It is Friday afternoon, a time that is dedicated to the families. The air is clean and fresh after the rain, the park is crowded. Music blares from the loudspeakers, small groups of girls sit in the grass and chat, timid couples hold hands.

While strolling around we decide to stop for a chat in the playground: parents sit on the benches looking at children running around and up and down slides and swings.

He tells me: “I can’t resist, I need to have a go on the slide.”

I prepare my camera to take pictures.

Slides are covered in mud; it rained and children love to climb and challenge the slopes.

“Let’s try the swings”, I say.

There is a green one, we get close but underneath the seat with the feet brushing there are big, muddy puddles. In any case, a child with a stripy t-shirt has been faster than us: he sits and starts swinging, he goes faster and faster. The seat has no back, he rolls down and falls straight into the puddle; his mom comes to the rescue.

A little further down there is another one, it is white; the seats are rusty and hanging a bit, the chain doesn’t seem to be very reliable. I can’t resist: I sit and start swinging. I know that I shouldn’t. I am an adult woman and this is unbecoming behaviour: and yet I can’t resist. I slowly realise that all the eyes in the playground are on me. I know and I don’t care. Swinging is liberating; I laugh and laugh, he takes pictures. We tell each other: this microscopic breaking of the rules brings back to our mouths the taste of freedom and we laugh and we forget.

I see in the distance a man with a badge pinned to his tie, he looks at us and slowly comes closer.

“He is coming” I say. “Nah, we are not doing anything wrong”, he replies.

The guy in charge of the playground comes by, he doesn’t talk to me but talks to him: we don’t understand Kurdish.

“Mushkila – It is a problem” – he tells us.

It is all right – or maybe it is not all right at all, but we knew it… freedom really is a swing.

At times it happens like this, that a melancholic afternoon turns into a story to tell.

Anna calls me and asks me whether I want to go with her to see the garden of one of her colleagues who asked her for an advice and some ideas for the house he wants to build in the village where his family comes from.

So off we go, in a car that is an adventure in itself: it maybe used to be bulletproof, with a big black exhaust pipe on the front for its diesel engine and so tall that I need a push to climb on it.

We travel East, towards the Safin Mountain more or less an hour drive from Erbil. We head to the Barzan Valley where the main tribe of Kurdistan comes from; the road turns towards the right, from the valley we see on top of the hill the mansion of President Massoud Barzani. The road gets narrower until it becomes a dirt path that climbs on the mountains. The air is cleaner, the sky clearer. We drive still higher up and from the top of the slope in front of us we see a valley with the village of Kh. nested on a side. The village has a long story of fighters and guerrillas who fought against Saddam’s regime to preserve their freedom. The response to their struggle has been a destiny common to some 4000 other villages: the complete destruction that culminated in 1988. At that time there were about 1500 families living in Kh., after years only 70 decided to go back and rebuild their houses in the same place of their native village. They are mud houses craved in the mountains, completely camouflaged in the landscape and the only bit of colour are the clothes hanging to dry and the blue plastic sheets used for insulation. Anna’s colleague, S., comes from the most influential family of the village; he wears the traditional Kurdish dress and shoes, the scarf on his waist is dark and wrapped with such perfection that the gun on his side doesn’t move. He carries himself haughtily, in an almost old-fashioned manner; his hair is salt and pepper, his smile open and welcoming. There is a gentle shrewdness in his way of being in the world that says that he has seen a lot.

The first stop is in the plot of land where 20 years ago his father’s house stood and was later destroyed by Saddam. It stands on a small hill; at its back there is the gentle slope where the village clambers; the front faces West toward the valley and the sky getting ready for sunset, whilst the other side looks towards the cemetery, where two graves tower among the others: “They are my parents’”, he tells us. From the side of the hill we see a man coming; he wears a dark green traditional dress and a turban; his face is disfigured. The tone of his voice is happy and cheerful; after the welcome rituals there are the cigarettes rituals: I offer you one of mine and you offer me one of yours. Anna and I are greeted with a hand on the heart.

He invites us for tea; we happily accept. We climb again on the car only to drive the few meters between the top of the small hill and the gate of the pergola where the man with the turban welcomes us. The guests sit underneath the pergola, on a low step covered with rugs. The position is amazing: in front of us the whole valley opens up behind the silhouette of the small village cemetery. The sense of peacefulness is pervasive. There are no noises but the chatters voices, the children playing, the patter of the acrobatic chicken foot balancing itself on the beam of the shade covering the courtyard underneath. The man with the turban tells us that he is S.’s cousin and tells us the story of his disfigured face. Here in the village every man fought on the mountains against Sadddam. He was himself a peshmerga – which means freedom fighter or terrorist depending on who is reading, and it literally translates as he who doesn’t fear death (and therefore fights for his freedom). He had an important role among peshmergas and was very well respected. He points his finger toward a faraway spot on the side of the Safin Mountain. “It is there that I have been shot. Two bullets. One went through the left leg and didn’t leave any consequence. The other entered underneath my chin and got out from my cheekbone taking my nose with it. I have been lucky!”

While he tells us the story a woman with strong hands, head covered and a black dress comes. We stand up to show her respect. A jokily conversation starts about our ages – S. translates from us from Kurdish. The lady laughs. We ask why. The peshmerga without nose has told S. to tell us that she is his mother instead of his wife. She laughs again and we join in. S. and our host sit on two plastic chairs across from us, who are on the step where also the lady is sitting slightly far from us, and closer to the door. As time goes and the conversation becomes more animated several young men wearing dark clothes and carrying deep and inquisitive eyes come in. They all share the same hooked nose and wear a thin moustache. They come in and sit cross-legged on the ground all around us. “They are our sons” says the peshmerga without nose. Looking at them closely you can tell that they have all taken their nose from their mother. They are eight. And there are also eight daughters. The strong hands of the lady now acquire a whole new meaning.

