Good morning

The sky is grey or amber – rarely turquoise. The polish on my toenails is purple. The rebellion of my body against the endless sand storms is a pinkish “thing” that is creeping (luckily in a quite discreet way) on the left side of my face. Summer is arrived and everybody talks about how hard it will be to face a temperature that is hotter by the day.

Nazanim in Kurdish means “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand” – it is one of the first words you’d learn as it seems that not having a clue about anything is an existential condition here. It is a word that I like a lot and that often works as an escape route: if you combine it with a shrug it is for me the embodiment of both displacement and the continuous negotiation between daily communications and misunderstandings.

In these days it has become the key word of a reflection about myself, my writing and my position in this place. At times I feel like I know way more than what I’d really want to know, at times I have the impression to know about things and situations I should know nothing about. This awareness is quite a burden and it is a double sided weapon. It fuels my already insatiable curiosity, while giving me a sense of responsibility that it is hard to deal with. At times I’d like to be like an ostrich and hide my head in the sand believing that this way I would be safe. At times the desire to discover the hidden threads that move people and situations gives me an excited vertigo.

Nazanim has thus become the lens through which I am starting to understand the influence that the society, customs and culture of this place are having on me. I am thinking of one of the first conversations we had with Anna soon after we arrived, we were discussing about the fear that such a repressed/repressive and conservative social fabric could shape us without us noticing. As of now, that fear seemed pretty grounded. I know that I am changing – that my behaviour is influenced by the context I live in. And I am realising – now picture my best naïve plus cynical grin – that all this is happening (has happened) without me noticing, until all of a sudden – seven months away from the departure line – my eyes opened. The most interesting – as well as painful and tiresome – revelation is that the level of self-censorship I am exercising on my spoken and written words is quite striking. There are things I know I cannot write about; there are stories I am craving to tell, but I know that I cannot. Not until I am here. This awareness gives me very ambivalent feelings – I feel a sense of repulsion towards myself for not being brave enough to speak up; repulsion towards a social system that is slyly suffocating; but also a feeling of mature acceptance (with no sacrificial nuance to it) of a condition from which I am learning a lot. I feel a bit like a hen, nursing the unspoken, waiting for it to be mature enough to take the “inoffensive” shape of the story of the many backstage settings I have the privilege to access.

A hug

Good morning

It seems that summer is doing its general rehearsals: yesterday and the day before it was very hot (around 30° C) and today the sand is back… it is a schizophrenic weather that makes me feel twice as weak: both for the change of season and for the first heat. The result is that I go around in a slow motion and I am always sleepy.

Roses are blooming in the lawn of our University, they are of many different colours and in days of clear sky their scent overpowers the smell of dust. These patches of colour give the landscape a lighter and more hospitable nuance.

In 1986, Julio Cortazar collected notes, and “unpolished” stories in a book called “Around the day in eighty worlds”. It is a travel the thoughts, impressions and suggestion that the world gives the writer even as he is sitting at his desk. This book came back to my mind the other day, when I was trying to figure out the reasons of my fascination with this country. I guess the answer might be in the fact that every day becomes for me a travel and a discovery of the thousands of contradictions that animate this place, of the dozens of incredible stories that I am told every day, of the improbable facets that constitute the experiences of the people I know or I happen to meet.

Every day is an unexpected combination of worlds that I experience observing the stratifications of society, the access to different circles, the mixture of languages, religions and traditions. And I feel a bit like Mr. Fogg in “Around the world in 80 days”, who looks for the ways and means to find an orientation and move around the world. And I feel a bit like Cortazar, who enjoys the (missing) connections between events, things and people as well as the pleasure that the suspension of Logics and the acceptance of the surreal side of existence can generate.

Encounters with people often leave me with the same sense of displacement you experience in a long trip and conversations become adventures and worlds multiply in the awareness that what would seem irreconcilable might find an acrobatic balance within one single person.

