The Best American Travel Writing 2011 (36 page)

There had been no explosions so far that day. Gazing at the long flatbed trucks full of cement bags in the traffic jam before the final checkpoint (manned by that same soldier in sunglasses), I wondered whether something would detonate. Two boys kicked a blue metal drum down the street. A tiny black-haired girl followed a man in sweaty garments who was pushing a wheelbarrow of wet cement along the sidewalk. And now came the Kurdish restaurant whose food had declined since it was first blown up, and now the low concrete houses of Kirkuk. Driving rapidly through the shopping district, where so many bombs had been detonated (TNT in plastic bags, the fixer said) that the store owners no longer permitted cars to park in front of their premises, we arrived at the Syrian Christian church called Mar Ghorgis, whose wall shrugged behind feeble caltrops and almost casual loops of barbed wire, across the street from an ice cream shop and a small restaurant with a rotisserie. A headscarfed old cyclist slowly pedaled by. The late morning reeked of smog. I asked the interpreter whether it was dangerous for the owners of the two food establishments to be situated so close to a Christian church, and he said: "Of course." We were all feeling anxious, and when an orange and white taxi rolled up slowly, a huge metal tank lashed to its roof, and stopped level with our vehicle, I felt a bit sick. The taxi departed.

 

The deacon's name was Johnu David Israel, and he was thirty-five or thirty-six years old. His family had been Christian for as many generations back as he could tell. He was born here, in the quarter called Arafa, which means something like "wetland." About his childhood he said, as they always did, that it was "very great," without discrimination—and, by the way, although the interview took place in Arabic, he considered himself neither Arab nor Kurd nor anything but Syrian Christian, an identification he reiterated almost defiantly. "I never heard, 'This is a Kurd, this is an Arab,' like that." His favorite activity had been soccer.

Ethnic differentiation began in 1982, he said. Although Deacon Israel did not mention him specifically, one of Saddam's most hated henchmen, the infamous and recently executed "Chemical Ali," set up shop in Kirkuk in 1986, when the Anfal campaign against the countryside began. Like Kurds, Syrians could not get jobs unless they changed their official nationality. In the course of their Arabization program, the Baathists constructed about two thousand houses for Arabs in Arafa alone. I asked about religious discrimination, and Deacon Israel remarked that even now there stood in Mosul a church built by Saddam at his own expense, with his name engraved into every brick.

"So would you say that he was not so bad concerning religion?"

"You cannot measure his goodness or badness by what he has done," replied the deacon in a rising voice, rapidly shifting the blue beads of his rosary.

His brother had been a member of a secret political organization. He was arrested in 1985 and held incommunicado for two years.

"Was he well treated?"

"Very nice," laughed the deacon. "They just gave him biscuits all the time. They tortured him and pulled out his fingernails..."

The deacon had a round head. His eyes glinted at me through rectangular spectacles. The neat zone of stubble on his chin matched his mustache. He wore a gold watch, well-worn shoes, and a slightly rumpled suit.

"Have many Christians been killed since 2003?" I asked.

"In 1997 there were 810 Christian families; I performed the census myself. That number has fallen by half now, so many have fled."

"Who was the latest Christian to be killed?"

"He was an oil engineer. Last year they knocked at his door and they shot him."

"Do they catch these people?"

He laughed with the same bitterness as when he had spoken of his brother. He spread his hands. He said: "No. This is why the Christians say it is better to flee."

 

We ventured into the Kurdish zone of the city to get something to eat, because, as the fixer said: "I cannot come in Arab district now, because we are coming in Kirkuk about five times" (actually, it was only four) "and in same car." Later he mentioned his Erbil license plates once again, and the interpreter was quiet, and the fixer said: "Did you finish your work? Because I don't care about ourselves, but I care about you." In the restaurant, when the lights failed for a moment, some of the diners immediately looked to us because we had eaten there several times and thus without a doubt been
noticed.
Not long after lunch, when I finally agreed that we could go, the fixer floored it, and once we had passed through the checkpoint at the city limit, he and the interpreter were embracing each other and singing in happy relief.

