“The Longest Day” (Part 1) – The Iraq to Istanbul Diaries

The first day of this trip we had planned to cross into Turkey from Iraq over land. What transpires is one of the longest and most exhausting days of travel in my life. Lucky for me I had my notebook to record the whole ridiculous charade.

Chapter 1: Into the Blue

ERBIL, December 16, 2010

8:45am: Morning comes and we leave our compound on the outskirts of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and greet a crisp morning pregnant with the promise of adventure. Before we left I had stashed all my conference gear in a drawer back at the villa, so as not to burden myself with silly things like collared shirts and computers. We set a good pace from these modern inventions, striding down a completely empty four-lane highway surrounded by the dust and rubble that forms a ubiquitous backdrop to Erbil’s dramatic construction boom.

9:00: We hail a cab after a brisk, 15-minute walk in the bracing cool air of the northern Iraqi winter morning. The sky is blue and guiltless. Destination? Zakho Garage, where our chariot waits, idling, to take us across the rugged landscape of Iraqi Kurdistan.

9:15: We’re on the next cab leaving Erbil for the border, and it only cost 15,000 Iraqi Dinar (about 12USD) each. We leave and there are three passengers in a car that seats four. Maybe the demand for border shuttles is down today.

10:00: After a 45-minute exploration of the outermost reaches of the Erbillian universe, we find the passenger #4. So much for a comfortable ride to the border in three-passenger luxury and style. We pick this fellow up at an unmarked compound on the side of the road. The company is unsurprisingly a Turkish one. Zozik, actually, which supplies the overpriced cafeteria food at our university. Having secured his ride to the border, passenger #4, whose name we learn is Murat, shuffles hurriedly back to the barracks to pick up his baggage: a tiny blue canvas bag in which you could barely fit more than a pillow. Chris offers him the middle seat and Murat’s wide body seems to take up more room than we ever thought possible.

10:02: A foul smell emanates from this new passenger. This is not the normal B.O. that Chris and I have come to know, love, and will cultivate in the coming days. This is something far more sinister: it smells like this man has worked and slept in the same clothes for months. Shit, sweat, blood, sleep. My record is 15 days without showering, but my nose tells me Murat has treated this mark like Usain Bolt.

He immediately proceeds to call someone on the phone and starts speaking loudly in Turkish.

10:17: We get on the highway – finally – and then immediately stop for gas. “We’ve enrolled in a free patience class!” Chris exclaims gleefully. I contemplate the fine line between genius and insanity.

10:34: When going on a long drive in the Middle East it is important to gauge the quality of the driver as soon as possible. Does he look like he could get you through checkpoints without any trouble? Does he look like he’ll try to double the agreed-upon price halfway down a middle-of-nowhere highway? It was hard to tell any of this about our driver as we u-turned our way around Erbil, but it seems like he is a consummate professional. Not the reckless, turn-the-roads-of-Iraqi-Kurdistan-into-a-three-hour-Space-Mountain-ride kind of driver, but that practical, I’ve-done-this-all-before type. Pleased with this reality, we settle in for the first leg of our journey.

One person who does not seem too happy about this is the elderly village woman in the front. She didn’t seem to mind the earlier detour in that war-weary, life-is-a-test-of-patience kind of way. But now that we’re on the open road, she is visibly agitated with our driver’s technique. She is constantly adjusting her threadbare black cloth head covering and appealing to God every time the driver does something particularly reckless. “Yah allah” she says with a sigh, as she wipes her nose with a pink dishcloth. Then, with a snort, she covers her face with it using short, calloused hands.

10:58: The driver cracks his window as if magically hearing me cry out for a breath of cold, fresh salvation from the ripe smell of Murat. His is a smell that one does not get used to. Our driver then lights a cigarette. Driver’s prerogative. Whatever.

We reach the first checkpoint and the driver tells the Kurdish patrolman we’re Europeans. We get through without trouble and soon reach a small village with a big sign over the main street.

Dohuk          Akre
Zakho           Qandil
<—–            —–>

Taking a right turn would be a first class ticket to the Qandil Mountains, or better known as the rugged lawless region governed by the Parti Karkerani Kurdistan (PKK or Kurdistan Workers’ Party). The PKK is a Turkish-Kurdish separatist group that fights the Turkish government for Kurdish rights in Turkey. More on this later, but if you’re interested in learning more now see their Wikipedia page. Tempting a suggestion as it may be, we bear left instead.

