This morning Darra, a friend of my helpful contact Sheikh Friyad ( I just recently noticed that people are calling him "Sheikh") came to pick me up with his car and drive me around for the day. He’s a youngish guy with a shifting posh and working class but nonetheless distinctly British accent who has lived in Manchester for 17 years and claimed that the only thing he resisted of adopting of the English culture was not having taken to spoiling the taste of his tea with milk. As far as I could judge after so short a time, that claim may well be true. I simply had a blast with him.
God, it’s good sometimes to just be yourself. We exchanged drinking stories, discussed the horror of meeting your so-to-speak mothers in law, and made jokes about all sorts of unsavoury topics: Walking down the street when we turned past an open sewer he remarked „I think I just farted" - "Congratulations", I answered. Discussing career options I dropped that "I heard you can make a lot of money here with male prostitution" and got as an answer "Yeah, I was thinking about trying it". A little later on down a small lane in the centre of town he said "You really want to know what that little girl just say to you don’t you?" and I suggested as a possibility "I want to fuck you in the ass?", and then we both laughed.
In pursuance of research for my PhD ("Alcoholism in Muslim Countries"), we went to the German Biergarten that night. Entering it, my initial reaction was one of repulsive shock and the urge to walk out backwards to where I’d come from right there and then. But telling myself it was all for my doctorate I mustered up courage and we sat down to have delicious indeed Hefeweizen, despite the worst-of-the-worst German folk-pop thumping from the boxes and the girls wheeling between the tables in those garish dirndles.
After the second Hefeweizen I got rather alegre, and my CFD (Compulsive Flirting Disorder), inappropriate as ever, surreptiously started to steal into my demeanour. The object of my pining glances was the sturdy man with the stout thighs showing under the lederhosen who, with the dodgy German accent and the feather bobbing at his hat, had assigned us our table on walking in. I braced myself and so on the beermat that I was waving coyly and nervously as I approached him with the request, I got the first autograph I ever made anyone sign in my life, from this REAL GERMAN, accent and all.
Exciting.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Down with another great aitchless race
After a few hours of hanging out in a library, amused enough to twist my head round cyrillic titles and authors' names (amidst the predictable Gogols and Turgyenyevs, the annoyingly unavoidably numerous Dostoyevskies and absolutely necessary Nabokovs, I also (delightedly) find a certain "Genry Miller" and some chance "Germann Gesse"-type (absent-mindedly)) I decide to spend the remainder of the morning sitting in the park, pulling the usual stunt of rolling a rollie. Less to actually smoke it, than to be maybe offered some of what here aitch-avoidingly is termed "gashish", which, by the same token, I don't have an actual craving for, but which serves as a cheap intermediary to try and make some sleazy, shady, drug-dealing friends, I suppose (everyone's favourite people!). Today it actually works. A lean young man indeed ambles over and offers me some very weak gashish (which in a moment of drunkenly misplaced generosity I will roll into a joint for himself in his apartment later on).
Despite one incisor missing, he doesn't actually seem that sleazy, so, what the hell, when he asks me to go for a drink with him I tag along to his regular bar (that sort of was my plan in the first place, meeting people, wasn't it? -I remind myself).
The drink turns into a couple more, sidelining an embarrassingly dictionary-oriented conversation -my dictionary is really a better friend than any human being could be at this point, making communication beyond the exchanging of memorised formulas of politeness possible at all. Really, I don't much mind talking ungrammatical insignificant shit, as I'm still very much in the early stage of the language learning process and I don't yet suffer from what I have come to term the "self-mutilation syndrome".
Afflicted by this, the language learning individual undergoes stages of utterly frustrating, though blatantly self-inflicted (for having put oneself into the situation in the first place) sensations of severe speech impediment, not far from ensuing complete desparation. Basically, forcing oneself to speak in foreign tongues can have the same effect as having ones actually tangible tongue cut out altogether: these drastic restraints on one's communication skills come with a horrible feeling of inadequacy for ones psychological need for commensurate expression of one's oh so animated inner world (alas, without the physically painful and bloody bit!).