Last week I met for tea with an incredible young man, a professor of Literary Criticism, with deep black eyes, a perfect English and the mild manners of an old fashioned gentleman. Here with a couple of questions where you ask without inquiring, you might end up knowing more than you would need to know – so I was told that this person comes from a powerful and religious family and that he and his brother are seriously militant (a detail you could possibly grasp by the fashion in which he grooms his beard). We discussed about Structuralism, Foucault and Derrida, of the possibilities of a postcolonial interpretation of Kurdistan , of the evocative potentials of Imagist poetry – which he quotes by heart with a perfect metric rhythm. These kinds of exchanges are not very frequent here and we both enjoyed the genuine pleasure of the conversation.

After one and a half hours he left – he lifted his hand to his heart and left… no hand shaking, it is not allowed, I wonder how I could forget… Two worlds that seem to me to be irreconcilable live together within this person with that graceful easiness that inexorably keeps on surprising me.

A hug

Good morning

Sandstorms are never-ending. The one that is going on now has been lasting for 24 hours: it is hard to breathe and impossible to see the buildings on the other side of the courtyard. The sky is yellow and the smell of dust so intense that overpowers everything else.

When I first arrived, six months ago, I had the feeling that something strong and “primordial” connected me to Kurdistan . Living in a place that is surrounded by mountains makes me feel at home and – however much differences are more prominent than similarities – the sensation of familiarity with the landscape is this something that makes me feel at ease here.

The idea of Kurdish “nation” and identity is constructed around the mountains. From the myth of origins to the uprising, from Ararat to the peshmerga, mountains are always part of the narration – not as the background of the story, but as one of the constitutive elements of the narrative.

I have always thought that mountains would have an impact on people’s character. If I think of home, of my family, of our roots, there is in them an unmistakable trait that comes from the mountains. I have found that same trait here – with different words and feelings, but still with the same meanings. Perhaps it is this ancient proximity that connects me to this place: it is a way of feeling that is connected to the solidity of the mountains, which generates a rough but still welcoming approach to the world.

The earthquake – or better the stories about the earthquake that my family and childhood friends have told me – gave me the chance to grasp the sense of my instinctive attachment to this place. I have been told, from my hometown, stories of pride and dignity, stories of a people that is wounded but not defeated. From afar, through these words, I rediscovered that part of myself that comes from the mountains. And in this rediscovery I have found the meaning of my proximity to Kurdistan .

My writing this week is a bit surreal and the yellow sky doesn’t help to find clarity. The loneliness I felt these past days – the emptiness that the awareness of missing out a significant part of the history of my family and my land – has been perhaps mitigated a little by the perception of this proximity, an ancestral and irrational feeling that functioned a bit as an anchor in a moment of deep disorientation.

Until next Thursday

Good morning.

Seasons are struggling to find a definition, and sunny days follow days of sand storms where air is so dense that it is hard to breathe.

Today it is particularly hard for me to write. The tragedy of the earthquake in Italy, the distance from my family, the difficulty of elaborating alone a collective trauma that I perceive only through my family’s words and the manipulations of media make it almost impossible for me to think straight. Focusing on the here and now without being carried away by this emotional confusion is very hard but there is nothing I can do - nothing but trying to make an effort to anchor myself to my present day reality. The thought of the unrealized project of the Museum of Earthquake in my hometown doesn’t leave me alone these days… we can’t afford to forget.

Today in Iraq is an important and controversial day. For someone it is the day of the end of Saddam’s regime, for others it is the beginning of American occupation. I try to suspend the judgment, but it is not an easy operation. I remember the images of the soldier climbing on Saddam’s statue and I remember the discomfort with which I witnessed the American flag waving over the statue – nothing is ever only what it seems, I remember thinking. Nothing at that time could have told me that years later I would be living in Iraq …

Here in Erbil this national celebration is not that national: ministerial offices are closed, but in University is a normal working day. There is much talking in/about days like this: opinions are always very careful and certain conversations only happen in private behind closed doors, for the rest it is a whole lot of detached smiling and nodding.