11:30: Call our driver Ismail. Seriously, that’s his name.

 

Chris and the Toshreeb

 

11:33: Ismail pulls off the road to stop at one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s famous roadside restaurants. One along the way that looks just like this but is closer to the Kurdish city Koysenjaq is famous for mastaw, which is a fresh yogurt drink served in a bowl which you try to ladle into your mouth with an oversized spoon. It’s pretty good, so I mention it, foolishly forgetting the custom here of passengers buying lunch for their drivers. At the mere mention of food, Ismail slips inside and reserves us a table to claim his free meal.

It turns out for the best anyway, not just because we were hungry but also this place is famous for something far more delicious: toshreeb. Toshreeb is a stew of slow-cooked lamb, whole onions, tomatoes and peppers on top of a pile of bread that has basically been pre-dipped in the soup. All of this is packed into an enormous bowl and is impossible to finish. You couldn’t do it. No way.

Ismail seems to be friends with the proprietor and calls him over. After conferring with him for a second, Ismail tells with a huge grin that we’re in for a very special treat. As he says these words, a waiter comes to the table with a small bowl of oily reddish-tinted liquid and proceeds to dump most of its contents in our toshreeb. Doesn’t Ismail want some of this mysterious liquid? No apparently not. Turns out it’s liquefied lamb fat. A special treat just for us!

Our special treat

12:17pm: We are stopped at a checkpoint outside of Dohuk when our Turkish friend Murat has to get out of the car for questioning. Murat’s company confiscated his passport as part of their work agreement and provided him with working papers that should, if the appropriate wheels are appropriately greased, get him across the border. Murat is from Kirshehir, which is a town in central Anatolia that would make Oklahomans feel right at home.

While waiting, Chris texts his girlfriend, Jhannar, in what is an amazing display of how far we’ve come in mobile phone technology: near the Turkish border, with an Iraqi phone, Chris can instantly communicate with his girlfriend, who is using a Mongolian cell phone, in China. Jhannar writes back “Have a great trip and don’t eat any crazy food!” You’re about 45 minutes late Jhannar. “Sure honey,” Chris responds, “no problem.” It seems like despite all these modern fixins there’s no substitute for proper timing (though would that have kept Chris from eating liquefied animal fat? I doubt it).

I’m assuming that someone in this peshmerga checkpoint can speak Turkish, because Murat knows no other language. But we get through after 10 minutes and it occurs to me that this has probably been the most tranquil moment all trip for the old village woman in front.

 

Chapter 2: Calling on Mr. 2-Star

IBRAHIM KHALIL, December 16, 2010

1:07pm: How do you know you’re getting close to the Turkish border while traveling through Iraq? People start buying cigarettes.

“Wait, stop here” Murat begs Ismail, who does not seem keen on unnecessary delays, “Five minutes.” Ismail keeps driving past the gas station Murat is pointing to incessantly. “Two minutes!” With hard, workingman hands, Murat leverages Chris and I from the middle seat to get as close to Ismail in the front. This of course, given the language barrier, is the closest thing he’s got to an effective argument.

Finally, when all seemed lost, Ismail stops. Ecstatic, Murat jumps out and runs as fast as his stubby legs will carry him into the store like an 8-year-old promised fun dip and pixie sticks. I wonder what Murat’s friends back home would think of him buying cartons of cigarettes at a gas station called “Nawroz Oil.”

1:23: Khabat Intersection, Zakho.

And then there were three. Our nice old Kurdish village woman gets out next to the Zakho garage and we’re off to Ibrahim Khalil, the name of the Iraqi side of the only Iraqi-Turkish border crossing (the Turkish side is called Silopi). Since 2003 official annual trade between Iraq and Turkey has skyrocketed from zero to $9 billion. As a result, Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu (pronounced DAH-ve-toe-lu) promised to open two new border crossings. One would be devoted just for facilitating the hundreds of 18-wheelers waiting to cross from Turkey into Iraq because, for now, the trade is mostly one-way: trucks enter from Turkey filled to the brim with stuff. They return mostly empty (except for cigarettes of course). For now, however, Ibrahim Khalil is the only place to cross a border spanning the distance from New York to Baltimore. Should make things interesting.