Anyway, so we continue our random palaver -mine staccato, his frighteningly cataract-like- till his friends come round. The three drinks so far turn into another few and at the end of the afternoon in that backstreet bar, everyone -me very much included- is by this time in much of a state. The plan seems to be that we all go out together later on, so in my advanced hammered condition it only seems natural I go back to my gashish dealing new acquaintance's house, not to miss the appointment-and, I muse to myself, it must be save, it's only six o'clock- you never get raped at that time of day, surely.
So now, home with Misha, sipping more of that canned gin and tonic which seems to be their REAL national drink, not that spurned vodka, keeping up an hour and a half of more stilted, painfully bilateral conversation. Even alcohol doesn't necessarily loosen my tongue.And finally I only have enough vocabulary for so long before it will relievingly be drained to its last drop and I can abandon myself to being passively showered in rapids of relentless Russian, from which after another hour -in which I am under the vague impression he might or might not be going on about some Ukrainian pop-star his little brother might or might not be in love with-, I finally glean that he is approaching the usual core issues now, as I believe to grasp that a) -nothing new to me -he wants to have sex with me (these russians have ways of NEVER making physical advances, but always more or less politely trying to TALK (out of all possibilities!) you into it (much in contrast to that other great aitchless race, the French, whose general approach seems to be to just get you and themselves drunk and then throw themselves into your bed completely unasked for), even the "bad boy" ones (or those who would like to see themselves as "bad boy"-types like this one)
b) he offers me 2000 dollars if I have sex with him
c) he is a professional and very succesful pimp and 2000 dollars are nothing to him.
I, of course, am not naive enough to believe any of the above propositions-except the first one evidently ( all too evidently! ->and at this point I contentedly check my make up-slanting my face into profile, eyes a-clack for my hand mirror). Being a pimp is just any young Russian lads idea of being cool and succesful or something.
The best tactic I decide, will be affecting ignorance of what he is talking about -always a good way out of sticky situations- and just continue a sometimes vague, sometimes vigorous nod, as if I was assuming he was talking about rising plum pudding prices.
His endless babble -obviously quite impossibly leading anywhere- is given an abrupt end with the striking of the midnight hour, which is promptly noticed, despite its only soundlessly manifesting itself by the morphing of reticent digital ciphers on the ubiquitous mobile phone(from the sahara to siberia, whether they work or not, they're there before you are)) -and which means we have to drive out for our appointment with the other guys.
So half an hour later, there we are in the Russian variation of the familiar situation of five people crammed into the back of a van, smoking many a joint, with me having to beg them to please, speak "bolshe medlyennoye" (slower, pashaulsta!) everytime I am directly adressed and at all other times just assume a knowing facial expression, -which turns out to be a rather dumb constant smile, as thus facilitated by all the alcohol- rather than actually try to follow the conversation.
Our little excursion takes us seemingly deep into the woods, down a road which is more bumps than path, which actually likens the experience to that of some desultory funfair ride -everyone's bursts of laughter included.We pass people next to orange campfires and when we finally get out of the vehicle, airs of distant house music are carried over to us, probably coming from a boom box. As the girls start peeling out of their clothes and the guys do alike, the plan and purpose of this whole undertaking, now somewhat belatedly, but still in time, takes an abrupt unfolding before the eyes of my mind. I'm stoned remember, every thought seems to weigh a ton. I, too, strip down to my underwear, and tip toe my way over the pine-needle covered ground to the softly dropping, earthy riverbank with the water lapping warmly up to our feet.
With Pasha, the blond guy with the beret, having already abandoned to the splashing medium (the beret in return being abandoned amidst the pile of cast off jeans and T-shirt for the occasion), and Misha (hesitating to call him "my Misha" for the distinction), the other Misha -the driver-, and Alex affectedly finishing their cigarettes, the two girls perform their squeamish girly ritual of taking step after step all too slowly, probably affirming the water's disagreable coldness in these squealing bursts of ever-incomprehensible Russian to each other.
Finally we are all in it, and in between dipping my head in the fresh black depths softly tingling on my stoner's skin, I take notice of the prettiness of the trees on both sides of the riverbank, outlined in stark silhouettes before the blue not black and only scarcely starred northern late night sky, and the moon rolling out its straight but fuzzy edged yellow carpet as on all waters.While rubbing dry in the van, preparing for our way back, everyone, druggedly, melts into a couple of minutes of jellylike mirth at a certain remark I- as is absolutely needless to reiterate but here it goes: did not understand. I suppose, I'm having fun anyway, though.