Last Thursday there was a “big event”: the American State Department organized a jazz concert with a group of American musicians touring around the world. Here we have no “cultural” events thus an evening of live music becomes “the thing” to talk about and comment on for days on end. One of my students told me that for her it was an incredible experience: it was the first time she listened to live western music and she was really surprised that it turned out to be so enjoyable.

The concert in fact wasn’t too bad, but again nothing is ever only what it seems and here everything in a way or another becomes political. Perhaps I have to learn to be less picky on details, but the rhetoric that animates the whole concert turned it for me in something more anthropologically interesting than aesthetically pleasant.

Everything started with the drummer – who was the leader of the group – saying that he was really thrilled by his first performance in Iraq . Fair enough: this is not a little thing and definitely something that does not happen to anyone. The uneasiness begins with the scarce geo-political awareness of the musician: he keeps talking about Iraq and how much he loves Iraq and I reckon he finds the slightly coldish reaction of the audience quite disconcerting. The evening warms up and in a moment of excitement the drummer, who by now has understood that there is something weird going on, cries out loud: “We love you Kurkistan!” (No, it is not a typo, but a textual citation!). My irritation at this point gives way to a sarcastic smile considering that the guy keeps on insisting on the fact that of all their concerts in Iraq this was the best (was it not the first?)

The group obviously reaches the climax at the end, when they present us with a song that the drummer himself composed – which for some reasons sounded very similar to a Coltrane piece… The song was composed during their tour of the Middle East maybe in Yemen or maybe somewhere in the Emirates (on a beach in Dubai ?) I can’t recall.

The piece begins, continues and ends like this: America , God watches over You!

I can suspend the judgment, but I can’t contain a grin.

Nothing is ever only what it seems…

Till next Thursday!

Good morning

Spring has arrived! The field in front of my house is full of yellow flowers and the grass has different shades of green. It is a new and transient landscape, a parenthesis between the sand storms of the winter and the aridity that will come with summer. Its temporary nature makes it even more fascinating and surprising.

The return from the trip in Palestine gave me a lot to think about.

On the road that runs along the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, not far from Damascus Gate, there is a tiny shop that sells tamarind juice. I try to stop by every time I go since that fruit juice has for me the taste of Jerusalem and many stories to tell. I told Anna about this place and wanted to take here there, I looked for it for a while, got lost, thought I found the right door and got convinced that it was shut down. Half hour before traveling back to the border we accidentally bumped into the little shop and, for my delight, we managed to drink the tamarind juice.

Perhaps in a childish way, the taste of tamarind enhanced the physical dimension of my perception of the change in Palestine. It also gave a kind of “materiality” to the sensation that the thought of “going on holiday in Palestine from Iraq” gave me.

I think this trip gave me the possibility to make a step ahead in the understanding of the place where I live now, focusing on details that would be impossible to perceive without a little distance. The most striking element was the fact that there are obviously very different ways of living a (post) conflict situation. In Palestine irony and an often sharp sarcasm have become a weapon for survival, a weapon that the Kurds have chosen (I wonder if this is the right word) not to embrace.

What is enchanting and horrific at the same time about Kurdistan is the total lack of lightness. Here everything is taken seriously. The motto that is constantly repeated, the mantra of daily life – the Kurds are like the mountains – give the tone and pace of life here. This is in fact an intense and fascinating way of looking at life, a way that completely lacks playfulness, a way that anchors people to the ground leaving a little space for dreaming.

Perhaps the slippery margin between dreams and illusions becomes a scary territory to venture in. Perhaps the schizophrenia between the weight of the mountains and the impossibility to look at a future that is further than tonight leaves here few chances to the liberating moment of laughter.

A hug for now

Until next Thursday