predominant religion in this area before Islam. Nawroz falls on the vernal equinox signaling the beginning of spring. School is dismissed for all of next week, and we intend to use our time to show Glenn and Berny around this part of the world that we have made our home since last September. It should be great fun. In our next blog we can post some pictures of their time with us.

We thank you for reading this blog and wish all of you the very best as you too celebrate the coming of spring.

Nineteenth Blog

Nineteenth Blog, March 7, 2010
In our last blog we told you about the dust storm that had blown through this area a couple of days before we wrote. We made the ill-advised statement that what we need now is a good rain storm to wash away the dirt that settled on every horizontal surface. What we had in mind was an Indiana thunderstorm that would come in, rain hard for an hour or so, and then move on. What we got, instead, was about five days of unrelenting rain, sometimes hard, sometimes soft, but always present. Sure enough, this rain washed down the dirt deposited in the storm, but it also made getting about the campus a wet mess by turning the sidewalks that link our offices and classrooms in to small lakes and the roads that lead up to our apartment complex into muddy pathways. The rain finally stopped on Thursday, March 4, and for the past two days, we have had lots of sun. As we talked with students about the weather, expressing frustration with the rain, we learned that all were grateful for the rain as it fills the reservoirs that provide water to this region in the hot and mostly rainless summer months.

The temperatures are warming, and when the warm temperatures are combined with the moisture the net effect is green. We see the hillsides that were golden brown when we arrived in September are beginning to turn green. Today as we walked the two miles to the bazaar, we observed some flowering trees beginning to form buds. We even saw a person in the bazaar who was selling daffodils. So spring is on its way. We’ll tell you more as we know more.

Based on observing CNN and BBC television, it would appear that few Western media have carried stories about the upcoming parliamentary election in Iraq. This election will take place later today, Sunday, March 7. Given our plans for posting this blog, we will not know outcomes by the time of the posting but we want to give you some impressions.

Unlike the campaigning process in the US, in which campaigns seem to go on forever, the campaign process in Iraq is short and tightly managed. No one was allowed to campaign openly until about three weeks ago, at which time this place burst forth in a kind of avid grass-roots campaigning process that we never see in the U.S. Various political parties put up flags across roadways and on buildings, people plastered campaign posters on their cars and trucks, and groups of supporters of one party or another conducted traffic-slowing parades on the main roads. Drivers of cars honked their horns in a short-long-short-short-long cadence of horn blasts pattern hour after hour. People sat on hoods of cars, or hung out of car windows waving flags. Children and adults alike rode standing upright in the backs of pickup trucks, waving flags and shouting. The climax of the campaign came late Friday evening when there were massive parades, including lighted floats, and fireworks displays. After Friday’s climax, the campaigning ended as suddenly as it began. On Saturday, the day before the election, they declared a moratorium on campaigning, so aside from the ubiquitous flags and posters stuck on every vertical surface and hung on ropes across all major streets, it was all very quiet. Shortly the polls will open and the voting will take place.

Regardless of the party one wants to see win in this area, the campaign process says a great deal about how the folks of this region have taken to the electoral process. A few of the more cynical of our students say that elections do no good, i.e., they keep returning the same politicians to power, but most disagree. But anyone who has lived through this campaign season can only conclude that there is a great deal of grassroots involvement in who wins and who loses. Their exuberance is a joy to behold, and a kind of living proof that in an important way people enjoy the most elemental aspect of democracy: having a say in who will lead. This is, after all, only the second parliamentary election since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and there continue to be many difficult issues to sort out both nationally and regionally. But our experience here and what we learn from the several reports from other parts of the country suggest that Iraqis have rejected various outside influences in charting the course for their own future, and they very much want an Iraqi solution to Iraqi problems. With you, we look forward to reading the outcome of the elections in a few days.

We have placed below several photos of the election campaign activity, and apologize that we may not have photos of every political party in the race. The photos we took were the result not of design, but of the vagaries of when we happened to be out, and whether we had the camera at a given moment. We intend no favoritism in the selection of photos.

We continue to be healthy and to be able to get around town safely – except for dodging the occasional car or bus driver who appears to be playing the game of “let’s see how close we can get to the pedestrian without actually hitting him.” We will begin the fourth week of the spring term this week and are a little over three months from the end of our time here. We thank you for your continuing reading of our blog.