We had done interviews in the Arab quarter on two previous occasions, and if I have not related them before, it is because the spiraling complexity of Kurdistan seemed sufficiently complex already; and before introducing you to the two sheikhs, I should remark that these men, being at least minimally cordial to the fixer, and agreeable to entertaining an American journalist, must almost surely have been in comparison with their compatriots pro-Kurdish.

The al-Haidi clan has fifteen or twenty thousand members in Kirkuk Province, more in Mosul. Sheikh Ismail al-Hadid was born in 1957 a few hundred meters from the quiet, luxurious house he lives in now, which stood behind caltrops and concrete barriers; his father was also born in Kirkuk. A bodyguard led us in. The sheikh had a rectangular face, thinning gray hair, and a gray mustache. When he received me, in a marble-floored room with a
bismillah
and many hangings on the wall, he was wearing a blue-black suit with a striped tie and shiny narrow-toed shoes. The servant brought black coffee that had a lemony taste.

"I believe that Arabs are newcomers," he said. "The people of my clan are old dwellers of the city. Others are more recent. The people of Kirkuk, they are lovely. They have no problem with each other." Raising his hands to his heart, he assured me, as so many Kirkukians did, that ethnic differences had scarcely existed in his childhood, that there continued to be intermarriage even now, that his neighbor on the left was a Turkmen and on the right a Kurd. "My ancestors built in this area. So of course most of the people here were Arabs. Here were so many great parks, for gardens and picnics. We were not afraid about our females, our daughters, whether they would be kidnapped. Now we are very much afraid about our girls, that they could be kidnapped or raped."

He considered Kirkuk to be unsafe now because "the law is weak."

"I believe that the Iraqis and the Americans are both responsible for what is happening now. The Americans came to Iraq as liberators, but later on they mistreated the situation and turned into occupiers. Maybe it was our fault that we did not advise the Americans," he said tactfully. "Each faction, they were trying to get the largest share of power at that time. We did not cooperate at that time; that was our biggest mistake. The Americans disbanded the Iraqi army; this was very bad."

"Should the Americans leave Iraq?"

"I believe that withdrawal is in the interest of the Kurds."

"Which groups are directly to blame for the terrorism?"

"I believe that many terrorists come from Turkey, Iran, Syria, more than from Iraqi Arabs. They are all the time plotting against the Kurds."

When the subject of ethnic cleansing came up, he remarked that some discrimination against the Kurdish majority had begun in the 1960s. "Later on, we discovered even before Saddam that all were treating Kurds with cruelty in order to Arabize Kirkuk City. Now when we hear there are some campaigns against the Arabs, we are not surprised. But on the other hand, we don't want it to be repeated, for the Kurds to repeat the acts of the former Iraqi regime."

 

Sheikh Ahmed al-Ubaidi, also known as al-Hamid, was secretary-general of the Iraqi Kirkuk Front. To meet him we headed for Hial-Wasadi district, "an Arab area, not so safe," advised the fixer. The feeling of fear was getting very tiring. Passing the city council office, we whirled down hot, uncrowded streets, the fixer watching left and right. Here was an auto repair shop, then we entered the Shia Turkmen area, then left behind a vacant lot with rubbish heaps and polka dots of rubbish, a car empty in the dirt, everything silent, a figure sitting knees up on a wall ledge, police at a concrete island with sandbags, then a walled compound with caltrops, followed by the Academy of Kurdish, the Academy of Police, and the sheikh's office, where we were greeted by bodyguards.

He was a big man with a husky voice, balding and graying, not distinctive, with the exception of his long, delicate fingers. "The Arabs are forming one third of the population—one third!"

Regarding ethnic differences, he said: "We did not think about those things, but unfortunately after the arrival of the occupier, the situation changed."

"Where would you like to see the border of Kurdistan?"

"As it exists now, according to the determination of Paul Bremer."

He demanded to know why an Arab with an out-of-town license plate must be checked if he goes to work in Erbil.

The fan was slowly turning. On the desk was a small red, white, and green flag with stars. "I see you looking at the flag. This is the old Iraqi flag. We consider this the flag of our party. It contains three stars symbolizing unity between Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. We in the Front would like to have the same unity on our side."