One of the sons brings us tea: strong and sweet. It is time to go now, they invite us to visit them again. It would in fact be very nice. Before reaching the car we turn for one more salaam – hiding behind a door there are several women’s faces… here is where the eight daughters we heard about were!

In the car again, now heading to the opposite side of the valley, the sky is preparing for dusk, the landscape takes a warm orange shade. We reach the “garden” that in fact is half of a mountain that faces both the valley and the village. It is here that S. wants to build the house where he wants to find peace and quietness away from his two wives and six children. They start measuring the plot and gathering ideas. S. and his older brother, also wearing the traditional dress and the gun at his waist, discuss with a friend the details, the orientation of the porch, the best spot to watch the sunset. S. goes away for a minute and comes back with a refrigerated picnic bag: pistachios and beer for everyone! The amazing contradictions of worlds that intertwine, elements that resist, details that add on, unforeseen nuances for what is yet to come!

There is one more thing that S. wants to show us before night comes. It is a pool of spring water that is part of the property; he tells us that it is very old. There is a big tree clinging on a tiny piece of soil just above the spring. S. tells us about his family, sun starts to set. I look around. Under the tree by the spring, S.’s friend has rolled his mat and has started praying. Mecca is in the same direction of the horizon. The power of Nature gives a mystical tone to the situation that touches even someone as sceptical as myself.

S. tells us about his grandfather, he was a powerful and well respected man, a fighter, the owner of the village. In the 1920s he fought against the British mandate that wanted to “conquer” his land; he fought till the end, but didn’t win. S. tells us that if his grandfather would have accepted some compromises their social status would now be different. His grandfather lost everything but his dignity. “Maybe he was right” he says talking more to himself than to us “ It is not for us to know, History will tell to the next generations.”

October 4^th, 2009

Good morning

It has been a little more than one year since my first encounter with Kurdistan. Many things changed since then and many stayed the same. The curiosity and desire to understand are unchanged, the biggest transformation is maybe connected to my attitude and to the fact that my “patience” is maybe a little less than before.

The daily cohabitation with cultural difference generates moments of emptiness, suspension, inability to let go of things without pretending to square the circle. The same cohabitation, however, gives you the chance to understand that these moments are part of a process of constant negotiation and growth. You accept that impatience is part of the process of familiarization and adaptation and go on like this with ups and downs and no major dramas.

This past year gave me the chance to understand that an extended period of time and the slow pace help you to plant roots that, however small and fragile, are nurtured by their surroundings and thus generate almost imperceptible transformations. The tininess of changes surprises me in unexpected moments, in the gestures that make my daily life, in my ways of relating to others, of making plans, of looking forward, of living the present.

This extended period of time in a place like Iraq is allowing me to build the foundations of a more complex and maybe sophisticated geopolitical vision than the impressions of a traveler or the instinct of an observer would provide. It is indeed a great privilege which is nevertheless counterbalanced by the fact that in these past months my idealism has been seriously under pressure.

The close up into the mechanisms that move the big machines of development, humanitarian relief, emergency responses nurtures a cynicism that I fear might turn into disillusionment. Here, like elsewhere, maybe like anywhere, the smallness of individual (western) interests plays with “good will”, with the rhetoric of cooperation, of altruism, of heroism even to pave the way to profit, career advancement, personal satisfaction of big egos blown out of proportion. From the myth of the frontline – of the kind: “you know, I live in Iraq, it requires courage” – to the moves of those who use serious NGO to serve their own aims, the catalogue of aberrations is long and quite unpleasant. The discovery of the murky shades of a world that is alimented by the moral and material support of people makes you more alert and capable of navigating in the folds of reality. Getting to know the dark side allows for the positive side to emerge in a more apparent way; getting to know the dark side fosters the development of less naïve “strategies of navigation; getting to know the dark side strengthens the desire to nurture your ideals against the risk of cynicism taking over.

Furthermore, the slow pace makes you understand that sees need time to blossom and that patience, discretion and suspension of judgment gradually manage to breach the thick wall of protection that makes trust so hard in this society.

I have been back in Erbil for four weeks now and it has been a pleasure to gather the threads of relationships that slowly developed last year. The demonstrations of affection and care I received made me understand that I did manage to plant a little seed of trust last year that now needs attention and dedication to grow strong and multiply.

In these past days I realized how trust generates proximity and proximity generates sharing. This path is taking me closer to the heart of those who are around me and it is filling my heart, mind and memory with so many stories, emotions and sensations that seem to be too many to be felt, contained and dealt with at the same time. They are small, big stories of daily life, of a “normality” that often escapes my full understanding, of strategies of survival around and against impositions and conditionings. This is how I discover that you are not able to believe to survive the death of a relative who has been kidnapped and starved to death. This is how I discover the immense inner strength of women who develop micro-strategies to avoid conditioning and preserve a space of self-determination. This is how I discover the shade of sadness in the eyes of a young man who is in love with freedom and resists with dignity to the pressures of tradition.

This is how I discover that in the evening I am tired, overwhelmed by the emotions of the day and by the need to carry myself with a good deal of self control. This is how I discover that I wish I could have the right word for the right moment, but that in most of cases there is nothing to do but listening. This is how I discover that silence doesn’t correspond to powerlessness, but to a desire of hospitality that has no words to it. I often realize that I don’t have enough tools to deal with these situations and that maybe I am not strong enough. On a daily basis I remind myself of how this life is enriching me and of the desire that drives me to try and build a wisdom that is nurture by the acceptation of my own limits as well as by the power of small things.

A big hug