It was the deadliest string of shark attacks the world has ever seen. In 2011, sharks in Réunion, a beautiful island, way out in the Indian Ocean started biting people way more than ever before and with lunatic violence. The epidemic forced local surfers, politicians, and business owners into a proxy war with ocean lovers and conservationists worldwide, where long simmering tensions boiled over. Réunion: Shark Attacks in Paradise is the story of what happened on this beautiful island, and t ...
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Matt Deseno is the founder of multiple award winning marketing businesses ranging from a attraction marketing to AI appointment setting to customer user experience. When he’s not working on the businesses he teaches marketing at Pepperdine University and he also teaches other marketing agency owners how they created a software company to triple the profitability for the agency. Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Mint Mobile: https://mintmobile.com/tmf * Check out Moorings: https://moorings.com * Check out Trust & Will: https://trustandwill.com/TRAVIS * Check out Warby Parker: https://warbyparker.com/travis Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
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เนื้อหาจัดทำโดย Servant Group International เนื้อหาพอดแคสต์ทั้งหมด รวมถึงตอน กราฟิก และคำอธิบายพอดแคสต์ได้รับการอัปโหลดและจัดหาให้โดยตรงจาก Servant Group International หรือพันธมิตรแพลตฟอร์มพอดแคสต์ของพวกเขา หากคุณเชื่อว่ามีบุคคลอื่นใช้งานที่มีลิขสิทธิ์ของคุณโดยไม่ได้รับอนุญาต คุณสามารถปฏิบัติตามขั้นตอนที่แสดงไว้ที่นี่ https://th.player.fm/legal
Hannah and Colleen take you on a tour of what life looks like as an American and teacher in Northern Iraq.
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62 ตอน
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Hannah and Colleen take you on a tour of what life looks like as an American and teacher in Northern Iraq.
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62 ตอน
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×Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 62 We're back with Erik! And he shares a more thorough walk through the old history of the Kurds. Learn more over at www.ServantGroup.org and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org. Here's a Rough Transcript! Hannah: Welcome to between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Woo hoo! Hannah: Hey, this is Hannah. I just wanted to put in a little disclaimer about this episode. The audio is not awesome. That's what happens when you try to record internationally over Zoom. So don't get distracted by the people in the background. Just pay attention to the history. All right, here we go. Welcome back to Erik. We did two podcasts with him just talking about his life in Iraq, and now we're going to talk about Kurdish history. It's just me and Erik today. Colleen's taking a vacation, so I hope I hope you're ready, Erik. Erik: Yes, I am. Hannah: Okay. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the history of the Kurds starting at the very well, I guess, the very beginning. What's the what's the earliest that we know about Kurds? Erik: Oh, I would love to have a precise answer for that. I think if, uh, to play it safe, I'm going to say very, very early. Okay. I think, uh, the Kurds like a lot of different groups that lived in these mountainous areas around Turkey, Iran, andSyria, they pop up a lot in historical records and sometimes, uh, play major roles in big, big world historical events, even though generally they're on the sidelines to a lot of those events. So, we see what some Kurdish nationalist historians would say that the Medes would be the early Kurds. So. Okay. So some would trace Kurdish lineage all the way back to the Medes. From what I've read, it's hard to prove that there's a self-conscious entity called Kurds moving through time without changing, without intermarrying, without shifting with other groups of people around those areas. But they do have a case for it as far as there's always been people living in these hard to reach regions that have been on the peripheries of empires that have resisted being kind of subsumed within bigger, stronger empires. They've always kind of sought their own independence and autonomy. So we have the history books and records go very, very early that there there have been groups of people living in these areas very much like the Kurds. And so they they'd be called by all kinds of different names, but sometimes they're called by their occupations. So, the Kurds had a long history of being, being shepherds. So sometimes they're called shepherds, sometimes they're called variations of different words sounding like Kurd, and at other times they're called by their language, which that happens later. But, there's all these terms floating around that have kind of attached to Kurdish. They've also been called very pejoratively by people that don't appreciate them. They've been called brigands and bandits. And it gives you an idea of the kind of reputation that these independent groups living in the mountains had for disrupting trade, disrupting routes of merchants and other groups that would try to get safely from point A to point B and just end up not getting there safely. Yeah. Because of these groups that would take advantage of their vulnerability. So there's always been groups there, and they've always been somewhat independent, played different sides on the kind of politics and history. And the Kurds would have been one of those. Actually, do you have any questions? Hannah: Well, I do want to clarify. When you talk about the Medes, that would be probably a reference point for most people would be like the Medes and the Persians from the Book of Daniel. Right? Hannah: Yes. The medo-Persian Empire, the Medes were early…built somewhat of an empire. And then the kind of merged or mixed, and then the Persians ended up being supreme over time. But there's a connection to some of those leaders. I need to look up which ones would have been part Mede. And so, I think if you read the history books and you go to ancient histories of these areas, whether it's in Syria, Turkey, Iran, or groups like the Elamites that are also mentioned in all over history, they're groups that basically reside in the mountains and then kind of descend upon the cities and sometimes destroy them and then go back to their ways. I should have said they've also been called nomads because they don't…haven't stayed put. You know, their are ways of life require, you know, grazing in different places with their animal. And so there have been sedentary Kurds, but there have also been the strong tribes would be the ones that are not tied to the land, but rely on others to work the land while they go on raids or other occupations. So, they pop up a lot. Yeah, yeah. Hannah: I imagine that their nomadic nature really is part of the reason it's hard to pin down. Like who are the Kurds and who are not? Erik: I think so, I think so. One book…I think it's called A People Without a State that was written by, I think, Michael Epel, which I really liked. He made a generalization talking about how important geography is to to understanding the history of different peoples. And so he would say, just as, say, the Arab peoples, uh, connected to the deserts and kind of ways of life that revolved around that kind of geography. You could say the mountains have played that same role for the Kurds or the Mediterranean, right? For the Greek world. So the mountains have played just very large in basically the way of life and their imagination of who they are and what they represent and what they are. So and you'll see that reflected in their writing, their songs and even their…even the way they speak today. The mountains loom large. So, I'm convinced that they have a long, long, long story, that's existed there for quite a while. Not always expressed in political terms, but they've always been there. Hannah: Colleen has a theory that she wants me to ask you about since she's not here…and get your opinion on. She thinks that the Kurds could be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Have you heard that? Do you have an opinion? Erik: You know, just off the top of my head, I'd have to look at what the merits are to the argument. I couldn't say. What we do know is that Kurds and Jewish people have lived side by side. And then there's been a number of intermarriages between the two groups. And a lot of Kurds would say that their great grandmothers were Jewish in different places, and you can find synagogues and across Kurdistan. So there's definitely a connection, and there's no doubt in my mind that there's been some, you know, intermarriages and stuff like that. But whether that makes them one of the lost tribes, I'm a little more skeptical of. But I haven't studied any of it. In general, I think that wherever the British people have been or Kurdish tribes have kind of been dominant. I think whatever the Jewish or Armenian minorities would have been a few levels down right from them. And you read…There's a I think there's a wonderful book called My Father's Paradise. In that book, I think they referenced that a lot of the Jewish people living in Kurdistan they would actually, this is fascinating, they would actually be the kind of merchants that would go through and sell things to the different villages as they did that. So they had, you know, networks of families in different places and moved merchandise from place to place. But because of that, a number of these Jewish merchants were also known as the storytellers because they would go from place to place and tell stories, and these house stories would spread. And so the Kurdish culture just loves stories and storytelling. So there's definitely a fascinating interplay between the two and even a certain kinship that at least expressed and if not literally just, in almost spiritual or cultural terms that they'll talk affectionately about each other. Erik: So, so you'll find the Medes playing roles in various biblical events, in the destruction of Babylon, the day of Pentecost, and in a number of other places. So fascinating, certainly. I think we more clearly see Kurds emerging from the fog. I think like during the Middle Ages, the Crusades, stuff like that, you start seeing there being kind of powerful families that arise. So you have the tribal level, but then when one tribe becomes really strong or one family becomes really strong and is able to kind of influence and by your loyalty or force, right? A whole bunch of other tribes, then then you get kind of what would eventually become like an Emirates or a Princedom where you have a now a kind of political entity that's not necessarily ethnic or national, I think, but definitely a political entity based on a family that has a lot of power. And so a famous example would be the Ayyubid dynasty, which was the Saladin's, um, family. So when Saladin, um, played his role in the Crusades across Egypt and Syria, um, what he left was the Ayyubid dynasty, a strong, strong dynasty of rulers that were Kurdish. Uh, and so these, these kind of and so the Kurds are just like a bunch of other groups that might have, um, these kind of emirate like or Princedom. Right? They emerge, but then they're subsumed or crushed within larger empires. So you start seeing those come up all around the Crusades time. And it's kind of chaotic because there's there's just a lot of different groups during that time. And so that then if I can just skip ahead because okay, so, so there's all these, all these groups, all these tribes living in this geographic, these geographical areas. And what you have are the rise of the Turks and also the Persians. And there's a religious divide between both empires. And so you'd get all those smaller entities would have to kind of pick sides or side with the one that's closest and strongest and able to compel them the most. The Kurds end up being in between both of these empires, um, that are fighting. But, uh, diplomatically, you have different Kurds who've always played a role in these bigger administrations. Right. And so there was a very, I believe his name is Idris Bitlisi. But like, okay, don't quote me on that. I may need to I may need to fact check myself later. I don't have my notes. Hannah: If you're wrong, we'll put a correction in the show notes. Erik: Yes. Hannah: You got that. Erik: So so he. Between this conflict, he rose in the Ottoman courts. He was a he was this figure that was able to kind of tour Kurdistan and convince a lot of tribal leaders on the peripheries of the Ottoman Empire that could have gone either way. He convinced a lot of families to side with the Ottomans. Part of that sort of religious reason, because they were Sunni. Right. And so there. And but also because the Ottomans were promising more decentralized arrangement with these tribes on the areas. And I think, I think at the time the Persians were a bit more, a bit more. Um, so anyway, in the 16th century, there was a big battle that was fought called battle Calderon. And that set the boundary between Persia, Turkey, and there were basically Kurdish families on both sides of that. And so some, some were more in the Persian area and many, many others were on the, um, Turkish side. And so. Yes? Hannah: Is that boundary where modern day Iraq would be now, or more towards Turkey or more towards it's Iran? Erik: Um, if you go north, I think Iraq is maybe shifted, but if you go north, it's roughly what the boundary is between Turkey and Iran. Hannah: Okay. Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It would be a big help. Erik: So anyway and so that starts this period, this kind of more modern period for the Kurds where they are, you know, there always seem to always be divided between various spheres of influence, whether it's nation states and empires or other things. There's never a full unity. But there are common ways of life. And so, uh, the arrangement is that there are… Oh. And then and then, of course, Turkey and Persia kind of compete over, uh, Iraq, uh, modern day Iraq and, um, Baghdad and uh, other cities in Iraq. So, so the arrangement between the Ottoman and the Kurds is decentralized. This is very, very common between patron client relationship is that the patron grants you certain privileges and you grant them, you give back loyalty. Uh, the patron might arm your tribe and with with the understanding that you will pay your taxes and fight for them when the time comes against their rivals. So this really works for the Kurds because they they can essentially ignore the central government most of the time and occasionally pay taxes or… it's a decentralized arrangement in which they're free to develop. Right? Hannah: Right. Erik: Okay. So this is where I think the I, the Kurdish political kind of expression starts to get more pronounced because they then have space to kind of fight amongst themselves, but then have different strong, uh, strong families arise that then arise to a higher level than tribe like a confederation of tribes, which is one family or one leader commanding many, many tribes underneath them. Right? And that functions on a decentralized level, or the empire. Eventually, these are called emirates. And these emirates get really, really strong and to the point where they can even fend off Ottoman armies that come to try to make them submit. There's a wonderful scholar named Martin Van Bruinessen, and he's written lots of articles that are for free on academia.edu. He's just one of the most fascinating writers on the Kurds, and he writes really cool stuff about this period of time and the complicated social arrangements during this time. Anyway, so they get so strong that eventually the imperial governments decide, we can't have this anymore. And so they're just, we can't control them. We need to crush them. They sent armies in. And this coincides with the time that the Ottomans realized they've got to get their act together and centralize their empire and modernize it, or else they're going to be left behind by Europe. And so they actually go and they crush these emirates, and the emirates become fragmented and they it devolves back to kind of like the lowest level of organization of tribe, which is smaller, smaller tribes with no mediating authority to kind of adjudicate their disputes. So, they become kind of anarchic again. And there's a lot of bloodshed and a lot of fighting. And so unfortunately, they created a bigger problem by having no authority or no law. But the emirate period is really important for the Kurds because this is where like these are almost semi states in which the ruler has all this wealth and resources and is able to patronize the arts, Kurdish language. And so you have a lot of these kind of writings that have been written, stories that are important for the Kurds. Those are written during this time. A lot of poetry. And so a lot of that kind of national identity that you see now was planted during that period because there was, you know, relative prosperity and an ability to create culture during during that time. Hannah: Because it's really the first time that they're, that they co-identify as like, hey, our tribe is not the only tribe that has these, these cultural things. There are all these other people too. And we can get along and we can get together. Erik: That's a good point, actually. Yeah. I think that their, um, one of their poets laments that everybody encroaches on us and divides us. And, and so there is I think there is an understanding, although it's not again, it's not a unified political understanding of who they are. But there's a linguistic, more connections, uh, are made. So even when these emirates are crushed, those cultural products, creations endure. And people have kind of rescued those from the past and use them to tell the Kurdish story in our times. So that's that's pretty cool. There's um, I'll just say this again, if people like reading, um, there's a famous Ottoman traveler named Evliya Çelebi, and he traveled through the Ottoman Empire during this period of time. And he I mean, it's incredible because sometimes he's just fleeing for his life because someone in the emirates wants to kill him or the his patron decided they didn't like him anymore. But it's super entertaining and he just it's a good historical record of a traveler who went to these places and lived under the the permission of the rulers of different places and told just great stories. And some of some of the stories are a bit fantastic and hard to believe, but it's something else. Erik: So that period