He was formerly an officer in the Baathist army, but he too had been arrested.

I raised the subject of the violence and he stared at me through half-shut eyes, saying: "The problem is an Iranian conspiracy through the Shia in the south of Iraq. They are sticks in the hands of Iranians." He saw Iraq as a cake layered with petrol.

But the security situation of Kirkuk was now "very good"; recently he had gone to visit some friends in a formerly dangerous place and did not even bring a knife! "The improvement took place due to the participation of all groups," he said meaningfully. "Maybe Turkmens or Arabs would not inform the police about terrorism, since police are Kurds. But now we feel the city is for all."

Even so, he considered himself underrepresented in the city council. Right now there were twenty-six seats for Kurds, nine for Turkmens, only six for Arabs.

"Why should we consult the Kurds?" he asked me. "After all, if something happened here, the people of Sulaimaniya do not care. Kirkuk is the mother of troubles. Kurds are ruling themselves. Turkmens are supported by Turkey and Syria. So, we need Arabs outside to support us." If the city council could come to consensus, "Kirkuk will turn into heaven."

 

The fifth time we went to Kirkuk, we grew a trifle silent as usual after Bani Maqan Checkpoint, speeding down from the dry hills into the valley of Kirkuk, the dust-dome of sky higher and broader today, the air better to breathe. The gray city began to spread before us, its hordes of concrete stumps truncated by the dust. Here came the final checkpoint's familiar stop sign, the left-hand lane of the highway blocked off by concrete slabs and three caltrops, the fourth caltrop in the right shoulder. The soldier was different today. Gray cinder-block houses burst silently out of the dirt. From a billboard a lovely young girl gazed out hijabed and smiling, decently covered from the throat down. Here came the roundabout, one sector of which had been closed off with barbed wire, and then we arrived at the Kirkuk Security Directorate—one of two, I should say, for each of the main parties maintained its own office, which in America might have seemed redundant or worse; but the interpreter, who was a member in good standing of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), approved, explaining that adherents of one party might decline to phone in terrorism tips to any branch of the other. So we came, as I can now more properly put it, to the Kirkuk Security Directorate of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), whose entryway was studded with spanking-new yellow caltrops. A machine-gun bearer in desert-gray cammies and a green camouflage facemask over which glared dark sunglasses greeted us. I could see part of his mustache and teeth through the round breathing hole. He wore one light trauma plate in front and another between his shoulder blades. All in all, he seemed dressed for the weather of Kirkuk, whose meteorologists must sometimes report light showers of lead, steel, or concrete fragments.

Our way now wove between concrete blocks painted absurdly with water scenes and peace doves. We entered another gate, rolled slowly down a concrete-walled alley where machine-gun-carrying camouflaged soldiers stood smoking; and a small girl and a small boy toddled among them, holding hands. Presently we found ourselves inside an air-conditioned carpeted office. There was soccer on the television and a light machine gun propped up behind the desk. The white and tan drapes were drawn, and the sun of Kirkuk glowed soothingly through them.

Our amiable interpreter said that he had learned his English from television; he spoke with a trace of a midwestern accent, and I wondered whether he might have been in contact with troops from Kansas or Missouri, perhaps assisting them in interrogations. Also present was Salar Khalid Kamarkhan, deputy-in-charge. As such people so often are, he was youngish, cheerful, and fit. I flattered him that he must be an excellent shot, and he smilingly agreed that he was.

The reason I had asked to meet the deputy was that everybody kept asserting that Iraq, and Kirkuk specifically, was being destabilized by neighboring countries, especially Iran. Since similar claims about Iraq had been one of our twin pretexts for invading that country, I guessed I might feel happier if and when we bombed Iran into democracy to know that Iranian materiel had indeed been employed by terrorists.

In Khanaqin, a colonel who declined to be interviewed had described IEDs as olive-green metal boxes about the length of a man's hand. He did not know what was inside them, because he simply phoned the Americans, who came and took them away, but he called the devices "well organized," meaning well constructed, "not something made at home. Maybe some company makes them."