Good morning

With one more check on the grades and on the very complicated system of resits in relation to the major that students have chosen, the semester really seems to have come to an end. Besides the supervision of Master theses, I am trying to use these days to do some studying, even if tiredness and concentration don’t quite go hand in hand. I have started reading about the 1970s and 1980s Iraqi history. It is a time when the Saddam Hussein strengthens his power, the regime becomes more violent and the tensions with the Kurds more outspoken. These are also the years of the agrarian reform, of the collectivisation of land and of the first dislocation of half a million of people from the mountains down to the valleys to manage the state-designed agricultural cooperatives. The reason between the lines of this socialist turn is to cut the presence of the guerrillas in the border zones. The creation by the government of communes where farmers and villagers were “invited’ to move represents the core of the (fast) process of urbanisation in the north of Iraq . Basically this is what I want to write about, but I am still in the phase where I need to understand the how and the why of the broader picture. It is a is really exciting subject for me – and for now I stop here as I don’t want to spoil the surprise of what will be the content of a full article (that will maybe meet the interest of two people in the whole world! J)

The research possibilities here are endless. There is little written in Arabic, little in Kurdish and very little in English. And this is the case for almost every field of knowledge. The few books that are available are mainly about history or political theory and most of them have a very linear and almost anecdotic approach. It is rare to find any academic book with a really critical approach or transversal point of view. This obviously makes research even more exciting, but the access to sources is really quite difficult and for a number of reasons. As far as I am personally concerned, the most banal is that I don’t speak or read neither Arabic nor Kurdish – I hope in this sense to get next year some support from university to get a research assistant that could help me digging out documents. The other problem is connected to the fact that intuitions become territorial when people stick their nose in their business. The most common answer (this has frequently happened to my MA students) is that, yes, the document is available, but it really not interesting.

In these coming days we’ll understand how many students we’ll have in the department next year. It is a strange situation: several of them became interested in Sociology, but few decide to major in it. Quite a few of them said they would want, but their parents don’t allow them to. Sociology is here a relatively new discipline. I don’t know whether it is true or just an urban myth, but it seems that in the whole of Iraq there is only one person who holds a PhD in Sociology. Furthermore, there is a sort of diffused prejudice that attributes to those with a degree in Sociology a quite low social status. This belief is common enough for several parents to forbid their children to study this discipline. Next year our department will change name – from Sociology to Social Sciences – and I wonder whether this would make a difference, whether the word “sciences” will give us a more dignified status. Having a small department gives us the possibility to do some serious quality work, while having the chance to question social bias gives to the job an extra twist of challenge.

Let’s see how it goes!

Hugs

With today’s exam board we close the academic year. It is a strange feeling of both closures and openings. The new Head of the Department has introduced himself in the best of ways: he is a great supporter of the idea that students have to get “their hands dirty”, so he will probably not find my way of teaching too exoteric!

One of the recent discoveries of Erbil’s “hidden treasures” is that of Sami Abdul Rahman Park. It is the green heart of the city and occupies most of the North Eastern slice of the city, which used to be Saddam Hussein’s military zone until the 1990s. Most of new urban developments are taking place in this part of the city – in a perfect Dubai style and in the hidden belief that designing a city that looks exactly like any other in the world is part of being modern. The park is big, open in the evenings till late, full of flags, a real hub for meetings and socialization – the ideal destination for a walk after work. At the centre of the park there are two small lakes with fountains that are lit with fluorescent neon lights and swans-like pedaling boats, a restaurant that sells alcohol (despite of being in a public place and just a minute away from the Parliament), a rose garden, a climbing wall and a series of lawns called “garden 1”, “garden 2”, “garden 3” to 15! In the gardens there are small kiosks for refreshments – I drunk a raspberry slush that stained by tongue with such a persistent purple that lasted way after dinner! – benches and picnic tables where families set up their food drinks and music. At dusk there is a constant flow of families – from grandmothers to little children – with (brown plastic) baskets full of food (dolma are definitely there as one of my students told me as a comment to my bulletin on that subject!) who go to the park to enjoy those hours when the heat is bearable and maybe also to spare some cash on the oil for generators!

Last week the park was full of students – with thermos bottles full of tea with too much sugar piles of books and pumping music up from their mobiles – who were there to study for their final exams. Walking with Anna we ended up in one of the little squares in the park where there is a big statue of a famous poetess, whose name I don’t know. Besides the buzzing of mosquitoes and the chatting of the gardeners watering the plants, the sound of a voice caught our attention. We followed for a bit until we found a boy in jeans and baseball cap sitting on his own on a bench reading out loud from what clearly seem a poetry book. The voice was deep and the rhythm of the words mesmerising. We sat on a bench that was hidden by a bush and we listened without understanding, but we the clear feeling that we were rocked and transported into another world.

A big hug

Good morning

I write on a Friday since for a good part of the day yesterday I was absolutely convinced it was Wednesday – with all the troubles that followed as I thought I had an extra day for a number of deadlines… anyways… it seems that, for good or bad, certain things never change!

It seems ages since I wrote my last bulletin – the past days have been very intense and full of news. Susanna left Erbil, we went to Lebanon and I had my contract renewed! The instability is eventually over and, despite the very bad management of human resources by the university, now I know I can stay! The contract is for the next three years – three years for someone like me who is not good at long-term planning sound like an eternity; three years (plus one already gone) of life in Iraq sound like an even longer eternity…

For now I am very happy that I can stay next year: there are too many things that are still open and too many seeds that still need nurturing. Above all there is my still unwritten book – that my academic mentors keep on reminding me of – that sooner or later should come out; and maybe this is the right place for gathering some ideas.

One of the reasons why I am keen on staying is maybe connected to a “matter of style”. In the past years I have traveled a lot and some of my travels have been the origin or the cause to do some research on urban matters – they have been fast passages that gave me a vision of faraway places and the impression that I understood how things worked there. It is nine months that I live in Kurdistan and I have the impression that I have still understood too little to be able to say that I have understood. I want to stay here longer to try and understand – or maybe I want to stay to keep not understanding. It is a strange feeling that mixes glimpses of light with moments of total obscurity. I know I cannot go back to Italy to work – not for now and I don’t know for how long – however badly I miss my family and friends. This awareness makes an outsider of me, wherever I am. However paradoxical it might seem, I think that the idea of an extreme lack of familiarity with a place and a culture – like the one I experience every day of my life in Iraq – is emotionally and psychologically easier for me to handle in comparison to a place that might be more similar to home. For some strange alchemy I think I am less homesick this way. In one of the first bulletins I wrote that the radical differences I find myself negotiating with on a daily basis make an adventure of every day. A few months down the line, this is still true: this constant game of translations is definitely a good way to keep my restlessness at bay!

This week’s bulletin is a bit self referential and I apologise for this. Next week is the last of the Academic year and in these moments of transitions is quite hard to control the instinct to judge and evaluate!

Thanks for listening!

A big hug