of time, um, I think the Kurds, if we went way back, we'd go before Islam for the Kurds. But. Okay. Um, the Kurds eventually did become Islamic over time under these different empires. And so, so there's always been a level of there had been a level of loyalty between Kurdish tribes and the imperial center of the Ottoman Empire, um, because of religion. And so that's always been there's always been a you have the ethnic identity, but then you also have the empire, which is also united to a strong religious identity. So some of those kind of work against each other sometimes. And so at least politically. So if I were to go to the next period of time, okay, eventually there does again kind of build up some, some form of law and, uh, tract after this period of chaos. Different important. Religious families are able to eventually mediate conflict, establish law again, and become kind of influential and able to rule the Kurdish areas again. And so after this is 19th century, early 20th century, you have big groups again, and instead the Ottomans and others, instead of trying to kind of just crush Kurds, they would instead just try to pick the winners, decide will pay you to um, and will arm you. And then they those groups would then become the strongest out of the rest of the groups and be hopefully be loyal to the Ottomans. So that was a new kind of imperial policy of trying to modernize the empire. Also take take the kids of the ruling Kurdish families and have them grow up in Istanbul and learn the ways of the empire and stuff like that. So I think then because of those, those sons and daughters of these important families getting educated in the Imperial Center and reading all of what's going on with, the different nationalisms in Europe and they begin to foment their, their own sort of Kurdish nationalist. Yeah. Hannah: So it kind of backfires. Erik: Yeah. And try to promote that with, with their own families and you know, some, some tribal leaders kind of are like, that's interesting. I'll use some of this for myself, but they're not entirely nationalists. It's this kind of what they call proto nationalism. Um, World War One happens, and, um, the Kurds are not able to capitalize on the moment to get their own nation. Um, instead, they're. Hannah: The Ottoman Empire kind of falls apart at that point. Erik: Yes. Fell apart and, um, and the pieces were kind of a lot of people were trying to pick up the pieces. Yeah. So you you have Greeks, Turks, um, the French and English carving out spheres of the Middle East. And, and so the Kurds were not able to… they they weren't able to get the same kind of support, um, for their nation. Hannah: Advocate for, hey, we are a solid group. We should have our own space. Erik: Yeah. Hannah: As the Europeans kind of come in. Erik: Right. And then the there were a few treaties that seemed to suggest that they could. But then I think the real world kind of power politics came in when the Turks were able to reassert, uh, control over, over parts of Turkey. And that eventually meant that the Kurds were not able to really unite. It was it's it's a big mess. Soo anyway, once again, I guess in the 20th century, uh, you find there being a reality of Kurdish existence, a Kurdish ways of life and with a historical basis for their being on the land that they're on. But you also have the fact that they're kind of folded into now a lot of other spheres, nation states. And, you know, unfortunately, like an empire isn't just necessarily defined on ethnic lines, but like a nation state is. So they're very much losers in each of the, uh, nation states that they're put under. And they, they, they begin to be, um, suppressed on, on a language, on culture, on, ethnic grounds, whether it's Arabization policies and in Iraq or, Turkish politics in Turkey, uh, or Persian politics. So the 20th century was a really hard century for Kurds everywhere. Yeah. Hannah: Can you talk a little bit about Arabization and what that means? Erik: Um, well, I think in the context of Iraq now, I think there's there's a more complicated story to the Kurdish story in Iraq than just Arabization, because there was a number of interplay between the central government and the Kurdish tribes. And that wasn't always, um, at odds. But Iraqi politics gets more nationalistic and and goes away from monarchy towards like republic. And there were… it was kind of a tumultuous. And in 1958 there had been a lot of coup attempts by military officers that had been kind of schooled within Syria and other places in ideas of Arab nationalism. Right. And so, so any weakness on the part of the monarchy towards minority groups would really upset these nationalist officers that wanted a strong Arab state. And so there had been a lot of coup attempts. And in 1958 one succeeded and the royal family was was executed time forward there, there was only just a lot of assassinations and coup attempts successively by by successive leaders. But so the kind of that kind of politics ended up, um, much more aggressive against, you know, Kurdish separatism or Kurdish desires to be autonomous or Kurds just not wanting to play play ball with central governments. So I think Arabization this comes later during, I believe during the, the Baath Party. Um, there are certain valuable areas of Iraq like Kirkuk in which, um, that had Kurdish majority areas. And so there would be persecution of Kurds making their life difficult, or forcing families out of some of these cities and then bringing resettling Arab families from the south into cities like Kirkuk. So what you'd see is the goal over time was to make a city… shift its demographic balance from from Kurdish to Arab. And so that's super messy. Hannah: Not so much like we want the Kurds to act and behave and co-marry with the Arabs so that eventually they go away. But we don't want the Kurds to be in the city, so we're going to send them somewhere else. So we have control of this area? Erik: Yes. I don't think it's, uh, trying to dilute, like dilute or make, um, you know, make everyone intermarry. It's more thinking in terms of group and one group that policy pursued during the Saddam years. Um, but I think it was I think it was also practiced in other, other places with a strong Arab nationalism like Syria. I think the Kurds are are survivors of history. Um, they've somehow, um, clung on and been able to… it's incredible that they not disappeared. Um, right. And they have lived through some of the toughest realities of the 20th century. When it comes to warfare, towards how groups adjust to nation states and state building. Uh, they got they got some of the hardest parts of that. Um, I know we haven't talked about the some of the major things in the latter half of the 20th century. We go to the Kurds, but, um, yeah. Hannah: Yeah, I think we have some old episodes where we talked to Dave about Iraq history, where he goes into some of that more modern Kurdish history. Erik: Yeah, yeah. Hannah: From Saddam on, at least. It's always a pleasure to get to talk to you. Erik: Uh, one other thing. I, you know, I mentioned the Emirate period and then later period and, uh, spoke pretty generally. But I think one of the things I really just find a lot of joy in is that when you're dealing with a group as unique and independent as, uh, Kurdish tribes and Kurdistan, you're not you're not going to get the same sort of leader as you find other places. And so what I find is, you know, larger than life characters who are utterly unique, who are able to command with their charisma, uh, great loyalty from their followers. And it's not like you're not getting the lowest common denominator of person. You're you're getting these… just how how does this person exist? You know what? What created this person? They're so interesting. And it's really a joy to just read about them and and just admire them. So I, I recommend. Hannah: Well, we are out of time. But we'll talk to you again soon. Erik: Sounds good. Hannah: All right. Thank you so much, Erik. Bye. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servent Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 61 Part 2 of our interview with Erik about life and culture in Iraq. Also, an amazing story of how he survived a 100mph crash on a highway! Learn more over at www.ServantGroup.org and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org. Here's a Rough Transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Woo hoo! Hannah: So we talked about female and male dominated spaces when you were around Kurdish or Arabic women. Did you? How much of that tension did you feel? Was it uncomfortable? And how much of that do you think came from what you know and like women actually being like, hey, don't talk to me. Erik: So in general, I almost never speak to women publicly, that I don't know. Sure. Right. So if I'm at a restaurant and it's very natural common just to be ignored, Right. Because girls go out with girls and they you know, that's that's their time. And there is a lot of it is a bit of a dance, though, right? Because there's dynamics between, you know, the guys and the girls. Right. Even if they never speak to each other, there's stuff going on, right? Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. Erik: And so and everybody's kind of very closely curating their image, through both phones, social media and presence in public spaces. So that's, I would say that. But in general, don't really get to talk or don't talk to people that I don't know. And now if I if I have students and their families, then by all means always show respect and greet, greet people publicly when you recognize them. And it's people do like to be recognized and publicly. So whether you're, you know, a guy or a girl, if you're if you're talking if you recognize someone, it's it's good to I think recognize them publicly. Tensions? You can't think of a lot of tensions that I that I've that I've felt I haven't been in too many difficult situations. I think when moving between communities. I think I felt more tension or at least been more aware because things are changing based on the community I'm working with. So I was very comfortable around Kurdish people, right? I taught, taught them, had a lot of interaction. But when I moved to Yazidis, well, that's a whole different story of, of what's, what's going on there. And then there's Christian communities, too. So I think moving between communities, it's the process of kind of learning and being just very observant, right. Of your surroundings and how your how you're treated as a guest. So being a guest is a, you know, superpower and skill that you have to develop to be a good guest. And they are extraordinary hosts, right? And that's also something we have to learn. I think think the ladies have to learn that a lot with greater detail because they'll get really judged if they're bad hosts. Right. Hannah: Yes. Erik: And and I'm people would just assume that I would be clueless about that because I'm a guy and and I'm, you know, not married. So they would just assume that I'm not able to host or cook or do anything. But so so there's differences there. But then when I was in southern Iraq, I was really on high alert because I had no idea what I was doing there. And there's other complications of, you know, having spent no time there before, and then totally different religious community that I'm working in. And then I was teaching at an all girls school where all the conservative families sent their sent their daughters so that they would have no interaction with men. So that was that. Then I was super trying to be on my best behavior, but that without knowing all the rules. In general, I think that the reason maybe I haven't felt a lot of tension is that Iraqis overlook faults a lot for foreigners and they are very generous. And if you do say something that's horribly awkward or wrong, they'll try to rectify the situation for you or it'll be left unsaid and you'll never know about what you did, right? Yeah, but everybody else will. So I've probably, you know, made many, many mistakes that people have generously overlooked. It's a real lesson in hospitality, the fact that people are not quick to take offense, but to kind of sidestep that for your sake. When I first went to Kurdistan, I definitely felt nervous around ladies because I had no idea, I expected it to be a lot more conservative than it was. Colleen: How did you see the expat community change while you were there or in the different places that you were? Erik: So I think the expat community was a lot smaller and more tight knit when I when I first arrived and and composed of a lot of a lot of families actually that had been working in the area for quite a while. So a lot of people who had a lot of context in the cities they lived in and the places they lived in. And over time there's just been so much more turnover and so much more volume of foreigners coming through. And not just Westerners, not just Americans, but people from all over. Right? Aid organizations, international aid organizations from all sorts of countries have been through. So for the place they have gotten used to seeing a lot more foreigners pass through work and leave. So I'll say like there's way less of a wow factor now when when a foreigner arrives, you might get stopped on the street. People will always want to know where you're from, what you're doing, and that that's an area of interest that will stay. But it's a little less of a novelty to society that that there'd be someone like you there working. So the kind of work has changed. There's a lot of aid that's come in. And between 2015 and 2017-18, there was just a lot a lot of organizations. Since then it's become very small again. So there's far fewer organizations working in Iraq. And and so it's becoming a smaller community again, from my observation. Those organizations are still there, but maybe they've pulled their offices out of Suly or Dohuk and maybe they have one big office in Erbil. And then they have, you know, whatever whoever their staff are will be local partners in, you know, Suly, Dohuk or any other region. And they won't actually have a lot of foreign workers in those places. And a lot of those aid organizations shifted to southern Iraq, to Mosul after 2017. Now, I'm not sure where they are. So the cities have grown a lot over those same years. A lot more shopping, a lot more malls. The cities have grown quite a bit in the last years and over let's see, yeah, over the last seven years, the biggest growth, I think in like a city like Dohuk or Erbil has been from people moving from southern Iraq into the Kurdish cities. You have lots of lots of Christians and Sunnis and some Shia groups all relocating their homes to to these northern Kurdish cities. So that's the biggest growth. Colleen: Did you find most of your friendship and community in the expat community or in other places? Erik: I think while I worked at the high schools, most of my community was my team and the students and their families, and that was a really, really wonderful experience, being so connected to families. So most of my community would not have been expats during the first years, but after, when I moved to Dohuk, that kind of flipped. Most of my community at that time were the, you know, international workers and people working in the camps and my team. And so I think some of that was a difference between maybe Suly and Dohuk, but also just having less of a foundation in Dohuk with with families. And I think Dohuk is a little bit more private of a city. So because of that, most of my community were expats in Dohuk, my own team, or non-native people in Dohuk. What I mean is not people from Dohuk. So I had a whole bunch of Christian friends from Mosul who who were displaced out of Mosul. And I'd hang out with them a lot or a lot of Yazidi friends from Sinjar or even even Syrian friends who'd come over from Syria. And now we're living in Dohuk. So basically, I found that a lot of the families who had migrated to Dohuk were up for starting friendships, right, in relationships and up for having having me over to their homes and connecting or going out. And so it just shifted because it seemed that a lot of people from Dohuk were pretty well established there. And I find that the circles of friendships go really deep, but sometimes the circles are rather small. In my case, I ended up connecting with more people from outside. That's not to say I don't know people from Dohuk, but …in general. Hannah: I noticed that more in Dohuk than even in Hawler (Erbil) that it was like they didn't know how to be friends with people outside of the friends that they kind of grew up with, because Dohuk is a little bit more village-y, and everybody that's there is there and has been there forever. And their grandparents were friends. And so there was a little bit of a like, we like you and we want you to be part of this, but we don't know.. we're not quite sure how that works. Erik: Yeah, I'd agree because I think the people in Dohuk are very, very respectful people. They treat you very courteously wherever you go, generally. But the, you know, the how you connect and be friends. That's a different question. And I think that that's, you know, a testament to actually, up until recently, it has been a very small place with not a lot of foreigners there. So it's understandable that that's kind of an adjustment. Also there they have a, you know, a long history and, you know, deep, deep connections to families and neighbors and very close with cousins and siblings and big families. So if you think about it, they have a very rich social life already, right? Hannah: This is the middle, the middle of the podcast where we interrupt ourselves to tell you things. And the only thing I really want to tell you is that you should go to Iraq because it's awesome and we'd love to get you there. Colleen: Did you have a favorite food while you lived in Iraq? Erik: I think the best food in Iraq is home food. And again, I didn't spend much time in people's homes. So, but actually, I love Dolma, Yaprax, and there's some some meat dishes that I really like. I really like Koozi, which is like this slow cooked lamb over rice. That's just very tender and delicious. They've got a lot of good food. Colleen: So if you ever go out at night with with the guys and do the Serupe, the head and foot soup. Erik: Definitely did do that. Yes. And actually, it tastes really good. So. If you can get past the description, I, I kind of liked it. Colleen: Great. Did you have any favorite adventures or experiences? Erik: Oh, man. Let's see. I mean, of course. But there's just. There's