Much later on I came to see that evening of midnight bathing as a baptism of sorts. I was my first night ever in Russia, the country I was going to come to feel so close to. And it was on this same trip that I later went to Kurdistan for the first time, too.
Despite one incisor missing, he doesn't actually seem that sleazy, so, what the hell, when he asks me to go for a drink with him I tag along to his regular bar (that sort of was my plan in the first place, meeting people, wasn't it? -I remind myself).
The drink turns into a couple more, sidelining an embarrassingly dictionary-oriented conversation -my dictionary is really a better friend than any human being could be at this point, making communication beyond the exchanging of memorised formulas of politeness possible at all. Really, I don't much mind talking ungrammatical insignificant shit, as I'm still very much in the early stage of the language learning process and I don't yet suffer from what I have come to term the "self-mutilation syndrome".
Afflicted by this, the language learning individual undergoes stages of utterly frustrating, though blatantly self-inflicted (for having put oneself into the situation in the first place) sensations of severe speech impediment, not far from ensuing complete desparation. Basically, forcing oneself to speak in foreign tongues can have the same effect as having ones actually tangible tongue cut out altogether: these drastic restraints on one's communication skills come with a horrible feeling of inadequacy for ones psychological need for commensurate expression of one's oh so animated inner world (alas, without the physically painful and bloody bit!).
Anyway, so we continue our random palaver -mine staccato, his frighteningly cataract-like- till his friends come round. The three drinks so far turn into another few and at the end of the afternoon in that backstreet bar, everyone -me very much included- is by this time in much of a state. The plan seems to be that we all go out together later on, so in my advanced hammered condition it only seems natural I go back to my gashish dealing new acquaintance's house, not to miss the appointment-and, I muse to myself, it must be save, it's only six o'clock- you never get raped at that time of day, surely.
So now, home with Misha, sipping more of that canned gin and tonic which seems to be their REAL national drink, not that spurned vodka, keeping up an hour and a half of more stilted, painfully bilateral conversation. Even alcohol doesn't necessarily loosen my tongue.And finally I only have enough vocabulary for so long before it will relievingly be drained to its last drop and I can abandon myself to being passively showered in rapids of relentless Russian, from which after another hour -in which I am under the vague impression he might or might not be going on about some Ukrainian pop-star his little brother might or might not be in love with-, I finally glean that he is approaching the usual core issues now, as I believe to grasp that a) -nothing new to me -he wants to have sex with me (these russians have ways of NEVER making physical advances, but always more or less politely trying to TALK (out of all possibilities!) you into it (much in contrast to that other great aitchless race, the French, whose general approach seems to be to just get you and themselves drunk and then throw themselves into your bed completely unasked for), even the "bad boy" ones (or those who would like to see themselves as "bad boy"-types like this one)
b) he offers me 2000 dollars if I have sex with him
c) he is a professional and very succesful pimp and 2000 dollars are nothing to him.
I, of course, am not naive enough to believe any of the above propositions-except the first one evidently ( all too evidently! ->and at this point I contentedly check my make up-slanting my face into profile, eyes a-clack for my hand mirror). Being a pimp is just any young Russian lads idea of being cool and succesful or something.
The best tactic I decide, will be affecting ignorance of what he is talking about -always a good way out of sticky situations- and just continue a sometimes vague, sometimes vigorous nod, as if I was assuming he was talking about rising plum pudding prices.
His endless babble -obviously quite impossibly leading anywhere- is given an abrupt end with the striking of the midnight hour, which is promptly noticed, despite its only soundlessly manifesting itself by the morphing of reticent digital ciphers on the ubiquitous mobile phone(from the sahara to siberia, whether they work or not, they're there before you are)) -and which means we have to drive out for our appointment with the other guys.
So half an hour later, there we are in the Russian variation of the familiar situation of five people crammed into the back of a van, smoking many a joint, with me having to beg them to please, speak "bolshe medlyennoye" (slower, pashaulsta!) everytime I am directly adressed and at all other times just assume a knowing facial expression, -which turns out to be a rather dumb constant smile, as thus facilitated by all the alcohol- rather than actually try to follow the conversation.
