In Iraq, a spot for a holiday Northern town awaits tourists

loading...

Editor’s Note: NEWS staff writer Alicia Anstead is sending periodic dispatches from Iraq and points along her itinerary to Baghdad, where she is traveling with fellow journalist Peter Davis of Castine, who is on assignment for The Nation magazine.

ERBIL, Iraq – Sherwan Rakeb Dizayee would like you to know that the staff at his hotel in downtown Erbil in northern Iraq, south of Mosul and north of Kirkuk, is eager to serve vacationing Americans.

“Erbil is a tourism city,” said Dizayee, whose Arbil Towers Hotel looks out on both the city and an old citadel, the perfect spot to watch a hazy sunset. “We have mountains and rivers. And this is the oldest city in the world – continuously without stopping.”

His own hotel is a cheerful place where locals gather in a central reception area to watch a big-screen TV late into the night. Around the corner, an Internet cafe is open until midnight, an hour later than the curfew enforced in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, and gunshots don’t ring out at night when darkness falls.

The rooms are equipped with furniture and appliances Americans would associate with a budget hotel – complete with a large dead bug in one corner of the room. But a suite on the eighth floor with a breathtaking view costs only $33 and includes breakfast – boiled eggs, cheese, rolls, vegetables.

While it is still not advisable for a woman to walk alone in Erbil, the women here clearly enjoy less stringent standards for clothing and social life than their sisters farther south. There also seem to be more assertive beggars. One boy followed me for a full block, his hand outstretched: “Please, Mama, I am hungry.”

Among Erbil’s attractions, Dizayee listed monuments, archaeological sites, restaurants, outdoor markets, a rock-polishing factory, cigarette manufacturer, and a new, modern Sheraton hotel. Erbil also is known for carpets, yogurt and goat cheese. And to Iraqis, Erbil is a sanctuary from the extreme heat of summer and offers a glimpse of snow in winter.

Like Maine, Erbil is vacationland. Or was. Under the Baathist leadership, Iraqis in other parts of the country were not permitted to travel easily to this area.

Dizayee is happy that Iraqis now may return to the playground of their childhoods, but he is more interested in Americans. When I mentioned the fact that Americans are not likely to visit a country where their soldiers are being killed nearly every day, Dizayee was quick to make a distinction between this northern territory and the rest of Iraq.

This area is referred to as Iraqi Kurdistan and has been under the protection of the American military since 1991. Although savaged by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s, during the 1990s residents here enjoyed a measure of political freedom. And it shows.

Erbil is busy and vibrant. It is the only place in Iraq where my anxiety about being a bull’s-eye for a resister’s potshot eased somewhat.

To its south in Kirkuk, American troops that occupy the former airport play soccer with local teams. At one game, 20,000 fans showed up, according to Sgt. Maj. Wade Gunter, who calls his on-base workout room the “best gym in Iraq” and added that he once drank a beer at Bangor International Airport, where his unit landed after the first Gulf War.

When Americans play soccer, they do not wear flak jackets, Sgt. Maj. Gunter said. And there has been no problem. Except that in the six games they played so far, the Americans lost four. This may be the only place in Iraq where Americans meet defeat with increased friendship.

In the eyes of many political leaders and businessmen, Erbil is a model for how all of Iraq might look in 10 years if security were restored and a representative government installed.

“Many people will want to know more about Iraq after this war,” said Dizayee. “Of course, this depends on the American forces in Baghdad. They are very slow in assuring the new government the U.S.A. promised.”

It also depends on the American forces in the north. Not all of them have been noted for their festive sportsmanship.

Rafid Jalal would like people to know that the political headquarters for the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Dakuk, about a half-hour south of Kirkuk, was brutally raided by soldiers in July. According to Jalal, members of the front were watching TV when their building was surrounded by Humvees and Apache helicopters, and armed soldiers kicked in the door. Nineteen men were handcuffed and bags were put over their heads. Their records, cameras and computers were confiscated, and the place was ransacked. The men were tagged, called “Turks,” and held overnight at the airport jail.

No one ever told them why, said Jalal. No one ever came back to apologize or to return their records. And the door is still broken.

When the war first started, the Turkmen, who say they are not affiliated with Turkey but who are underdogs among the more powerful Kurds, loved Americans. They formed close friendships with the advance team of soldiers stationed near Dakuk. One soldier achieved the status of local hero when he called in a U.S. medical team to save the life of a little girl who drank kerosene.

“We used to eat out of the same dish,” said one of the Turkmen of his American military friends who have since been stationed elsewhere. “We were not Muslims and Christians. We were brothers.”

The raid changed all that.

“I would like to ask the American government and George Bush: Is this the democracy he promised?” said Jalal. “Bush says freedom every five words. Is this the freedom?”

His brother added: “And we demand doors from President Bush.”

When I asked Sgt. Maj. Gunter about the raid, he neither confirmed nor denied it.

Here is what he wanted me to know: “We try not to be forceful, punitive or demeaning to any of them.”

But soldiers must do their job.

And perhaps someday – no one knows when – Iraq will be the vacationland Dizayee is hoping for.

Alicia Anstead’s “Notes” and articles she plans to write after her return from Iraq will be based on conversations with Mainers and Iraqis with common ties and her perceptions of daily life in that troubled and volatile region.