just a lot to choose from. I think I did survive a high speed taxi crash on a highway. And I've gotten I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that story over the years. Should I should I go there? Colleen: Yeah, you should. Hannah: Tell a story. It's a good one. Erik: Well, it was I was on my way to to get a flight out of the country for Christmas to meet a cousin in Germany. I got in a cab between Suly and Erbil to get there, and it was. It was a full cab. So I was in the back middle seat with no seat belts. The back seat almost never has seat belts. And the two people in the front did have seat belts. So we were going and he just when it came to the, you know, straight straight portion of the highway between Kirkuk and Erbil, he just started going so fast. And I think when I last looked at the speedometer, we were going 160km an hour somewhere, somewhere near like that's I think that's about 90. [It's actually closer to 100mph.] But eventually somebody tried to cut us off and we lost control of the car. And we, we slid into the divider of the highway and crashed into it and flipped over. And then the vehicle started rolling across the the oncoming lanes of traffic. And as we are rolling, my door bends off the car and then I fall out of the car with the two two other guys. So this all happened very fast. Uh, the next thing, the next thing I was aware of was that I was out outside of the car, face down in a field, and I had all this, like, kind of moist dirt in my mouth. And so I guess I wasn't aware of whether I had legs or not or whether the car was on top of me or what what was going on. But so I just thought figured I just lay there. And when I when I looked over, there was another guy face down and then to my left and the other guy on my right was in the same position. But I just look at them and they just they just hopped on their feet immediately and just kind of like casually, like brushing off the the dirt from their clothes as if like, nothing had happened. So we work perfectly fine. I had we miraculously landed on a field with with moist dirt between Kirkuk and Erbil. And I stayed there just a little longer laying down because I didn't want to hurt anything. And while I was there, somebody like picked up my glasses and brought it over to me and someone else picked up my phone that had flown out and brought it to me. And by that time, I finally did get to my feet and the car was totaled. So it was a it actually was a bit emotional. Once when I called my parents, when I called my parents, that's when the kind of release came. It wasn't I hadn't realized how much tension I had in my body, but I went over to the taxi, got my stuff out, and somebody else offered me a ride and I got in the next cab and made it to Erbil to get my plane on time to make Christmas with my cousin. Hannah: Um, no major injuries or? Erik: I was really sore. My ribs were really sore, but, um, I mean, not a scratch, really. Not a scratch. Physically. Colleen: Your glasses and your phone were both fine. Erik: Everything was fine. And the other. The other thing about that, which was funny as I was driving away, which is a very, very Kurdish thing, the the other taxi driver that offered me a ride as we were driving away, he kept on looking back at me in the back seat and trying to explain that he had seen everything and just to simulate it, he would yank his steering wheel back and forth just to show that he saw that what happened to our car? So, um, and I realized after the fact that as we rolled across the highway, I involuntarily screamed just this involuntary thing out of my body, and no one else made a sound. So, I was a little embarrassed after that. I was the one that couldn't just, you know, just take it silently. But that was that was that was amazing. I've had a lot of funny experiences in in people's offices. Anyway, I'm really grateful that was. Yeah. That that story didn't end badly. Hannah: Oh, my goodness. Erik: Other important, other fun things. I think if you're in Kurdistan, there's so many cool places to go. So I loved going to Lalish, which is the Yazidi, most important Yazidi temples and then going to Korek mountain and, you know, being up in the mountains in the snow and getting a renting a cabin there. But there's there's a lot of cool, historic things to do in Kurdistan and have a lot of good memories of going there with friends and teammates. There's a lot to see. Colleen: What do you miss most? Erik: Um, like, I really like walking through cities and I like that Dohuk was really walkable, and it's neat because in a small place or in a place like that, people really get to know you everywhere you go. And so it's even though it's not a small town, Dohuk, I mean it's a big city. But but everywhere you go, it's like you're known and you have these little personal relationships with every little shopkeeper and every place you go. And if you're coming from a city in America, that might not be an experience you have often, but it actually does fulfill something in your heart, I think, to have all these little connections and to be placed right, even if there's some discomforts from being an outsider. There's a lot of little things that I appreciate about it. And so I lived for a while. I lived above a mish mish, which is a sweet shop that delivers cakes and sweets all over Dohuk. And in the morning sometimes I just go downstairs and help them, you know, set the tables or just sit down and, you know, just a lot of just very familial kind of casual friendships where you just you just hang out. And I do really miss that. Yeah, I missed the hikes as well. There's a lot of cool places to hike in Kurdistan, and it's a real fun activity to go, you know, put some food together and go up a mountain and spend a morning up there. And I miss people, of course. I miss them. Colleen: Of course. That was assumed already. Hannah: Yes. Erik: Yes. Hannah: Well, we've talked some about reverse culture shock coming from Kurdistan back to the US. What's it like for you going back to Mexico? What things are like, wow, this has really changed? Or just, because it's been a long time since you've lived in Mexico, right? Erik: I'm like 18 years. Hannah: Wow. Okay. Yeah. Erik: Yeah. So I think to back up, I didn't have a lot of culture shock when I moved to Iraq, and I credit that partially because of my background here in Mexico. Some something about that wasn't completely, totally foreign to me. So I can't say that I feel a lot of reverse culture shock either. It's really nice to step back into Mexico and I've desired to do that for many years. I think that whatever the shock is, it's just because of it's it's a life life transition, right? And so taking on a new job or stuff like that. But Mexico is a very warm culture as well. And so I've actually the city I'm living in right now reminds me of Dohuk. It's surrounded by mountains. It's super small and walkable and people are rather conservative. So like, you know, people are glancing in my shopping cart, you know, inspecting my items, you know, as I'm in the lines, you know, there's like not a lot of personal space. And so there's a lot that reminds me of of Iraq. And I'm actually I'm actually really enjoying it but it feels a little more like home. So I am an outsider in the new city. I didn't grow up in northern Mexico, so that means I am there's a lot of cultural things that I'm having to learn here because it's just there's a lot of different differences between North and South. So yeah, um, I'm still kind of learning things culturally. I don't know if that's a good answer to the question. Colleen: But it makes sense. I mean, I felt like some of those things that for me, moving to Nashville, culture shock or reentry was eased in some part by the fact that the South is such a different culture than where I grew up. It was easy to treat it as, Oh, this is just another foreign country, rather than like recognizing all the things that were different from where I grew up or that, you know, it wasn't how I experienced it growing up. Erik: I'd say the other I think maybe I'm just fortunate that the place that I have landed here has a really kind of tight knit special community and they're very hospitable. So it's it's not like I'm starting out as a stranger. And and so I think I would feel I would feel the loneliness probably a lot more if I were starting out, like in a new place completely alone. Right. That's really nice. Hannah: Your Spanish is all coming back to you? Erik: Well, well, yes and no. I think, you know, after so I am a native and fluent speaker, but there's a lot of work to do, let's just say. And people do make fun of me. That's nothing new! Hannah: You have like Kurdish words come to mind instead of the Spanish one or I mean you got a lot of languages floating in there. Erik: Oh, man. You know, I know in Kurdistan I would certainly sometimes Spanish would be it wouldn't be an issue until I spoke to someone on the phone in Spanish. And then the next day in class I'd mix in some Spanish. Um, but actually, no, there are Kurdish expressions that come to my mind when living life. And I hope I hope that's always the case. I want it to be with me forever. So. And if I lose it, I have to go back to Kurdistan and get some more. Yeah. Colleen: We've taught our roommates over the years several Kurdish phrases that are still a part of our lives. So yup. Hannah: And we we frequently ask each other like, "What time is it?" in Kurdish, because it's easier to think of it that way than in English, which is bizarre. Erik: But yeah, I think with at least with my even with my siblings, we grew up speaking English to each other inside the home, right. And Spanish in other places. But, but now when I reconnect with siblings, we basically speak in Spanish. And what that says to me is that this is the time that we shared together. Right. And the place that we shared most of our lives together. So speaking of Spanish cuts past everything else and goes right to home. Right. And so I think it's an unconscious thing, but that's what that's a way of being kind of close to each other. And so I think that's I could do that with, you know, teammates from Kurdistan too, you know, a little a little Kurdish word here and there brings back a lot. Hannah: Yeah. Well, thanks for talking to us. Colleen: Yeah, thanks for giving us your time. Yeah. Erik: Sure thing. Very, very nice to talk to you. Colleen: We'll have to touch base again with some stories from Kurdish history. Erik: Okay. Colleen: And or Kurdish myth, maybe. I don't know which where those stories all fall, but it'd be fun to have you share some of those stories with us. Erik: I definitely need to polish up and get some student consultants. Hannah: There you go. Erik: To help me out with that. But yeah, I'd love to. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.Org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening. Erik: Excuse me. ACHOO! Hannah: Bless you! Erik: Edit that out. Hannah: It's going to go in the end, the bloopers part.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 60 Hannah and Colleen interview our friend and teammate, Erik, about his life and experiences teaching and living in Iraq as well as his studies of Kurdish history and culture. Learn more over at www.ServantGroup.org and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org. Also, here's a link to the book Erik recommends in the show! (https://www.amazon.com/Kurdistan-Global-Stage-Kinship-Community/dp/0813563526) Here's a Rough Transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah! Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. I hope so. Hannah: Uh, we have our first international podcast, Colleen. It's very exciting. Colleen: That is exciting. Hannah: We're going to talk today to our good friend Erik. Erik served with us in Iraq for many years, seven, seven ish years. Um, and he started the same time as me. So we've been in this for a long time. Not as long as Colleen, but we're trying to catch up. Um, so Erik grew up in Mexico, and that's where he is currently. He lived in Suly and was on a team with you. And then he was in Dohuk with me for a little while and then has also done some stuff in Southern Iraq as well. And so we're just going to talk to him about his life in Iraq, because we're not men, so we don't know what it's like there for men. Colleen: You have a unique perspective. Hannah: Yeah. Thank thanks for coming, Erik, or thanks for being there and recording with us. Erik: Well, really happy to be here and to have been there with you. Colleen: We thought we might make you try to tell us which of our teams you actually enjoyed being on more, but we decided that you're really nice and that wouldn't be fair to you. So we're not going to ask you that question. Erik: I would say something very even and diplomatic. Colleen: Yes, because you are diplomatic and we appreciate that. Hannah: Yeah. So I guess our first question for you, which is our first question for everybody who works for SGI, is how did you how did you hear about SGI? How did you get started with us? Erik: So I would have heard about SGI actually somewhere in middle school or high school. I'm not sure if I would have actually put together that it was SGI, but I began hearing people that my parents knew talk about it, specifically Jerry Brown. So I was aware of work in Iraq and that there was a group in Nashville working in, in the Kurdish region. And, and I kind of slowly pieced piece things together from there. I think I heard a lot more about it right as I was getting ready to leave college. And that was because Jerry contacted me very directly and said, hey, consider consider SGI. And, they're amazing. Hannah: Yeah, that's great. You got that real personal contact. Colleen: So was Jerry the main reason you chose SGI or Iraq or like, what kind of got you the rest of the way, right? Erik: So I hadn't been shopping around for like, organizations as I was just I had studied Middle East history and I had a general interest in the Middle East. And really it was Jerry's personal note and kind of right at the right place at the right time, right as I was about to start the job hunt. And and he he basically said that SGI and Iraq and Kurdistan are would be a really, really good first entry into the Middle East And to getting a sense of whether that was something for me or not. And he gave me examples and we really had a good relationship. So the fact that he kind of vouched and then provided a personal connection with with the director of SGI, that really helped me. And as soon as as soon as we actually spoke directly, that then it was almost it was settled very quickly that this was a this was an organization I could work with and that I could respect. Yeah. Hannah: So what did the interview application process look like for you? Like I lived close enough that I could come for an interview. How did you how did you do that one? Erik: I think I was not in person. I did submit an application. I remember that. I can't remember what I wrote, but it was a it was a Skype call with Dave, and I think I did that the day after I graduated from college. So it was yeah, it was on a beach, actually, and I interviewed with Dave, so. Hannah: That's fantastic. I guess I also didn't know that you had done Middle Eastern history for college. Was there like when you were doing that, was there a specific country or people group in the Middle East that you were like, Yeah, think this is what I want to do? Or were you just kind of open? Erik: It was a general personal and academic interest of mine to get into Middle East studies and history. And I had an incredible professor at the university that really mentored me in studying Middle Eastern history. And I wasn't I wasn't sure. On moving to the Middle East or ever working, working there. But it just happened to come together as an opportunity right at that point. So I wasn't honed in on Iraq, but actually because there was some family history in Iraq, though. So that was in the background. My dad went to, left Mexico and went to the Kurdish region in 1992, right after the first Gulf War and right after Saddam Hussein's kind of big take back of land and kind of retribution on people who rose up against him during the Gulf War. And so he went on a on a project to dig water wells in different Kurdish villages. And he spent a few months in the country. And he came back with with all kinds of stuff, with Kurdish clothing, with literal machine gun bullets and all kinds of cool things to show me and stories. And he was so moved that he had actually considered moving our family out there to continue living there. It didn't work out that way. But from that was around when I was seven years old. So I was aware of some part of the Kurdish story from way back. And so and that was always in the background. So I can put it together now that that was that was something leading me there. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: Yeah. What you're saying is we got to start recruiting with the the first graders. Erik: Yes. Hannah: Oh, man. That's going to be… Colleen: I mean, that's kind of what I trace some of my story back to as well, is like having a map of Iraq on the back of our door and looking at all the places mentioned in the news. Erik: And yeah, and it helps having, you know, some little family story that you can tell when you're first getting into Iraq and meeting people. And it really it's really served me really well to have a story connecting my dad to Iraq and basically saying that, you know, it runs in the family. You know, yeah, I got this from my dad. Colleen: So can you tell us a little bit about some of the different roles and projects you were a part of while you lived in Iraq? Erik: Sure. I so the first time I went, I was I hadn't studied education, but I went in as a middle school teacher. So I got to teach. I think the first my first year, I taught eighth grade history and literature, 11th grade health and economics. Yes. And let's just say. Hannah: What an interesting combination! Erik: You can guess which one was a stretch for me. But the but I loved teaching humanities classes and I ended up teaching, I think, a ninth grade history and literature as well. And then some some 12th grade, a 12th grade class as well. And then so, yes, for a few years I was doing the high school and middle school work. Then I very briefly taught at the American University in their academic preparatory program. So the program that gets students up to the level to be admitted into the American university. And then I was out of the country for a time. And then 2014, 2015, during the ISIS takeover of parts of Iraq and the displacement of Yazidi communities and other minority communities in the country. I spoke to SGI again and a project came up to do schools for displaced children in Yazidi camps right outside of Dohuk. And up until that time I'd only worked or lived in Suly, but that just seemed like the right thing to do. So I moved to Dohuk and helped get that project going as a technically project manager. And so I, I helped facilitate two schools in that camp with all with Yazidi students. But as Sinjar, the city that they're from, is run by two different education systems. So we we actually put two schools in one and ran it ran the two schools on different shifts. So that was a real education of how education works from a different perspective. And it was a real privilege to be able to do that with SGI. Colleen: And it was a really neat school area and you guys were able to accomplish that really fast from what it seemed like, things normally run in the speed. Erik: It was it was remarkable. Yeah. And probably, you know, some of that's the country in crisis. But but we also just had so much so much blessing and favor in the eyes of all the authorities to be able to navigate that. And so I was shocked. I was shocked by that. But it was also it was so encouraging. Yeah. To just just to see that school go up so, so quickly and then to see it fill up immediately with students. It was a really big deal. And yeah, that was an unforgettable time. Hannah: Yeah. So I was living in Dohuk at the time and teaching at CSM and our students sponsored, I think you guys got them going on putting together backpacks for the students in the camp, which was an amazing part.. way for me to feel involved in that project. And our students too. And yeah, opening opening day, we we brought a bunch of our high school students and did all of that. And, you know, it was a great way to get our students who are upper middle class and upper upper class involved in that refugee and IDP situation in a way that they think had been a little bit afraid to do before. Erik: It was really I think it was really interesting to have yeah… become a link to for our students connecting to to those communities. It actually turned out to work out to actually students Colleen and I had taught in Suly who graduated out of CSM and went to university, their universities contacted us to do volunteer projects and a lot of those students came all the way from Suly to our school without our really, you know, orchestrating it. It was just the fact that that relational contact was there that allowed them to volunteer at the camp. So that was really sweet. Colleen: That's so cool. Hannah: Yeah. Did you feel like your time having already lived in Iraq and you got your Kurdish studies master's at that in the in between time, so you know, you weren't wasting your time by any means. How much do you feel like that helped you with those connections and overcoming some of the the cultural weirdnesses? Erik: So that's a good question. And it's hard to answer. I think that… Okay, so my sequence of living in Iraq first and then doing a degree in it, I think was really good because that you need some grounding in reality. Right? And what you know isn't necessarily what's true for all times of, of of the groups and people in Iraq but that grounding in in the Middle East and the sense of how culture works just from your own personal immersion in it really is an important foundation, especially if you're not a native from Iraq. So that immediately, like if I had gone into it without that, that would have been a problem. I would have been lost. But then the, you know, Middle East Studies, Kurdish studies, it was helpful because it gave me a broader knowledge of where the discussions are and related to, you know, history, ethnography, anthropology of, you know, Kurds, Yazidis, communities in Iraq. So it was really helpful to get a broader exposure to literature from from people who have studied this and also I felt that it really helped get it giving more of an ethnographic basis, ethnographic basis to knowledge. So there's a lot of there's a lot of good ethnography that's been done on Iraq and the communities there. And so the fact that we're working with displaced Yazidis communities from from Sinjar, I think that really did provide me a lot richer context to kind of be aware of what I was… who I was working with. Right. So you can't go wrong, you know, doing a little research and reading. But but I think that personal exposure to to the cities and communities in Kurdistan, that was really helpful to get first. Hannah: Yeah. Because you didn't have to overcome some of the like how do we get around and how do we communicate and you already had that right. Erik: And just just a sense, I think. Just a sense of actually knowing the rhythm of life within your own sensory experience, right? If you have that, you'll be thrown by so much less or you won't be thrown as much. If you've been exposed, like your senses have been exposed to life. And so going back that second or third time, I'm able to deal with other kinds of conflicts because those small living ones, those are already settled. So, you know, you're already kind of at home. Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It'd be a big help! Colleen: So as you did do that studying, what… did it change the way you saw Kurds or the way you saw Kurdish culture or how things functioned there? Was there anything that gave you like, Oh, that's why that functions that way or… Erik: Well, I think it gave, because the at least the degree I took was, you know, academic so it tries to stay above the fray of, you know, identity arguments or, you know, which which national arguments are correct. So it provides a little bit of distance. And I think as a guest in any culture, you need to develop that distance anyway, right? So that you're not completely a partisan in conflicts that have nothing to do with you. Hannah: Right. Erik: So I think it helped me, I think maybe be a little wiser with things I might, you know, knowing the relationships between ideas and families and all of that, you still pick that up living, living there anyway. But I think, you know, a lot of people make claims about history and so it just made it more complicated because with any history that's thousands of years old. Right. It's hard to make really, really strong, definitive claims. I don't want to offend anyone. Or it did make me appreciate all the stories I have heard. Right. And so and I really love jumping into stories and where people where they get their stories, who they get them from, how those stories have been inherited over time. And that's one of the kind of joys of being among Kurds and Yazidis and all the other groups is that they have so many amazing stories and it's really fun to get into those. Hannah: I think we're going to maybe have to do a whole podcast where you get to tell us some of those stories because I now want to know. Yeah, and we did a… we did a brief series on Yazidi mythology and theology. So if you don't know who the Yazidis are, go listen to those episodes. They're great. Well, I think they're great because I did all the research, but they'll they'll fill in some of the gaps there. Is there anything that you learned in in those studies that was like a surprise that you didn't already have some inkling of? Erik: So, yes. I think there was other than like little historical moments that I wasn't aware of, I think Iraq is very, very much… It's all about the village, Right. And so things are things are very local and people's attachments and sense of place is really, really important. So people who've done fieldwork in these villages and have done observations and talked and developed relationships over many years, have a lot of valuable things to share. So I think I read a book by Diane King called Kurdistan on the Global Stage, and I was really surprised by her providing a a richer layer of context to things that you might just assume are really simple concepts like, say, honor, shame, you know, honor, shame is really important. Well, it is, but why is it important and what makes it meaningful? Right. And so so I think reading her observations about how kinship works in families, you know, how how gender works, marriages, connections between families and lands and then and inheritance. Right. How how identity is passed down through fathers right to their children and how how all three of those interplay right to create a rich honor culture. And so I would have generally thought, okay you got to respect people because honor is an important thing here. But but actually, there's all these other relationships that make it really important and make you understand the why. Right? And it's you step into another culture and you sometimes we're tempted to make assumptions that this does not make sense. This just does not make sense. Right. To to your framework, but actually it's profoundly meaningful. Colleen: Yeah. Erik: Everything you see. And so some of this literature really has brought out a lot more, giving me more, more of a framework for the meaning of the place, right. And what I'm trying to navigate there. So yeah, I just make that plug for that book, but also to always be just developing questions and asking questions because there's just… I think it'd be a shame to go all that way to Iraq and leave, not like with just a richer appreciation for what you what you've been in the middle of. Which is really special. Colleen: Well, we can definitely link that book in the show notes. You mentioned honor, shame and relationship to gender and marriage. And so some of our questions definitely have to do with some of the gender differences and the way those affect your life versus, you know, the way they affected our lives. Did you enter any spaces that were like obviously male or female dominated? And how did that make you feel? Erik: So yes, I did. So what I say is like my experience, right? I wouldn't basically try to paint with too broad a brush. But so generally I mean, just as a general thing, I think the the home is very, very much family space and female space. Right. So so I my whole time in Iraq, I've been a single, single guy. And so as a general rule I don't spend much time in homes. In fact, it's very, very rarely do I go into someone's home. If someone does invite me over, they're probably a really good friend. And the fact that if I if I do go into the home sometimes I probably either just very briefly say hi to the mother or sisters, but they're probably in another room and they come out and serve us some tea or food and then go out again. So that's just it's just a space that, you know, single guys aren't in. If you are, if you had a family, that'd be a different story. So as a single guy, most of the time I'm out in public in cafes and restaurants and going on picnics or going up to different sites with friends or going to places to play games with other guys like me. So that would be the closest to like a female dominated space. And my like, you know, female colleagues actually spend quite a lot of time at homes and they get to spend the night at homes and they they get, you know, almost I'm almost envious of how much access they have. They might feel more restricted. Right. But actually, I see that there's a lot more liberty in some of their relationships with with families than than I could ever have. Colleen: Yeah. I can see that. Erik: Now if I'm in public, you know, there's a lot of interaction between men and women. It's, it's not like it doesn't happen, especially if you're colleagues at schools universities there's, there's plenty of interaction. But that's… the space is different. And now if you go into an office, a government office, you could also go into an office with, you know, a woman sitting in the most important seat. Right? But you'd be wrong to think that's a female dominated space, right? The question it would be. Okay, whose daughter is she? Right. Who what are her relationships? Right. That connect her to this position. And more often than not, they'll be, you know, some family important family relationship that's not disconnected from male leadership. Right. It's not not saying there's no not a meritocracy or that there's people aren't good at their jobs. It's just that the assumption that, okay, she's in an important position, therefore it's a female dominated space would be different, right? Yeah. So most most public spaces are male spaces. Right? And you'll see that even in how the layout of things are laid out in, in restaurants and other places, the family space or the female space is a little more removed the more public space is where all the all the men are sitting. And this I mean, we could talk and talk and talk about this. I think you're you don't you never get away from what you are as a as a man or a woman in in these places. You're always interpreted that way so you have to… I think that's part of the nuances of working there over time as you get used to like making these judgments yourself and realizing just how much is going on, right? It's really easy to live there and not really think about what's going on. But the longer you're there, the more you see it. It's actually kind of nice. There's I'd say that most of my friendships are male friendships, though. Hannah: Yeah. And I think we would say that most of our friendships are female friendships and that's just the way that it is. I think it's easy for us as women to get frustrated with the freedom that we see our our male teammates have. But yeah, I hadn't really thought about how you guys don't get invited into people's houses and it makes total sense to me why it is that way. But yeah, I think most of my my team time was with families or other single women, but always wanted to know what is it like in those cafes that only men can go in? Erik: What do you mean? Hannah: Like. Like what? What do you guys do in there? Erik: Oh, man, it's… I actually miss it. Um, so I think it's, you know, it's just. Well, it's really a lot of guys on their phones and smoking, right? And, um, and watching, watching sports or music videos. Colleen: And you miss it? Erik: Playing, playing sports, or cards, or backgammon. Um, but, but that's not the aspect that I miss, but it's, it's the fact that you can just sit with a group of people over a long period of time and you don't have to… The conversation does not have to be interesting you can just sit there and then you can you can laugh, you can talk, you can go silent. It's just it really it's just about being with your friends and and in Iraq, you know, wherever you go in Iraq. Friendship is just such a high value. And the there's there's quality of friendship. There's depth of friendship. There's a lot of expectation with friendship, right? So you end up spending just a lot of time with people that consider you a friend. And so there's something there's something unique about that and really special about that. Once you've been in it. It can be exhausting. But it's also really it's really sweet so… Colleen: I mean I think that's kind of a lot of what the time for women in the homes looks like is that same. Hannah: Just less smoking, Colleen: Yeah, less smoking. Colleen: Yeah, but the same sense of just being together and that that is enough to grow your friendship without having some grand deep sharing or like something that you've accomplished or like any other thing than just presence. Erik: Totally. Yeah. I'm trying to think what else goes on. I mean, just a lot of, lot of talking. So and that's the other thing. I think the number one form of entertainment is talk so people talk and talk and talk and it's just a form of entertainment and so it's it's a lot of fun. Hannah: Are the men gossipy this this may or may not make it into podcast Erik: O for sure. Hannah: Yeah. Erik: Yeah. Oh I think so yeah they talk about all kinds of stuff. Probably. I wonder though. I'm not going to say that if you're in a cafe, sometimes the talk can go deep, but a lot of times it's surface level. Right? And if you're with with another friend somewhere else, it might be, you know, because people are always weighing who's around them and how they speak. And so trust can be low in a in a super public place. You know, you always have to be mindful of how you speak about your friend because you don't want to hurt your friend's, um, image or reputation. So I think, you know, a super public space lends itself to a little bit more surface level talk. Not to say you can't have good conversations in those places, but if you really want to have a, you know, deeper conversation, you might or more personal, you might need to be around a few little less people. And I imagine that in the home that's different. I think I think ladies would go deeper, faster within the privacy of the home. Colleen: Provided you have the language skills. Erik: And language skills. Yes. Yeah. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening. Hannah: But it's okay. I know that the Suly team was better, and it doesn't hurt my feelings. It's totally fine.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 59 Hannah and Colleen embark on the many uses of the Iraqi Kurdish Park and the many varieties of Recreation available in Kurdish parks. There's workout equipment, food carts, fairs, amusement parks, roller skating, strange statues and more! Come take a walk with us through our favorite and least favorite parks in Northern Iraq. Learn more over at www.ServantGroup.org and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org. Here's a rough transcript of our episode! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Hannah: Woo hoo! Today we're going to talk about something that would make Leslie Knope very happy if she was a real person and, B, she cared about international parks at all. Colleen: Okay. Hannah: You don't know who Leslie Knope is, and that's okay. It's from a show called Parks and Recreation. Colleen: Right. That's what you said you wanted to name this episode was "Parks and Rec." Hannah: YES! And so we're going to talk about parks, less about recreation, although there is inevitably recreation at parks. Colleen: I mean, the parks were definitely made for recreation. Hannah: Yes. I was thinking more like community programs. Colleen: Oh, yeah. Not that kind of rec. There's no rec center with, like, community soccer teams or anything. Hannah: Art programs. Colleen: No, not now. Hannah: Yeah, but parks are a big part of Kurdish city life. Because as we've talked about before, Kurds really like to be outside in the green when it's green or at least outside. Colleen: Yep. And picnics and having space outside which most of their homes if you remember back to episode one, don't have because everyone has a garage and like a courtyard, most people don't have lawns. Right? Hannah: Or even like garden gardeny tree areas. Colleen: If they do, they're real small. So parks are essential. Hannah: Yeah. And I feel like most neighborhoods have a park of some kind. They're usually pretty small. I think the smallest one I've ones I have seen are about the size of a house, a house in that neighborhood, like the lot that a house would be on would be about the size of the park. Colleen: Right. My neighborhood was mostly pretty new and still kind of being built. So we didn't actually have a park at first. And then, yeah, one was put in and it was probably about the size of three homes. It was really just a strip of green. Hannah: Yeah. Like, here's some grass. Colleen: Yeah, some lights, a bench. Hannah: I feel like the park that I went to the most in Dohuk was within walking distance of our house. And it was, it was actually a fairly not big, big. But it was a fairly large neighborhood park. It was probably probably the size of maybe a city block there. And it had a big sidewalk, essentially, that was kind of everybody came and walked around and there were some small trees and bushes and stuff. But it was it was it was mostly just grass. Colleen: Yeah. Occasionally some will have a piece of, like play equipment. Hannah: Or exercise equipment. Colleen: That's my personal favorite is that the exercise equipment generally becomes play equipment. Hannah: Yeah. Like, I had an apartment complex that I lived in for a very short while that had a little patch of grass and a playground and exercise equipment. But the exercise equipment I only ever saw get used by the kids. Colleen: Right. One of the bigger and more well known parks in the city that I lived in is called Azadi Park. It means Freedom Park, and it's the site of some horrific things. But it was next to one of Saddam's old prisons and like it is both a Memorial and Park. And it's huge. Yeah, at least for four there it was really big and we would go there and walk because it has a big, wide path around the whole outer edge. And along one portion of the path had exercise equipment set up and kind of like I don't think I've ever seen exercise equipment like this in the US anywhere. It's all like bodyweight resistance, maybe hydraulic pressure stuff all sunk into the concrete, a lot of spinny things. Hannah: Do they have like the they're kind of like an elliptical, like, you stand on it, your arms go back and forth. That was one that I saw pretty typically. But yeah, then they have the ones where you're like, supposed to like, twist your body. Colleen: Right. And it's like a little platform that you stand on. Hannah: A standing ab workout kind of thing. Colleen: And then like ones that you sit in and push with your feet like a leg press kind of thing. Hannah: Yeah, I don't know that I ever saw that. Or maybe I saw it and didn't know what it was for, because that's the other thing. They don't have any instructions on them. Colleen: Right? You're just kind of guessing. Yeah. Hannah: Yeah. The kids would get on the elliptical ones, one on each, like one kid on each foot, foot place and swing back and forth on them, which was really amusing to me. I was like, Yeah, I mean, that seems fun. Colleen: I did occasionally see men actually working out on them, but that was only really early in the morning when we would go to the park. It was the one place in the city where again, really early in the morning women could run or bike or exercise. And so we would go like 5:00 in the morning. I mean, it was also cooler then. It was only like 90 or 95 degrees. So we would go and some of us would walk and some of us would run. We met up with a bunch of other women there for a while. Hannah: Yeah, there was a big park like that in Erbil that we always just called Sami Park. It has a big long Arabic name after some person, and it was pretty big. I'd say the there's a walking track sidewalk that goes all the way around the perimeter of it. That's probably a half a mile all the way around. We went there for Newroz sometimes because there are picnics, you know, raised doing picnics in the park. They have a little like, tram that you can ride around. That's just like some guy driving like, like the trams that they use in Disney parking lots to get you to and from your car. Driving one of those around and it's like 1000 dinar to ride it and he'll take you all the way around the park. And we did that one night, one evening that we went, I don't remember why we were there in the evening, I think we were celebrating somebody's birthday and they did a nighttime picnic and there were lots of fireworks and super crowded at night. And every time I've been back there, when I go back now, like you can barely get down the street that it's on. I mean, it borders-- It's got four streets all the way around it two main arteries of the city and then two side streets. And they're always full of cars because there's no parking lot for it. Right. Because until recently, almost everyone got there via taxi because they didn't have their own cars. Colleen: Right. Hannah: But yeah, that was a big. A big deal. And like the park that everybody knew about. Colleen: Yeah, that's definitely the same way people saw Azadi Park. Keep wanting to call it Parki Azadi because that's what they called it there. But they had a roller skating area and a pond and a kind of an amphitheater little section, depending on the day and the time of day. And especially if there was something going on in the evenings, there would be the little carts out with food. And that's also where they've more recently hosted like international food festivals and the international markets and some different stuff where people from a bunch of different places come together and do stuff. And yeah, it's the place where you go for an inexpensive party or wedding. I went there for a picnic once. For a wedding. I was where everybody went after the the photos and the all the pieces of the party. Hannah: Yeah, there's another park in Erbil that's closer to the Citadel. I don't remember the Kurdish name for the park, but it, like, was translated to us as like Peace Park. Colleen: Oh. Ashti? Hannah: Maybe. Colleen: There are multiple words for peace. Hannah: Yeah, I don't remember exactly. It had like a historical museum in the middle of it. That was like they had taken concrete to try to make it look like a mountain with trees on it. And then there was like, art and history inside of it. But you could also walk all the way up to the top of it, but it also had a like a skyline… what are those called that like you ride in the little bucket and it takes you up and you go around and you come back down. But it's like suspended in the air, Colleen: Like a funicular? Hannah: Yeah, like kind of like a funicular, but a funicular is like on railroad tracks. Right. And this is like suspended in their gondola, gondola or something like that. Yeah. And I was never brave enough to go on that because I didn't trust it to not, like, get stuck with me, you know, 200 feet up in the air. And then you'd be … Colleen: Just bring your water! Hannah: Hot and sweaty and thirsty and yeah, I wasn't on board for that. So we never did that. But we did go in the museum and I think, yeah, I think they hosted like an international festival, a French festival there actually. I went with a roommate who spoke French and it was weird. It's one of those things that I remember now and I'm like, What a weird thing for us to have gone to. Colleen: A French festival in Iraq. Hannah: In Iraq, yeah. But they also outside of Erbil have started establishing parks specifically for Newroz picnics. Oh, where it's like this is a designated, like picnic area. There's a trash bin. If you put your trash in the trash bin, the city will send someone out. And there are like big pine trees. So it's shady. But I mean, it's like here are 20 picnic places and it's like… Colleen: …here are 20,000 people. Hannah: Yeah. It's not going to work out the way you think it is. I mean. Colleen: It's a start. Hannah: It is a start, but there's like a little place to park your car. Colleen: Like a campsite. Hannah: Yeah, but for picnicking. Colleen: Which is far more important. Hannah: It is. It is far more important. Colleen: There's also a newer, really large park that, again, is in honor of someone famous that I don't remember that was being built out just on the edge of Slemani. And it also had a big path, but it was more hilly and it felt in some ways like the beginnings of a more Western style. Park, like a hiking, like a hiking path or but like not hiking but still walking path, but like more of what we would expect out of an arboretum, say, or something like that. Hannah: Right. Less central park and more state park. Colleen: Right. Larger ponds, just larger space all together. Lots and lots of parking lots. And you know, it's definitely made just for more people. But it was in its early stages and very obviously so like all the trees were tiny baby trees and all the grass was brown. Hannah: Just they're putting forth the effort. Colleen: Yeah. They're working on it and that was that was exciting, I think. Hannah: And there is there is a national park in or near Suly, isn't there? There's like a or like a preserve and nature preserve. I don't know if you ever went to it. I've only ever read about it. Colleen: Is it the one where they like work to preserve the wildlife? Like leopards… that's it. Hannah: Like leopards and mountain goats, I think. Colleen: And maybe wild boar. Hannah: Yes. Colleen: Yeah. And I don't even know where that is. I've only ever read about it. And it was not something that I feel like was ever talked about while I lived there. Hannah: Right. And I don't think it's it's open to the public in the way that we think of national parks or forests being open. It's more of a like nature preserve. Colleen: Like don't go here. Hannah: Right? There are leopards. Hopefully. Colleen: Hopefully they have some leopards. Yeah, they have video of them. Hannah: The other park that I spent time in was in Dohuk was the Gelli Park that is built. Below the dam for Dohuk lake. Colleen: Oh Yeah. Hannah: And so that one's kind of interesting because it's a mix of, like, Nature Park and small amusement park. Like they have bumper cars, and there's a little arcade that you can go in and play games and like, a little restaurant. Colleen: And, like, everything's painted in slightly garish colors. Hannah: So but there's also, like, a hiking trail, But you hike on the hiking trail to see these weird sculptures. Which, like, is a thing that people do even in the US. But for me, I'd never been on anything like that. And so when one of my friends was like, Oh yeah, we'll go and hike and look at the beautiful nature. And I was like, Okay, cool. And it was like, Oh, and these weird sculptures of like, Pegasus, which doesn't make any sense to me. And like, I don't know, it was just a very odd like, I do not associate these subject matters of art with Kurdish culture. And so it felt like we're trying to make it Greco-Roman art, but in Kurdistan. Colleen: In Kurdistan, it's very strange. Hannah: Hi, this is Steve. My wife and I have been with Servant Group International for quite a while now, which means that we're sort of old. And what that means for Servant Group is that we need more young, fresh faces in both in Iraq and here in Nashville. Love to have you join us! Colleen: But I feel like several of the parks do border into amusement park. I mean, even Azadi Park. One corner of it is an amusement park and Dream City in Dohuk is also an amusement park that I went to. Hannah: I actually never went to that one. By the time that I lived there, it was like, Oh, it wasn't cool anymore. And so nobody really went to it at that point. Colleen: My favorite thing was the receipt we got from there. When for paying our tickets to get in said "Makes all your dreams came true." Hannah: Did all your dreams came true? Colleen: Wow. Such promise! No, I had a lovely, a lovely Ferris wheel ride. Hannah: Yes. Colleen: If I had heard some of the other stories. Or maybe that was before, I think. I think that's before anyone else. Some of the other… The terror stories of the Ferris wheel rides happened. Hannah: But yeah, one of which is our our friend Mary, who she and John did an episode with us about raising kids in Kurdistan. But before they had kids, they went on this Ferris wheel. And Mary already is not like a big fan of heights and Ferris wheels and like… It's not her thing, but she was convinced to go on it for the experience. And I guess the way that it operated then was that if you wanted to get off, you had to like tell them, Hey, I want to get off. Whereas in the US it's like, oh, you get like three turns and then you got to get off. But they didn't know that. And so they just kept going around, and around and around. And she was like, How do I get off of this thing? And I think at one point they got stuck and she got stuck, like up in the Ferris wheel, stopped and like, wasn't sure if she was going to be able to get down again. Yeah. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: We got to get her to tell that story sometime. Colleen: It's a better story when she tells it. Hannah: But yeah, that, that also contributed to me never going there. Colleen: I mean, I had a similar experience, but on a different ride in a different city. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: So me and some of the other teachers and some of our students went on a ride that was like a… it's a swinging boat ride. Hannah: Yeah. Like the pirate ship. Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, again, I don't love things like that. I do get motion sick and I got convinced and I went and we were on there for what felt like forever. And finally, not even at my instigation, someone else was like, Hey, can you let us off? You know, as we swing back and forth. Hannah: Well, you get your money's worth, I guess. Colleen: I guess! That was the last ride I ever went on in Kurdistan. Hannah: That's probably for the best. Colleen: No more, no more of this. Hannah: We went to an amusement park in Kurdistan called Panc, which from my understanding, it was my first year in Kurdistan, so I didn't really have a good grasp of like directionally where we were. But I was told that it was near the Iranian border, but they had the pirate ship ride and I was like, No, thank you, I'm going to get seasick. I've already been driving on this party bus all day and I already feel like not great, but I think I did go on the bumper cars and this was all teachers from the school. Colleen: Oh, nice. Hannah: Picnic. So it was adults. They have that like anti gravity spinny thing that like, pushes you against the walls that a bunch of them went on. But they it was like branded as like the dance wheel because they played like really loud dance music as you spun around and there was like all these flashing lights and I was like, No thanks. I don't I don't want to be part of that either. Like, my ability to listen to music has been filled. Colleen: Again, party bus, loud music, dancing in the aisle the whole way. Hannah: Who needs a roller coaster like that when you go on a Kurdish party bus. But what I did end up doing was an alpine roller coaster, which a little bit on reflection, I was like, Hmm, that probably wasn't super safe either. But it was, it was a lot of fun. It's probably the best roller coaster ride I've ever been on. And I like roller coasters and it was really cool. So the park was along built kind of on a mountain-ish. So the the roller coaster went down into this gorge, essentially. So you kind of wind back and forth down into the floor of this canyon. You're just sitting on like a little cart that's on rails and you're in control of like your speed. So you have a hand brake that you use to, like, slow down and not slow down. Oh, and they just send you in twos. So it was it was me and my teammate at the time went down together, me and Anna. And so there are signs along the way that are like, Hey, there's a big curve. You should slow down. Colleen: That's a lot of faith to put in a person who's never done this or like… Hannah: And like, you also have to watch out for the people who are in front of you and behind you. Because if someone behind you decides to go faster than you want to go, you might get run into. Or if they stop suddenly in front of you, you might run into them and like you won't like crash and fall off. I mean, I guess if you were going fast enough, you could knock yourself off, but. We I think we ran into a couple of people, but it wasn't like it wasn't that big of a deal. Colleen: Like you encountered them. You didn't actually run into them. Hannah: I think we did run into one person or they ran into us. But it was really it was a really great way to like see the scenery of of that area. Colleen: And like Kurdistan does mountains and canyons really well. Hannah: Yeah, it was beautiful. And I remember thinking, I wish I had brought my camera with me to like, be able to take pictures of all of that because I was like, I'm never going to be up here again and see this again. So I just have to remember it in my mind and I do. But it's also been twelve years since then so it's fading a little bit, but so you get all the way down to the bottom and then your cart goes on to one of the conveyor belt, clickity things like on a roller coaster and it tows you back up to the top of the mountain. Colleen: So you don't even have to hike up the mountain. Hannah: Nope, You get a ride the whole way. It was really fun. There's one apparently in Gatlinburg, not far from here, but I don't know. I don't know if I could talk myself into doing it ever again, because it was really neat. It was a really cool experience and that was definitely a like, we're going to go out here and go to an amusement park, not just say like, Hey, there's a park that has this in it. Yeah, there's also a long standing-- I'm never sure it actually got built. And if it got built, I'm not sure it ever got used-- water park in Erbil. Colleen: Really. Hannah: With like water slides. Like the big ones. Colleen: So as you drive into Suly from like the airport or Erbil or somewhere, you passed, I don't think it's there anymore. I kind of hope it's not the remains of a water park. Oh, only the upper part of like three or four different slides that are like those brightly primary