Our little excursion takes us seemingly deep into the woods, down a road which is more bumps than path, which actually likens the experience to that of some desultory funfair ride -everyone's bursts of laughter included.We pass people next to orange campfires and when we finally get out of the vehicle, airs of distant house music are carried over to us, probably coming from a boom box. As the girls start peeling out of their clothes and the guys do alike, the plan and purpose of this whole undertaking, now somewhat belatedly, but still in time, takes an abrupt unfolding before the eyes of my mind. I'm stoned remember, every thought seems to weigh a ton. I, too, strip down to my underwear, and tip toe my way over the pine-needle covered ground to the softly dropping, earthy riverbank with the water lapping warmly up to our feet.
With Pasha, the blond guy with the beret, having already abandoned to the splashing medium (the beret in return being abandoned amidst the pile of cast off jeans and T-shirt for the occasion), and Misha (hesitating to call him "my Misha" for the distinction), the other Misha -the driver-, and Alex affectedly finishing their cigarettes, the two girls perform their squeamish girly ritual of taking step after step all too slowly, probably affirming the water's disagreable coldness in these squealing bursts of ever-incomprehensible Russian to each other.
Finally we are all in it, and in between dipping my head in the fresh black depths softly tingling on my stoner's skin, I take notice of the prettiness of the trees on both sides of the riverbank, outlined in stark silhouettes before the blue not black and only scarcely starred northern late night sky, and the moon rolling out its straight but fuzzy edged yellow carpet as on all waters.While rubbing dry in the van, preparing for our way back, everyone, druggedly, melts into a couple of minutes of jellylike mirth at a certain remark I- as is absolutely needless to reiterate but here it goes: did not understand. I suppose, I'm having fun anyway, though.
Much later on I came to see that evening of midnight bathing as a baptism of sorts. I was my first night ever in Russia, the country I was going to come to feel so close to. And it was on this same trip that I later went to Kurdistan for the first time, too.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Ainkawa
It's six a.m. in Ainkawa, the Christian district of Hewler, and its richest, too. In the 90's it was the place where Saddam's CIA financed resistance used to be located. I have been put up here for a few days only. At my own behest I am regularly taken to the PKK-sponsoring "Turkish" restaurants round the corner (they serve spicy adana kebab and sprinkle your hands with lemon kolonyasi when you leave).
Insomnia here is less of a bitch since at least there is a generator providing round the clock electricity. After a sleepless night listening to the silence outside, suddenly the sparrows and starlings have become very chatty. It is the first time I actually hear the bell of that castle-like Chaldean Church down the street.
Insomnia here is less of a bitch since at least there is a generator providing round the clock electricity. After a sleepless night listening to the silence outside, suddenly the sparrows and starlings have become very chatty. It is the first time I actually hear the bell of that castle-like Chaldean Church down the street.
"When faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the “necrophiliac” world of wealth and power -choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be. Your peers might at first look down on you: poor Nina, she’s twenty-six and she still doesn’t own a car. ...
You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?" -George Monbiot
(I think it should become a moral imperative that there be more Ninas who'll never own a car.)
You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?" -George Monbiot
(I think it should become a moral imperative that there be more Ninas who'll never own a car.)
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Into Iraq
The road curves left and right like a mountain stream, my driver drives like a madman, and I am glad I am not prone to motion sickness. The landscape makes me feel like I am on a little boat rocking in an ocean of heaving and sinking green slopes, shook about by the hills.
The Kurdish landscape continues as beautifully as on the Turkish side, but the hills swing on a different rhythm here. They rise heavy with vegetation, build up like green, lush waves, and then abruptly tumble and crash in steep cascades of rock. When the landscape finally sinks down into a valley the last row of hills stands proud like pyramids.
The Kurdish landscape continues as beautifully as on the Turkish side, but the hills swing on a different rhythm here. They rise heavy with vegetation, build up like green, lush waves, and then abruptly tumble and crash in steep cascades of rock. When the landscape finally sinks down into a valley the last row of hills stands proud like pyramids.
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