There are mountains beyond mountains

 There's still some snow on the mountains in Turkey, beyond the border with Kurdistan.
 

Shivering in the darkness, I pulled the blanket tighter around my neck and moved to the couch, where I hoped it would be warmer away from the window. Dohuk has been so hot and dry that I hadn’t thought to pack warmer clothes for the mountains. After much tossing and turning, I burrowed beneath the blanket, which was shortly thereafter pierced by invading sunrays at what I thought was 8am. Apparently, in the village the sun rises with startling intensity at 5am. Gathering the blanket around me I walked to the windows and watched the village of Shemsayyida turn golden under the peaking sun, then greener as the sun rose higher and the sky grew bluer. 

After a busy week visiting schools in Dohuk for my job / research, I had joined my employer for another weekend trip to her village. This time she had invited eight guests to her village home for a holiday. Because each guest has some stake in reforming education in Kurdistan, the discussion over breakfast became passionate and the gathering seemed more like an education summit rather than a weekend getaway to the village. 

Although the education problems we discussed remained unresolved, the group, invigorated by the debate, turned the conversation to sightseeing. It was decided that we should drive up to the border with Turkey where we could see Turkish mountains beyond the mountains of Kurdistan.

Late spring wildflowers, bursting forth in golden clusters and lavender and pale blue blooms on stalks.
 

Loaded into three vehicles, we set off for the border. In the 1990s only brave humanitarian caravans would have made such a trip, as my employer recounted. “Up ahead I will show you where the PKK stopped us,” she enthusiastically pointed out as we lunged around the mountainous hairpin turns in her BMW.  She was one of the first, if not the first, female drivers in this part of the country, and she drives with the same dexterity as other drivers in Iraq: dodging enormous potholes, passing cars in blind curves, and braking hard in gravel. There are no lanes. It might be argued that there are no rules of the road, just civility and experienced risk-taking.

 Men dressed as peshmerga (Kurdish freedom fighters) headed to a picnic. No doubt these men were freedom fighrters.

 

It seemed to be a happy reunion. Too bad I haven't attended a picnic, and the season is almost over.

“When they pulled us over, I was thinking ‘go ahead and kidnap me!’ I wanted an adventure,” my employer was telling me, her eyes wide and sparkling, her hands gesturing defiantly. I watched her with a mix of admiration for her bravery and fear for her driving habits. At that moment a yellow and black hornet the size of a hamster tumbled into the open passenger window and collided with my hair. The sound of the wind whipping into the open windows of the BMW muffled my shout, which my employer mistook for a reaction to her story. “Yes, it was a very exciting time. You know at that time the PKK was kidnapping everybody and exchanging them for prisoners with the KDP,” she explained as she took another curve a little too fast. Frantically swatting at the hornet, I knocked it to the floorboard where it became lodged next to my shoe. I stamped wildly at it, then swatted it with my sunhat. “My American friend who was with me then,” she continued, “was telling me, ‘Just speak English, pretend you’re a foreigner. ‘” Desperate to dislodge the hornet, I jerked the car door open and saw the jagged cliff edge rushing past. With one last swat the hornet tumbled out and over the cliff edge as the open car door took out several small bushes and clumps of weeds.  Meanwhile my employer had been scanning the opposite hillside for the spot where the PKK detained her. “There’s the spot!” she said, then looked over at me with her eyebrows raised as I pulled the door shut.  “You have to remain calm in these situations,” she said demurely. Whether she was speaking of being captured by terrorists or defending oneself from a beastly hornet, I wasn’t sure.

 

 

 We returned to the house for a delicious lunch and more discussion. Oh, the view from that house...