colored tubes that end maybe one or two stories high. I don't even know. Probably one. One story high. Yeah. And then underneath is just a field of upright rebar. Hannah: Huh? Terrifying. Colleen: Looks like some sort of torture. But it's just a long defunct water park, that is no longer. Hannah: I don't know. I don't know if Kurds would really enjoy a water park in the way that they enjoy their other parks. Colleen: It would just be men. Hannah: Right. I was going to say, there are a lot of other cultural weirdness around it. Colleen: So, like. Hannah: They would probably do like Women's Day. Colleen: But they still are kind of out of doors. Hannah: That's true. Colleen: Someone could see from somewhere else. So unless you had an entirely indoors water park. Hannah: Which do exist. Colleen: Which do exist, it's just that's a lot of work to go to. Hannah: Right. Colleen: For women, Hannah: That's true. Colleen: In their mindset. Hannah: Sure. Colleen: Kurds really do like their outings with their whole family and everybody being together. And that's part of what the parks serve is it's a public gathering place that you can bring your whole family, even at night like they are hopping. Hannah: Yeah, they definitely utilize parks in a way that I don't feel like most Americans do. Like we may go to the park to exercise or for like an afternoon picnic. Colleen: Kids to play at. You know. Hannah: And it's not like we're going to be here for the next 7 hours or we're going to spend the whole day. Colleen: Right? We don't bring multiple meals worth and set up on the grass. Hannah: And like, I feel like people in America would get mad at you if you did that to some extent. Like somebody would be upset that you were taking up park space for that amount of time. Like here, if you want to do that, you have to like reserve the pavilion. And pay to be there for that long. This is a totally different, totally different way of interacting. Colleen: And like, people don't use that big green space to play Frisbee or baseball or soccer, really. I mean, some kids will do on the side, but. Hannah: They dance, though. Colleen: They dance. But it's not it's not like this green space is here for large sports, which is kind of the way I feel like American parks are set up. Like, I mean, there's weird stuff in the Kurdish parks, right? Like benches that look like enormous pieces of fruit. Hannah: Or butterflies, we saw some of those, too. Colleen: Like giant concrete structures and random bushes and trees. Hannah: If I think about Centennial Park, which is the big downtown park here in Nashville, there's that big open field. And like, sometimes people are out there picnicking. But a lot of times as people like running their dogs out there or playing Frisbee or kicking a soccer ball around. Colleen: Throwing a football. Hannah: Throwing a football, it's definitely used as like, this is where we like are active, not this is where we. Colleen: Lounge. Hannah: Lounge and listen to music and dance and like it's utilized differently. Colleen: Right? All the people who are there for picnics and things are tucked in behind the trees and, you know, in the picnic tables and benches and, you know. Hannah: Yeah. And the pavilions that are set up specifically for that. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Yeah, but, Parks, we should go to more parks. Hannah: We should. Hannah: That's our. That's our resolution from this podcast. Go to more parks. Colleen: Go to more parks! Hannah: Hang out in the park. Colleen: Tell us about your park. Yeah. Hannah: Let us know how long you can hang out in a park before someone's like, Hey, why are you just, like, hanging out in the park? Don't you have somewhere to be? I wonder. Now I want to do a social experiment. Colleen: Social experiment? I think Americans would be, too. Uh, I don't know. Unlikely to tell you what to do or comment on it. Hannah: I don't think that's true. Colleen: I don't know. Hannah: I think they would. Somebody, somebody would get their feathers ruffled. Especially if you went with, like 15 people. Colleen: Well, maybe. Hannah: All right, check out your parks. Let us know. And if you live in the Nashville area, let us know of a good park we should go to. Besides Centennial Park. We've been there. We've done that. Give us somewhere new. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 58 This is a special update episode! Hannah and Colleen interview Robin, who helped SGI rebuild schools in Turkey after the big earthquakes in 1999. Those connections and relationships have opened up paths for us to serve in relief work and hopefully with rebuilding after these more recent earthquakes. We're sending teams to help build shelters in the short term and hopefully continue to serve the area as they rebuild. https://servantgroup.org/relief-work-in-turkey-team-heading-over-soon/ And here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Hannah: Woo hoo! Colleen: Today we have a guest with us, our dear friend Robin Dillard. Hannah: She's been on the podcast before. Colleen: True. But today she's coming to us in a very special capacity as she was part of a team years ago with Servant Group that served after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey. And so that seemed particularly relevant right now as we are continuing at looking at ways of serving in Turkey as Turkey suffered another major series of earthquakes. So we're very excited to hear what you have to share today, Robin, and how everything's connected, the work then and the work now. Hannah: So our first non Iraq focused episode. Mm hmm. Colleen: Yeah, ooh. Is that a problem? Hannah: No. We're just gonna have to call this one between Turkey and a hard place. Robin: Uh, well, it's interesting because when the earthquake of 99 happens in Turkey, Dave and I had been working in Iraq already for eight years or something like that. And so our work was centered on the Kurds in Iraq and hadn't thought about working in Turkey. So when the earthquake happened there was a church in Nashville or a supporter that went to one of our supporting churches and said, Hey, this is a really devastating event that's happened in Turkey. I'd like to send the director over to Turkey and get him on the ground and just see what the people could use there. And so with the $1,000, that was the donation it paid for the the travel. It got our director, Douglas, over to Turkey on the ground. And when he was over there, he met with several friends who had been living in Istanbul and some other team members from Europe met him there. And together they went to the center of the earthquake region, which was Izmit. That earthquake was 7.4. So it was it was pretty major. It was what they were calling at that time, the event of the century. This was about you could take a boat ride from Istanbul. It takes about an hour if you get on the ferry. So it's pretty close to Istanbul. And so the team came together and went on site and it was just devastating, how many people were homeless. Actually, after the earthquake, there was a tsunami in the Sea of Marmara that killed another couple hundred people. Colleen: Wow. Robin: So just devastated. This earthquake killed about 17,000 and about half a million people were left homeless. So when they went there, they just met with the city officials and said, what can we do? How can we help? You know, and what besides needing shelter, they really wanted schools. Everything was devastated. Their kids had no place to learn. So that was sort of the takeaway. They want us to build some schools. He flew back to America. And brought Dave in the office and said, Aren't you an engineer? And Dave said, Yeah. And he said, Isn't your wife an engineer? Yeah, she's an engineer. Hey, can you build some buildings? And we were like, What? I mean, it's specialty earthquake design is a specialty in structural design. And so my college degree was in structural design, but I didn't do much earthquake design at all. But we had friends who lived in the Pacific Northwest who were very accustomed to that kind of design. So they had the technology we needed and were willing to come alongside of us. Colleen: So you guys decided to build schools? Robin: Yeah. Colleen: In Turkey? Robin: Yeah. Hannah: Earthquake resistant. Robin: Schools? Yeah. Hannah: How was the timeline on this? Like, how long from Douglas getting back? Was he like, okay, you guys are going to go? Robin: It was like less than a couple of months. It was so fast. It was fast. Yeah. So we had, we had the $1,000 that was all that was given. We started raising money for this huge project and sent our first team over to build several concrete structures. Which that was sort of the first prototype. It was much more difficult, but it got us on the ground really fast. And we took teams there, contractors from Nashville and people that could just pick up and go right away. And that was the first team that went. And in the process, Dave was supposed to go over and he got appendicitis. Hannah: Oh, no! Robin: I don't know if you guys knew that he was really, really ill because his appendix burst and so he was bed bound for like weeks. He was so ill. So he was the person who was supposed to be in charge of everything. And here he was stateside. So we sent the teams. They did really tremendous work, working with local contractors. And so that was the first two school buildings that were built and everyone was happy. And it gave us favor. Like, I mean, the government officials were like, come back, we need more. We need more. So. It gave us a little bit more time. To to say, okay, just pouring these concrete structures on site is not probably the best way. There's got to be better construction and maybe we can build something in America and have it partially shipped over. So we called FedEx and they were on board to to help us get materials to Turkey. So they were sort of our logistics person, FedEx. And and we linked up one of our contacts in the Pacific Northwest had developed this earthquake resistant building system recently and it was sort of a combination metal and concrete system. And so we really we learned how to use that system and how to detail and design using it. And what we ended up doing is building some of the frames just in our parking lot in Nashville and having all those things figured out, the frames built, shipping them over, using FedEx. They arrived on the site and once we got on site with our teams, then we started pouring concrete and much more efficient system, much more light gauge, lightweight, earthquake resistant and just doable. Like it was quick and you could put up a building just like in a week. Literally. Just tilt it up. It was tilt up panels a little bit different than we did before. Hannah: What's a tilt up panel? Robin: Yeah. So you have a metal frame that's done and that's what we did in Nashville. And and you set it on the ground. You sort of. It's like making brownies, sort of. Hannah: Okay. Robin: Here's what you do. You line like you have a form on the ground and you put like you spray it like with Pam so it doesn't stick. And then you lay your metal into it and then you pour your concrete on it and you let it dry and then you pick it up. You just tilt it up and that becomes your wall system and your roof system for a building. And it's extremely efficient, lightweight, fast. And what you have to bring from America are like the anchors that hold it all together. And that's what we were shipping over besides the the metal, we shipped all these anchors over and it was crazy. So I think, um, we took in the process over several years we built six structures. And probably involved several hundred people. Building and going over to Turkey like either involved in Nashville building frames or on the ground. You know, putting these buildings up, finishing the buildings, all that. And probably that thousand dollars was the seed money it turned into several hundred thousand dollars being raised is probably was 200 to 300 people being involved from $1,000 seed money. Colleen: That's a big project. Robin: Amazing. So the last building we built was for our team members who wanted to stay in the region and continue to help the people of that city. And so the second to the last building we built was the police headquarters in that city. Colleen: I've seen photos of that one. Robin: So that one was the smile of the city. And man, everyone loved it and felt safe in it. And from that point on, our team members like they had the kiss of of the mayor. And the last building we built was was a house for our team member to live in. So he stayed in that region and helped the people. Help them with industry, business. As well as helping the refugees that would later show up and that all along the coast from Syria and Iran and Iraq. And so he's been there over 20 years. Hannah: Yeah. That's amazing. Robin: Yeah, it is. Hannah: And now they've had this this huge, bigger earthquake, right? 7.8 was the original one. And it was devastating. And they've recently had some more big ones. And probably by the time this gets out there, we'll have more accurate numbers. But they're in the hundreds of thousands of people presumed dead at this point. Right. Colleen: I don't know if it's quite hundreds of thousands. Hannah: Tens of thousands? Robin: Tens of thousands. Yeah, it's over 40. I think we're looking at 45,000. Hannah: So we are still working with with folks there in Turkey still right now, it seems like the thing they need is, is funds to be able to feed and house and and work on some rescue operation type stuff. Colleen: It sounds like most of what's going on is passing out food, blankets, diapers and then building tents or these other kind of temporary metal structures. Hannah: Yeah, we are sending teams? Colleen: We're sending a team next week. Robin: Yeah. It's a discovery trip. And yeah, they'll survey the land and see and see if they can get all the materials they need on the ground. But it will be a shelter, shelter building. I mean we're hoping to I think we are with another agency raising funds for 100 structures. Right. That's the first phase. Yeah. 100. Hannah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think we are hopeful that we can send interested Americans over to to help build that. And that will be pending information. Keep an eye on the website for information about that. If if you're interested in in going, that might be possible. So yeah, we're just again amazed that it's been 20 some years, 23 year since then. And and we're back. We're connected still through all of this. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks, Robin. Anything else? Colleen: Thanks. Glad to be here. Hannah: Are you going to build us some earthquake proof shelters here in the US. Robin: What do you think? Do you like concrete? Hannah: I think the back end of the office needs to be shored up. Robin: I think you're right. That makes me a little bit nervous. Actually. I agree with you. Hannah: Oh, man. Hannah: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org. Colleen: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Hannah: Thanks for listening.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 57 Learn more at www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq and email Hannah at hannah@servantgroup.org with questions, comments, or suggestions! Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Hannah: Woo hoo! Colleen: Welcome back, Hannah. Hannah: Thanks. Colleen: You were gone a lot over the last few months. Hannah: I was, not all of it relevant to this podcast, but some of it. Colleen: But some of it was because you went to Iraq. Hannah: I did. Colleen: Which I will say is one of the most fun things to tell people randomly when they ask, Oh, how are your roommates? Oh, my roommate, Hannah, she's in Iraq. And they're like, What?! Hannah: That's true. I went to a meeting of a different volunteer organization this week and people are like, We haven't seen you around. Where have you been? And I was like, Well, I was out of the country and they're like, Oh, where did you go? And I was like, I went to the Middle East. Oh, where in the Middle East? I went to Iraq, and they're all like, Oh, I have no follow up questions. Well, some of them had follow up questions, but. Colleen: But yeah, it definitely is a little on the shocking end of things. Why, Hannah, would you ever go to such a country? Hannah: I mean, aside from the previous, you know, 50-ish, how many episodes have we done? Colleen: I don't remember. Hannah: We're going to call it 50 because that feels right to me. This particular time it was to visit with our staff who are living in Iraq and, you know, some of the other folks that we work with in Iraq as well. So it wasn't just hanging out with Americans time. We also hung out with some British people and some Kurdish people. Colleen: And some Kurdish people. Good, good. Hannah: Yeah. And I think for both you and I, that was one of the things we really appreciated about Servant Group in our time living in Iraq was that, you know, the director at the time and someone else, at least one other person, usually came and visited us once or twice a year. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And so it's kind of fun to get to be the person who does the visiting now. It feels powerful. I mean, it actually sometimes makes me really nervous to be like, okay, I got to, I got to be as good as Lisa was. It's a lot of pressure. Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. I think it was key having people come and be able to see the changes that had happened over time and the ways we maybe grew as teachers or the ways our classes had grown or the changes in the schools, some of the changes that were good, in ways that we couldn't see because we're on the ground and like it happens incrementally. And then also just a better understanding of what day to day life looks like and the challenges of the things that happen on a day to day life, whether that's acquiring water or, you know, using the right amount of electricity to not flip your breaker or all of the other things that we run into that don't always get communicated in a weekly phone call because they're just the detritus of life. Hannah: Yeah. I can remember on probably one of the first trips that Dave and Lisa made feeling like, Oh, they're going to come and like sit in my classroom and watch me teach and I've never taught before, and they're going to be like super critical and like, it's going to be terrible. Colleen: The judgment is going to come. Hannah: Yeah. And it was 100% the opposite of that. And it was kind of interesting on this trip, our newest staff member, I think, kind of felt the same way about us coming to visit. We got a lot of text messages and emails ahead of time of like, So what are you expecting to do? Like… Colleen: What do you need from me? Hannah: Me? And then I told him I was going to come sit in on one of one of his classes and he was like, Okay, like, are you going to, like, give like report me to the administration? Like, is this just? And I was like, No, it's just me coming to sit in on your class to see what you're like as a teacher, what the students are like. If there's some way I can help you and give you advice, I'm happy to do that. But really, I just want to I just want to observe this is part of your life and I want to observe it. And he was like, Okay. Colleen: But hopefully by the end, you had communicated that like you guys are there to be a blessing and an encouragement and to be a witness like that phrase, observe, like I think a big part of what we need as as people is that there are witnesses to our lives. Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's definitely a big part of it. I think it also really helps establish trust between them and us. Because while John and I have both lived there in the past and it is known to the team, I think seeing us be there and be part of their lives and not and not be critical or not be demanding really helps them feel like they can trust us because we're not just saying, hey, we care about you. It's like, hey, I showed up here in your life today and, you know, we took you out to dinner or we took you on a little adventure or whatever. Colleen: Yeah, the visits from Dave and Lisa or Kay or any of the others that we've had over the years were always times where the people visiting, like, were there to treat us well and like to… Yeah, we always would go out to dinner, we'd do fun, special things and spend time just talking or visiting some site or like it was not just, Oh, now we have to take care of these American people. It was never that it was. They've actually come to step into our lives and take care of us. Hannah: Yeah, I remember on probably Dave and Lisa's first visit to me while I was in the country. Dave wanted to take Andy. He wanted to take one of the other staff members and and me to a music store so that we could get guitars because we both played. And he was like, Oh, it's really important for you to have a guitar like SGI will provide it for you. And I was like, Oh great, I know this music shop nearby. I have been living in the country for maybe, maybe three months at that point, but I was like, yes, 100%. I am confident I can get you there. I've been there once. And so we got in taxis and I told them where to go because I knew the nearest landmark to it. But the taxi took us in like a totally different way and like, instead of dropping us off on the side that I was used to of this landmark, he dropped us off on a different side and I was like, I have no idea where we are. I don't know where we are. I don't know how to get to the place that I know. None of us spoke any Kurdish because it was Dave and Andy and I and Andy and I had been in the country for two months, three months. And so we ended up walking around in probably 100 degree heat, wandering around looking for this music store and like occasionally stopping and asking like, do you know, dukan with like and the play the guitar, air guitar, guitar thing happening. And I think we finally found someone who called a friend who spoke English, and we were able to ask the question through the translator. They were like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're going to go down the street that you're on and then you're going to turn left. And it was like, But where, where do we turn left? And it was just like, Well, it's just you'll see, you'll see it, you'll see it. And it was like, okay, I guess off we go to try to find this music store. And they were right. It was like we went down the road, we took the first left and as soon as you take that left, you saw the music store and it was like, Oh, thank goodness. We were really close. And I think Dave gave me a hard time about that. For the rest of that trip, he would be like, Well, don't ask Hannah where to go. I think I finally redeemed myself eventually, after I had lived there and I was like, No, I do actually know how to get places now. But yeah, but it was like that was one of those bonding times of like, you're here lost in this country with me and we are both experiencing this. Like, I don't know where to get where I'm going. I don't know how to ask for help. I don't know where I am. But you're helping me figure this out. Colleen: Yeah. And as much as Dave gave you a hard time for it, it was all in good fun. Hannah: It was good fun. Colleen: Not in actual frustration or judgement. Hannah: No, no, not at all. I think he even stopped at one of the shops and was like, here, water for everyone. We're all super dehydrated. And we got our guitars. So, you know, happy, happy. Colleen: We like to take good care of our our, our team members. Hannah: So another one of the things that we do is we bring stuff to them. So I filled my suitcase this time with about 20 lbs. of brown sugar. Which was the only thing that really got asked for, which is fine. It's fine. I'm happy to bring brown sugar. I think maybe someone who did a security check on my bag was like, What in the world? And all of my clothes smelled like brown sugar the rest of the trip. It was awesome. Colleen: That doesn't sound awesome to me. Hannah: It was so great. Brown. Sure smells so good. Colleen: It does. But I don't think I would want my clothes to smell like it. Hannah: Yeah, but one of the weird things was when you and I lived there, there were specific things that we were like, We cannot find this anywhere. This does not exist here. And we went into one of the shops with our team and it was like, You can buy brown sugar here. Oh, it costs like $10 for half a pound. So it's not cost effective. Colleen: It's a little expensive. Hannah: But you couldn't get it at all. No. And they had like all kinds of weird like keto stuff and sugar substitutes. And I mean, it was not a cheap store. Colleen: But when I first went people were asking people to bring in peanut butter because you couldn't get peanut butter. Hannah: You could get peanut butter. Colleen: I mean, by the end of my time there, I could get peanut butter. Hannah: I think they even had Fruity Pebbles, which I feel like you can't get in every grocery store in America. Not that I look for them, really, often. I think that that was kind of a a fun aspect of it for me was like, what are things that I know that they can get? That I don't have to think about bringing them or things that they could get here. But it's too expensive that I can be like, Well, let me just let me just buy it for you. Yeah, this will make your life more convenient and easy. How can we problem solve this for you? And I think John got wrangled into actually fixing a couple of things in the women's apartment. Yeah. That they were Sure. Hey, you're an engineer. Can you fix this? And he did happily. Colleen: I think the other thing is that often we end up bringing over our packages from family members or sometimes mail, letters and cards, birthday cards sometimes, or Christmas cards. And I know when my family came to visit me, my mom and my sister came. They brought me Christmas decorations. Nice. That was super fun and books. We would do a lot of books because the the whole digital reading was a less common solution to the lack of, you know, your local public library. Hannah: Yeah, I think it changes maybe not year to year, but it changes frequently enough that it's like, oh, this thing that like in my mind I will say the one thing that has not changed is chocolate chips. You still cannot get chocolate chips there. Colleen: How odd. Hannah: I mean, you can buy a chocolate and chop it. Colleen: Chop it up, I mean which it does work. Hannah: But yeah, I think they melt. I think that's the problem when they get shipped. Colleen: Because they don't plan to ship them in the refrigerated units the way they do the chocolate bars from Europe. Hannah: Yeah. And maybe chocolate chips are like a surprisingly American thing. Colleen: Maybe. Hannah: I don't know. Colleen: I've never tried to make chocolate chip cookies in Europe. Hannah: No, Me neither. Never lived in Europe. Colleen: Me either. Hannah: Well, I'll have to find out. If you live in Europe, let us know. Can you get chocolate chips? Semi-Sweet ones. Semi-Sweet chocolate chips? Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It would be a big help! Hannah: One of the other things we did on our trip was we, well we did a lot of things, but we took the team out with our Kurdish friend to his farm for the day. And so for a news team member, it was his first time outside of the city that he's been living in, into the countryside. And we went with our our good this guy who's been working with Servant Group for like 20 years, I think. He is hilarious and really fun and his family is lovely and they're like used to Americans in our weird quirkiness. Yeah. And so he took us out to his farm about a 45 minute drive outside of town, and we had a very Kurdish sort of day, which I think was a little… I think our team was a little worn out. They'd had a really busy week, but I think they also enjoyed like we wandered through his fruit orchards and looked at his new building projects and he talked to us about like the villages and it was really close to like an oil refinery. And so he told us all about that. I felt like I learned a lot. It was also on like a small river, the the Zab, Colleen: the little Zab, the greater Zab? Hannah: Little Zab. And so that was kind of cool. I never really been aside from like picnic bus tours. I never really been that close to a river in Iraq. Um, and so I felt like it was a good chance for our, our new team members especially. But even the, the older ones to be like, this is very Kurdish and it's beautiful in spite of the fact that it's 102 degrees outside. Colleen: There you go. And it's very different from the city, which is where our team members live is in the city. And a lot of those resources and a lot of those amenities don't exist the same way out in the villages is the way they do in the city. Hannah: Right. Like his house didn't have air conditioning in the rooms that we were in, at least. I don't think there was even splits, the air conditioning and heating units. But he cleverly made almost like central air by creating vents, like when they built the house, putting vents in and then he has swamp coolers. Colleen: Yeah. Swamp coolers work great. Hannah: Blow into the vents and throughout the whole house. So if the swamp coolers are on, it cools the whole house. And I had never seen that in a Kurdish house before. And I was like, This is brilliant! Colleen: One of the houses I lived in in Iraq had had a swamp cooler. Hannah: I mean, I've seen the swamp coolers, but not like hooked up to a central air system like that. Colleen: Definitely connected to things. Yeah, But yeah, it's amazing how well swamp coolers work in a really, really dry environment. Hannah: Yeah, it was impressive. And you could tell when they were, like, out or when the power was out, it was like, Oh, it is uncomfortable. Not awful, but uncomfortable. It was a lot of fun hanging out with him and his family. They also did a very Kurdish… we did a barbecue. Uh huh. With lamb and chicken skewers, tikka. Colleen: There you go. Did it have the the little grill pan with the the fan that you spin and you turn really fast? Hannah: So I had the little grill pan, which is like maybe a foot and a half long and seven, eight inches wide. And then they put, like, charcoal, wood, charcoal on the bottom. But instead of having the little fan that you like crank the handle and it blows the he updated his methodology. Colleen: Oh, really? Hannah: And he has a tiny little blower that maybe it was like child like a child sized leaf blower. He plugged into his house and he just stood there with his leaf blower and blew on the coals with the leaf blower until they got red hot. It was like much more energy efficient. Colleen: I mean, because I have seen people without the little crank fan ones just do it with paper or their lungs. And it always seems like a lot of work. Hannah: This was very, very efficient. And he made John stand and heat up the coals. That was John's job. I've never been more thankful to be a woman than that day when I was like, I don't have to touch the meat. I don't have to deal with the coals. I can just sit here and drink my cold water and watch the men sweat over this. Colleen: Do the barbecue. Hannah: Delightful. I had a new thing for a Kurdish barbecue, at least. I've done this in the US, but a grilled onion, which was exciting. So they took a bunch of onions and put them on the skewer like they do with the meat and just cooked them over the coals like that. So you have to, like, peel the outer. They leave the outer papery skin on. Colleen: Wait, you've never seen that before? Hannah: I've never seen it with a whole onion. I've seen it with, like, pieces of onion or like the quarter the onion and skewer the quarter. But this was like an entire onion. And, like, I've done it in the US where we wrap them in aluminum foil and put them in the coals of a charcoal grill. But yeah, I'd never seen it there. Colleen: Wonder if that's just more of a eastern Kurdistan thing. Hannah: I think it must be a Suly thing because they're from Suly originally, but his mom I think was like. I want an onion. Put an onion on the grill for me. And then he was like, Does anyone else want an onion? And I was like, Oh, me, I want an onion. And so he just did a whole skewer of them. Colleen: A whole skewer of onions. Hannah: And I think it made his mother happy that I was like, Yeah, grill me an onion too, man. Yeah, it was really fun. And I mean, we did other things besides just team check in. We use those visits as reconnection in person with the school administration. There were some new administrators that I had never met before, so it was really good to meet them. While we were there, they asked us to do some teacher evaluations. So just sitting in a classroom watching non-American teachers teach. And that was really fun for me because a year ago I did teacher training, so I got to sit in for some of the teachers that I had trained and so I could be like, Hey, they listened or maybe there are more things we need to go over like next time. But yeah, even just like you said, to see the changes in the school and the improvements in the school and it's definitely very improved since we were there. I feel like the quality, at least of the teachers that I saw, has gotten a lot better. too. And I think it made our staff feel better too, because I did sit in on three of their classes, one class for each of our staff members. And so I think they felt like, Oh, you're not just sitting in on our classes, you're also sitting in on like normal classes. Colleen: Kurdish taught classes. Hannah: I did sit in on a Kurdish class and I was like, I don't know how to evaluate this. I don't know what they're saying. But then I realized I was in the wrong place and I was like, Oh, he's he ran over his time. It's not my fault. Colleen: Ah ha! Like, so I'd like to evaluate this teacher on his usage of time. Hannah: Yes. Yes, I did. I did note that on my evaluation paper. Colleen: Evaluation paper. Hannah: I only got to observe this teacher for like 5 minutes because the previous teacher ran over and we also went and visited / met for the first time. Well, I met for the first time some some new folks that were partnering with in Suly. Yeah. And so that's kind of an aspect that I think when I lived in Iraq, I didn't really realize that maybe Dave and Lisa were doing was like connecting with other people who were not part of the schools or any of that and and making those connections. Um, so again, it was kind of like getting a peek behind the curtain except like, I'm already on the other side of the curtain. Colleen: You are the other side of the curtain. Hannah: I know, it's so weird. Yeah. And then we also got to go to church with our team, which was new for John. I. I'd been when I was there a year ago. Colleen: Right. Hannah: But our team, really, like, in all of the talks that we had with them up to that point. Were really like, We really want you to come to church. We really want you to see what it's like and have this experience. Yeah, so we did. And I think it was, again, one of those things that's like encouraging to them. Gives us a better picture of like just what church life is like for them. Colleen: Was it what you expected? Like in the sense of it felt like an American church service? Or was it different than your… I don't know that saying a standard American church service seems a little bit silly, because there is not a standard. But.. Hannah: I think it very much… And it's a Baptist church. And so I was like, yep, this is a Baptist church. It seems very much like a Baptist church. Colleen: No major surprises. Hannah: No major surprises, except there were. Uh, a group of I think they were Pakistani guys in the back who were having the sermon translated for them, which I don't really see in American churches. Colleen: No, really? Hannah: Yeah. And it took me a minute to be like, What is going on? Because there was one guy with, like, the sheaf of papers that he was flipping through and talking, like whispering quietly with the other guys. And I was like, are they doing like some kind of paperwork in church? And I was like, Oh, no, he has all the sermon notes. And so he is like translating the sermon while it's being given to these guys. Ok, cool! Colleen: I love it. I love, I love international church. Hannah: It was really cool. They they also have a QR code that you can scan and choose your language to have the sermon translated to on your phone so you can listen on your phone with your headphones to a live translation. Colleen: Wow! Hannah: And I think it's only in like Arabic and Spanish and maybe Kurdish. