Celebrating

 Learning to dance, Zakho style with our little fingers interlocked. Dahlia's niece let me borrow two of her Kurdish outfits, one for each day of the wedding.

 My friend in Zakho, Dahlia, invited me back for a cousin's wedding. Until the last few years, weddings were held in homes. "Everything is changing," Dahlia explained. "We used to have the wedding for three days in the home, in the street." The first day was for bringing the bride to the groom's home and the application of henna. The second day was mainly about the ceremony, dancing, and eating. The third day was more of the same, but only a half day. In recent years, venues, like the hall for this wedding, have been very popular. "There's no mess to clean up, plenty of room, and now it's just two days," Dahlia said.  The first day was only for close family, and it felt a bit awkward for me to be there. There was no segregation of men and women, since it was for close relatives only, and about 100 people were there. Yep, that's "close family" in a large tribe, or a patriline to be more precise. Every person in the room, excepting myself, can trace his or her ancestry back to a single male. Amazingly, I could have approached anyone in this room and they probably could have recited their ancestry (on their father's side) and their relation to everyone else in the room. The bride and groom both belong to this patriline, which is to say that they are what we Americans generally call "cousins."

I kept mistaking guests for other guests I had met on my previous visit to Zakho. This was to be expected, I suppose, since every person in the room was (most likely) related through cousin marriage.

An ensemble of Kurdish musicians and singers performed on a little stage (not pictured here). The drumming was overpowering, and our ears were ringing. The bride and groom sat regally upon their own platform, where they received relatives and guests and bore patiently many photographs. A professional studio handled the video and photography. I'm sure hours and hours of footage and photos will be watched and re-watched by the family for years.
 

 This boy, center, was a lively dancer. He's wearing traditional Kurdish clothes, which most of the men did not wear, surprisingly.

 The bride wore the gold/yellow robes (center) on the first night of the wedding. The second night she wore a white wedding gown like you might see in the United States (and in many countries now).

 Gold galore. And it's all (mostly) real. Here Dahlia sews a strand of gold coins onto her robes. The belt in the foreground is also solid gold. We borrowed this gold for the second night. Dahlia laughed and said to me, "You'll see. We will be the poorest people in the room, even with this borrowed gold."  It was true.

 The entrance to the hall and red carpet for the couple to walk down.

This cousin of Dahlia's has been living in Canada over 30 years, where she works as an artist. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation about art!  She exhibited at a gallery in Zakho just last week. And she wasn't the only Kurd in the family who had emigrated. Part of the family lives in Seattle, and something about their living in the U.S. made them easy to spot, something about their manner. That and the black, plastic framed eyeglasses one of them wore (there are hipster Kurds!). For the adults, the wedding was a joyful reunion with their family and their native culture. I think the Seattle Kurds danced the hardest, laughed the heartiest, and took the most photographs. For some of their children, it appeared to be their first Kurdish wedding and perhaps their first Kurdish dancing lessons, for in Kurdish "wedding" and "dancing" are the same word.

 I couldn't have been more thrilled to dance at the wedding. It seems that Kurds generally are more reserved with their smiles and laughter, and I must have looked a fool for grinning so much. I'd dance until my feet hurt, and sit for a few minutes. Inevitably some relative would beckon me back to the line of dancers moving around the hall's perimeter. Learning the steps and arm motions was tricky, as the feet and hands followed different rhythms. Dahlia planted me between male relatives whenever I wanted to dance, saying that they were "stronger" dancers and would help me keep pace. Judging from the grins around the room, I wondered if she had ulterior motives.

 I never snagged a good photo of the bride, as she was constantly surrounded by people. Here you can glimpse her in the background, seated on the platform behind the line of dancers.

 I wasn't allowed a moment to myself, as I was always on the arm of some relative who had been charged with guiding me across the room, escorting me to and from the line of dancers, or serving as sentinel beside me. Perhaps this was filial loyalty, because everyone knew I was with an important lady of the patriline. Perhaps it was because, especially on the second night, there were strange (non-family) males present. I soon grew weary of being jostled about and passed off from one relative to another with little communication.  I felt desperate to learn Kurdish. The crowd and moving about prevented me from snapping as many photos as I would have liked, although I had plenty taken of myself. My cheeks burned from not fitting in, a blonde foreigner in Kurdish clothes trying to dance, who hardly knew any Kurdish and who grinned like a fool. There must have been 500 guests crowded into the hall, and as far as I could tell, I was the only (true) blonde in the room. I kept tripping over my long robes, which looked more beautiful on fuller-figured women whom I admired for their elaborate hair, makeup, and dress.

An announcement was made around 10pm, and women began pushing toward the door, speaking over one another and looking for misplaced relatives and handbags. A young woman appeared (pictured second from the left in the photo below) and gently placed my hand in hers. "I'm Dahlia's niece," she explained.

"Yeah, yeah, you're all her cousin or niece," I muttered, a bit flustered at being jostled by the anxious women.

"We go eat now," the nice explained. Hence the frenzy, I thought. Our pack of women crossed the parking lot and entered a second hall where rows of tables were covered with a variety of Kurdish dishes. Women scurried to and fro looking for the choicest platters. The niece pronounced several dishes "Ni xweshe" (not nice) before settling for a rice and chicken platter. We stood, as there were no chairs, and everyone ate rapidly from shared dishes. Within ten minutes, the crowd began pushing again out the door to rejoin the men. (I think the men ate later, although I didn't notice their absence.)

Around 11pm, Dahlia decided we'd had enough over-loud drumming, dancing, and socializing. We returned home to settle down, but guests continually passed in and out of the house. We heard their tea cups and dishes clinking until 3am.

The following pictures are actually from my first visit to Zakho. Dahlia took me to the market, where we looked at fabrics and jewelry. All the dresses you see pictured in this post are tailor made. Women typically select their fabrics and coordinate them with accessories. Sometimes women embellish the fabric with rhinestones.  The Canadian artist (pictured earlier) chattered happily about how much she loves Kurdish fabrics, her artist's sensibility for color and pattern evident. "The fabrics make great scarves," she said,"which I wear in Canada. So unique, the fabrics. My tailor in Canada loves it when I bring fabrics back from Kurdistan."

    "I wanna know where the gold at. Show me the gold."

 Gold jewelry is usually part of the groom's wedding present for the bride. During the first night of the wedding, a box of gold jewelry was presented with great ceremony by the groom's family. Trilling, dancing, and snapping photos, their phalanx approached the bride's platform bearing the box above their heads. Some minutes later the couple was coaxed from their stage and beckoned to join the dance. They were surrounded by males, the lead male waving a white cloth overhead, dancing with redoubled effort.

Not to get too carried away with romanticizing, but this wedding, especially its bold display of material wealth and celebration of kin relations, reminded me how very old a thing marriage is. That no matter how much "everything is changing," as Dahlia and many Kurds say, this rich ritual and symbolism seems as deeply engrained in Kurdish society as the Khabur River that cuts through Zakho.

Perhaps I'll take some tips for my own future wedding?