1:51: Ibrahim Khalil Passport Control

Bring photocopies of your passport.

Taxi rates at the border:
- 50 Turkish Lira per seat in a car to Diyarbakir
- 15,000 Iraqi Dinar per seat to Silopi (Just across the border)
- 15 Turkish Lira for a bus from Silopi to Mardin
- 20 US Dollars per seat from Silopi to Mardin.

2:20: Ibrahim Khalil Passport Control – Manager’s Office

Our entire trip unexpectedly hinges on the mercy of a 2-star lieutenant who speaks no English. Apparently we are supposed to have some sort of exit visa to enter Turkey by land. But we don’t need one to get to Istanbul by plane. Does this make any sense?

Meanwhile, it is disarmingly hot in Mr. 2-Star’s office. It’s so hot that if he sentenced me to execution by blunt object right now I’d still feel sleepy.

The snow-capped mountains of Turkey, just outside Zakho

2:33: Ibrahim Khalil Passport Control – Manager’s Office

Our fun little magical mystery tour bubble is burst when we are told to go back to the residency office in Sulaimaniyyah. Go back to Sulaimaniyyah? Simply out of the question good man! Time to call on our wasta.

Wasta. In a region filled with incomprehensible dialects, wasta is one of the few words that cuts across all ethnicities, tribes and religious sects. Everyone knows what wasta is, whether they have it or not. Wasta is connections, relations, moxie, mojo, the ‘in’ and the ‘hook up.’  Wasta is this nebulous combination of knowledge, money, power and connections. Do you know an Iraqi politician? You have wasta. Is your brother’s wife the daughter of the chief of police? Forget paying parking tickets (if they were ever issued here). Are you a shepherd living in a village with no running water? You definitely do not have wasta. And if you are that shepherd’s wife, like the old agitated village woman in the front seat? You are resigned to a fate of absolutely zero wasta at birth. There is no daylight between your wasta ceiling and your wasta floor.

There are also different styles of employing your wasta. There’s the spoiled rich kid who flaunts his wasta like a bad rap video: his whole life is defined by his wasta. There are also those who brag about wasta they don’t have. But these false wasta types always seem to put themselves in a position to not have to use it. They are the Biff Lomans of wasta: somewhere along the way their wasta disappeared and now their life is one, big wasta-less lie. Be careful for the Biff Loman-types.

And then there’s the foreigner wasta. Yes, foreigner wasta is its own special brand of wasta, and it has an almost perfectly inverted relationship to societal development: it is most powerful in the least developed regions, and becomes next to irrelevant in bustling urban centers. In fact, sometimes it can be negative wasta, as in Midnight Express.

Dulled by the oppressive heat and the intense irony of watching scenes from the Beatles tribute movie Across the Universe, Chris and I slowly deploy our foreigner wasta in a two-pronged approach. The first step involved Chris immediately calling our university’s wasta connect. What’s that you ask? AUI-S has wasta? Of course it does. Some might say this is corruption. To those accusations I say… maybe. But wasta is simultaneously the lifeblood and currency of our local economy: it is essential for survival. AUI-S has to have wasta, without it we would drown in a sea of government paperwork and starve from a lack of student applicants. Yes all of this can be attributed to wasta, which takes on the same air of impenetrable mystery as Jobu’s influence on hitting curveballs.

The second step was for me to play the role of the indignant foreigner with a limited ability to express his frustration. That’s a cornerstone of foreigner wasta. My ‘conversation’ with Mr. 2-Star went something like this:

‘What is this visa business?! We have heard of no such thing. Of course we’ve been to the residency office. You can see the stamp in our passport right here. What? That’s not the right stamp? How were we supposed to know what stamp we would need? No one tells us these things; we’re so busy being extremely important outsiders that even if we knew this information beforehand we simply wouldn’t have had the time to acquire the necessary paperwork. Surely you must understand.’

3:27: Ibrahim Khalil Passport Control – Stamping Center

The double-pronged approach works beautifully, and after a time we get the magic seal of approval to continue on our journey. It was a combination of Mr. 2-Star being sick of our presence in his office (my job) and realizing we’re important enough to have people calling on our behalf (well done Chris) that did it. Foreigner wasta, executed to perfection (although we probably could’ve gotten by much faster with a bribe).

Now that we’re legit, all we have to do is cross the border. Simple, right?