Good morning

Tomorrow I will go back to Italy and with today’s bulletin I close the first cycle with the idea and the intention to start again in September when I will be back in Erbil.

My backpack is still to be made and feelings are mixed: a huge longing for home combined with the strange taste that closing a parenthesis leaves in your mouth. In September a new year will start and many of the people with whom I have shared emotions experiences and ups-and-downs will not be here when I come back. They say that it is normal that post-conflict zones are transit places where people land, stay a little and then move on to the next destination. Those who have chosen the long term found themselves dealing with the coming and going of people, with reaching out to new people, as well as with a kind of fatalism about the fact that sooner or later, somehow, somewhere, they’ll meet the new friends they have met.

In the last week I haven’t had a single meal at home as there are so many people to say goodbye to - it seems that departures are sure, about the coming back, who knows, God willing, Inshallah.

I am not too much in the mood for evaluations, but I know I have changed, I feel that many of my sharp corners have started to smoothen and that I am learning the value of slowness and patience. I feel my feet more grounded and I feel more at ease with the “moralist” side of my choices. And now I long for clean air and clear skies, I need to recharge my batteries and enjoy the simplicity of dealing with things I know, without being constantly alert, without constantly keeping my eyes open, pondering every gesture, analysing every word.

I hope I’ll manage to practice the easiness with which I feel I can accept that my life is now made of two opposite faces that possibly will never reconcile, but will have to learn how to live side by side in a playful dialectic and mutual acceptance.

My thoughts are a little scattered today I feel half here and half there… I wish you all a great summer and if there will be still people up for reading in September, then I will come back with the second series of Kurdish bulletins

A big hug

Good morning

The past week has been full of very intense moments, many parentheses open and close, several emotions intertwine.

Wednesday I went to Alqosh for the graduation ceremony of the vocational course I visited when Susanna was here – I wrote about it in a bulletin few weeks ago, when I became blonde! It has been a very touching experience. The situation in Alqosh is always a little unstable– the town in itself is quiet, but the proximity to Mosul, its position in the disputed territories between Iraqi and Kurdish Regional governments as well as the great number of refugees make the situation quite complicated. You can’t visit Alqosh without an invitation and only residents can spend the night there; the atmosphere is always rather tense and it seems that there is rarely something positive to celebrate. In this context, the graduation ceremony became a very special moment for the community: there were about 250 people, the families of the participants, the bishop and all the local authorities. Everybody was wearing their best clothes, with a great display of shiny pointy shoes, high heels and even a naked shoulder that generated the noisy approval of the public. J. and S., the organisers of the course, are really special people: they have planned the ceremony in the tiniest detail, giving value to every small gesture in order to highlight the importance of what the students achieved in relation to the possibility and hope for a better future. J. is an amazing woman: a powerful combination of determination, anti-conformism and simplicity. She has blue eyes and a heart-warming smile. She is one of the most respected Kurdish activists for women’s rights and she was one of the 100 people who were asked to be part of the Iraqi National Assembly that was set up before the national Parliament was elected. When it was her turn to hand out the certificates, she hugged every single candidate, whether a girl or a boy, generating the surprised appreciation by the public.

There aren’t many women here who are as open and self confident as J.. The female universe is definitely not public and at times it seems almost inaccessible. The private dimension is powerful and uninhibited, hard to reach and open only if and when you are invited to join it.

Yesterday afternoon there has been the ”girls only” goodbye party of one of my students, who – after 7 years of procrastinations, has decided to get married. Her husband to be lives in Europe, getting married for her means also having to leave. It has been very special for me to have been invited to share such an intimate moment: it was a privilege to have the chance to meet these young women away from the formality that our roles impose on us in our daily interactions in university. It has been a fantastic afternoon of chats, laughter, dances and millions of pictures: the time has flown by without us noticing. They were all dressed up in their good clothes, three of them wore the Kurdish dress, with amazingly high heels, matching makeup and tons of gold. The sequined waistcoats that go with the dress worked as stroboscopic light matching the rhythm of the dancing. It was beautiful and surprising to see them unveiled, observing the differences in the expression, the way they carry themselves, the subtlety of the relation between hands and hair. The topical moment of the party was the arrival of P. – who was as late as usual despite of being the reason of the party. The official excuse this time was strong enough: she arrived in her wedding dress, to show it to her girlfriends who won’t be with her on her wedding day and to be hugged celebrated and photographed as a bride. Her arrival has been quite surreal to me: I wasn’t expecting her coming in the wedding dress (with matching makeup and jewellery) and never thought that you would wear your bride’s dress (outside the tailor’s workshop) before your wedding day. At the end of the evening, with the same spontaneous attitude, P. changed into her normal clothes, folded her wedding dress and took it with her in a plastic shopping bag.

A hug