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Which is why the Pakistani guys had their own personal translator. But yeah, I was like, What a cool thing! Not a thing that existed when I lived there. Colleen: I ran into that when I spent a couple of summers in Japan. The church there did did that. But yeah, never in Iraq. The joys of technology. It sounds like you had a good time. Hannah: Yeah, it was a good time. It was short. It was shorter than our trips usually are. But we also usually, if we're going that far, go to like several different places. And so this trip, we really only went to Kurdistan and we were primarily in Hawler, except for the day trip that we did down to Suly. So it felt nice to just kind of be able to be in one place most of the time. Yeah, not, you know, Greece and a different place in Greece and then Iraq and then a different place in Iraq and then a different place in Iraq. Colleen: And then Turkey. Hannah: And then Turkey. Yeah, I feel like it wasn't it was intense in that it was short, but it wasn't intense in that I was like, I have been traveling for three weeks and haven't slept in the same bed for two nights in a row for 80% of this trip. Colleen: You didn't seem to have too much trouble with the the jet lag coming back and seemed to recover okay. Hannah: Yeah. Yeah, it was good. The worst part of the trip was Chicago, but we're not going to talk about that. Colleen: Okay. I think we all have our favorite and least favorite airports at this point. Hannah: Yeah, it's one of those things that it's like, I know better. I know better than to fly through Chicago. And yet, I keep doing it. Colleen: It's the cheap way to go. Hannah: It is the cheap way or the shortest like travel time. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Yeah. So are you going to go with me in the spring? Colleen: I'd love to. I'm working really hard on getting enough volunteers lined up for my English classes that I can leave them. Hannah: That would be awesome. Colleen: That's my hope and my plan. Hannah: And then we'll do a podcast from Iraq. Colleen: That would be so much fun. We should totally do that! Hannah: Yeah. All right. So you got to get the time off. Or the volunteers to fill in? And I got to remember to bring the microphone. So, you know, my job is the harder of the two for sure. Colleen: Oh, yeah, for sure. Hannah: For sure. Colleen: But more suitcases to bring more gifts to our Iraq staff is also more fun. Hannah: It is more fun. All right. You heard it here first, folks. Next podcast from Iraq… Colleen: No, no. We're going to record one before then. That's going to be the spring. Hannah: A future podcast, not live streamed, from Iraq. Colleen: We could do a live stream. Hannah: No, we can't. I don't want to. Colleen: It could be fun. Hannah: No, the filter is very important for me because sometimes I say things that should not be on the podcast and I can edit them. Colleen: Okay. Hannah: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Colleen: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening. Hannah: Just Chicago. Something always goes wrong.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 56 Learn more at www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq and email Hannah at hannah@servantgroup.org with questions, comments, or suggestions! Hannah: A special mini episode for you! It's the last ten minutes of the previous episode about tourism in northern Iraq. This one is just about Duhok, baby! We realized that we were really running over time, so… Here you go! Special mini episode on Duhok tourism, starting now! Hannah: Duhok itself has the Duhok Dam… Colleen: …which is like the number one place all Kurds want to go! Hannah: It's huge and it's painted to look like a giant Kurdish flag. Colleen: Which, I mean, what more could you want? Hannah: What more could you want. It's earthen, primarily earthen, dam. So the Duhok Lake is behind it. We just always called it the Geli, which maybe is the Kurdish word for dam or for ravine, but that whole neighborhood is just known as the Geli, which I lived in the Geli neighborhood for a little while. Hannah: It's also touristy, like they have a mini golf course and an arcade at the bottom of the dam. Colleen: And a restaurant? Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: Like, I've seen the restaurant! Hannah: And an ice cream stand. Apparently Duhok is famous for its ice cream… Colleen: No kidding! Hannah: I did not know this until I lived there and they were, like, "Yeah, Duhok has the best ice cream." And I was, like, "Well, ok." Colleen: All the ice cream I ever ate was from Turkey. Hannah: They make their own in Duhok. It's pretty good. Colleen: I mean that would be famous compared to places that don't really make their own. Colleen: There are two other caves-ish there. The one I remember visiting we always just called the Zoroastrian cave and it's got these four pillars and, like, obviously things had been burned in there--it's kind of black and sooty. There are stories--again, I feel like people don't really know what it was for--about, you know, different goddesses or the Mithridaties. Hannah: Sure. It a very weird… Colleen: It's one of those, you know, mystery religions ones that maybe they were part of that or it was their temple… Hannah: Or maybe it was theirs first, and then the Zoroastrians got it. Colleen: Yeah, that was the only place I ever actually met tourists from Mosul. Hannah: Oh, really! Colleen: You know, because you walk up on this hill and its got this plaque down at the bottom about Zoroastrianism, and, um, yeah, made some friends, got some pictures with people. Hannah: Nice! What's the other cave? Colleen: It's the one that I've never been to but that Victoria talked about going to--the Halamata cave--which has actual carvings and is Assyrian, I think. Hannah: Yeah, it's up on Zawa mountain, which Zawa is a tourist attraction, too. Again, for Nowruz, all the Duhok people go up on Zawa and set off fireworks. It's not as beautiful as Aqrah, but it is cool because you can look down on all of Duhok. It's really cool to be up there. We went up there once to watch the sunrise and the moon set, because they were happening at the same time. So we went up on Zawa to watch it. It's the coldest I've ever been in my life. It's really cold. Colleen: Yeah, standing on mountains in Iraq is definitely one of colder, colder times I've had. We did up that on Azmar Mountain, which is the mountain, large hill, that overlooks Suly, and we went up there for Easter morning sunrise service! The wind was whipping through there and were all huddled in a circle and trying in some sort of Easter song. And it was too cold!! Colleen: Yeah, um, the other thing that only really knew about Westerners or high school kids doing is hiking up to Flag Mountain, which is a mountainside that overlooks Duhok that's basically just rock but someone has painted the Kurdish flag on it. Colleen: I mean, again, what more do you want? Hannah: I guess. I never went up there, because I never understood why… Colleen: When we were looking up different things that tourists go to see in Kurdistan before we did this episode, just to make sure that we weren't forgetting anything drastic. One of the things that was mentioned a lot by different people was all of the murals and the mural art in different places. Colleen: There are some really awesome murals! Colleen: And there are a lot of really cool murals and, because of the intensity of the sun and the low quality of the paint, they change fairly frequently, because they fade so quickly. And so, there are ones that I remember seeing that are definitely not there anymore or got repainted over with something different. But it's definitely a fun part of being there and going to different places and seeing what kind of paintings there are on rocks and dams and old military barriers, checkpoints, and along the side of the road. Hannah: The military barriers are pretty popular for murals. There was one town that I do not know the name of that we would drive through between Erbil and Duhok that had a mosaic mural that went along the side of the highway on one of their walls, which was always really cool… Colleen: But the most common is definitely paintings of the flag of Kurdistan. Hannah: Oh yeah, super common! Super common. I think the only one we really have left is Zahko bridge, which is popular with everybody! Colleen: Yeah, I never made it. Hannah: That's too bad! It's pretty cool. I say that. The last time I went was when I was in Duhok the last time I was visiting. Colleen: So not while you will lived there! Hannah: Not while I lived there! One of my students and her brother took me up there. There's an old Roman bridge built across a very tumultuous river, still in use, in Zakho. You can walk across it. It's definitely touristy. The day we went there it was rainy, so there weren't a lot of people. But yeah, you can walk across it. It might be the only thing there is to do in Zahhol. Colleen: I know that, like, the people who went there when we took high school students around different places one year and different stuff like that, that it was just the thing you were going for was to see this bridge. Hannah: And I think I was told by one of my students that the reason that it's famous was that there were some forbidden lovers who threw themselves off of the bridge to drown in the river in protest, like Romeo and Juliet kind of thing, and so the bridge has never been demolished to commemorate their love. Everything that I read about it is that it's just a really old Roman bridge, a stone arch bridge, and there is a modern bridge now, too. Colleen: But, I mean, there are a lot of star-crossed Kurdish lovers in Kurdish poetry. It is a very popular theme. Hannah: Yeah, it is. Colleen: But I think that about covers it. Hannah: There are definitely things that we left out. Colleen: Well, there were a lot of things that we left out that we could not a) find on the internet, identify by name, things we randomly saw. Hannah: Yeah, I mean I've seen pictures from students and other friends who find these, like, beautiful places that I'm like, "Where is that!? How did you get there? Why did you never take me there!?" Colleen: My favorite one of those is one called Deralok Dam, which the photos of it look magical with this stunning teal, blue water, and when I first saw it I was like, "That is photoshopped!" And they're like, "No, no, it's real." Hannah: So is there actually a dam? Colleen: There is a dam. Hannah: With water behind it? Colleen: There is water behind it, I think. Hannah: Because I know there's also some sort of natural spring that also has turquoise water, but its white stone with turquoise water--like it looks very Mediterranean. Colleen: Yeah, I do feel like this did look Mediterranean to me, but I don't think any of what I saw looked like it had white stone. But there are a couple of different areas of it. There's like a family area and then like a mens' area. Hannah: Maybe it's the men's area. The only reason I say that is because my male friends are the ones who have posted certain pictures. Colleen: But yeah, I never even heard of that while I was in Iraq. Hannah: I'm sure there are some that we've missed that we just never saw, and I also feel like things continue to be discovered: little magical, beautiful gems of places. It's definitely, there is always something more to explore carefully. Colleen: Carefully. Hannah: And with a guide, if you can get one. Yeah, tell us about your places that you've visited that are maybe off the beaten path. I know there are a ton of places where I grew up that I love to go to that I won't tell other people about because I don't want to ruin it. So if you have those special places, maybe don't give us details, but let us know! Some magic gem you found somewhere along the way, and we'll be back… to talk about prison. Colleen: Probably. Yeah, I don't know that that's our next one! Hannah: Prison! Colleen: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: And it's really hopeful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on! It helps us know that people are listening and lets us know what you want to hear next! Colleen: Thanks for listening!…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 55 Learn more at www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq and email Hannah at hannah@servantgroup.org with questions, comments, or suggestions! Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to between Iraq and a Hard Place! I'm Hannah! Colleen: And I'm Colleen! And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq! Hannah: Wooho! Colleen: Today, we're going to take a bit of a trip through Kurdistan… Hannah: A tour, if you will… Colleen: Indeed, we're going to be tourists--or tour guides--for all of the different places we've been and some of the places that are really popular that maybe we haven't been and some of the places that are really just gone to by Kurds and some places that are really just gone to by foreigners who visit. Hannah: Tourism is kind of not necessarily a new concept in Kurdistan. It's still a little bit of a Wild West kind of a concept, I guess I would say. Colleen: Well, they definitely have two major groups of people who are coming: there are people from other parts of Iraq or the Middle-East who come and then, you know, there's this desire to get more and more of Europeans or other Asians or Americans. Hannah: And we do have to also qualify that for both of us, it's been quite a while since we've been to some of these places. Things change. Colleen: Things change. That whole Wild West thing applies even when you're talking about ruins that are thousands of years old. Hannah: It's true. I will say, though, for me two things always surprise me about going to significant places in Kurdistan. One, if you went somewhere ancient you were allowed to get up close and personal, like there are no barriers or guards or people standing there being like, "Please don't touch that." Colleen: Right. Hannah: Like they're they're a little bit taken for granted. Colleen: I mean there are a lot of them! Hannah: That's true. Colleen: That seems a little bit fair. Hannah: And the second one is that, in my experience with, like, natural beauty… You know, in the US we have tons of state and national parks so that when we go to see a waterfall, you can go up to it and like play around in it and it's just a bunch of people playing around in nature where, in my experience in Kurdistan, it's like "Look at this beautiful waterfall with a restaurant that's built right next to it!" Colleen: Yeah, and like all sorts of little boats and flags and paintings on the rocks. Hannah: Or you could pay to like go up to the waterfall and get in it. It was just much more tourist trap-like, commercialized in a way that I'm not really used to. Like, Americans value wilderness as wilderness on some level… Colleen: Yeah, at least some. Hannah: And perhaps that's a more recent history for the US than long term, but those are always the two things that I think about when I think of Kurdish tourism. Like, yeah, you can get up close and personal, but also sometimes it's very commercial. Colleen: Not exactly the pleasant experience that we would hope for as an American, but that's not to say that our Kurdish friends didn't really love some of those places. Hannah: Yeah, they absolutely did! They absolutely did. Colleen: So where should we start? We have a long list of different things, some of which we will mention very briefly. Colleen: Yes, we're definitely not going to get into all the details. And if you've been to Iraq and we miss your absolute favorite place, write to us and let us know. Hannah: I think we should also say that some of the places we've been we don't know the names of, because, again, Wild West, not everything is named. Colleen: There was this one rock covering that we encountered up in the mountains with zero signage. Zero. I could never find that again, probably ever, because we went on a hike, and there it was. Hannah: It's always an adventure! Let's begin with Suly. Colleen: Suly is where I lived so there are a lot of places there that I think you have not been to. Hannah: I have not been too much in the Suly area. Colleen: Did we never take you to the Amna-surika, the Red House? Hannah: I have been to Sulay, like, three times and you weren't there for any one of them Colleen: I'm sorry, I would have taken you to Ammasurica, maybe. It's an old military center for Saddam and prison and so it's not exactly a pleasant place to go. They have it set up with kind of reenactments and you can see people like in the position of being tortured. Not actual people, but like, mannequins. It's kind of awful. Hannah: Well, now I'm not sad I never went there. Colleen: But there is this one hallway that the entire walls are covered with mirrors, little tiny, broken bits of mirror and the ceiling is covered with little tiny fairy lights, like Christmas lights sparkling so it's magical walking in there. But the symbolism of it is also really heartbreaking because it represents the villages and the number of people who were killed by Saddam during Anfal, during his genocide of the Kurds. So it's sad, but also really beautiful and also, weirdly, a really difficult place to photograph. Hannah: Because how do you capture sparkly, sparkly, sparkly…. Colleen: Yeah, because there are no other lights in there besides those Christmas lights and they're all reflecting off these tons and tons of little bits of broken mirror. Colleen: Connected with that and outside of Sulay, not in Sulay, but in another place that is another place that a lot of people go as a tourist in memory of all of that genocidal tragedy is Halabja, and there are some really big statues and a large graveyard and it wasn't open, because it had partly burned down before we went on our trip there, there's a museum you can go and see there. Hannah: And Halabja is the city that had chemical warfare that really kind of kicked off getting help from outside: pictures and videos from that really really really sad that sparked a lot of international outrage as they ought to have. Colleen: Also in Suly there's Sulaimani Archeological Museum that a lot of people go to. It's free and it's interesting, especially if you could go with someone who can read and translate the signs for you. Hannah: Because they're all in Arabic? Kurdish? Colleen: They're all in Kurdish. The first time I went I was like, well, I can kind of read it, but I have no idea what it says because that vocabulary is not really in my vocabulary. Hannah: Right, it would be specialized. Colleen: Also outside of Sulay we did a lot of hiking and there are some really beautiful places. There's a cave called Hazar Merd, which has this whole story about this woman with a 1000 husbands and… Hannah: That's too many! Colleen: I heard different versions of it and none of them seem to make a lot of sense to me, but, you know, you just ask a local person. Hannah: Did she go to the cave to get away from the husbands? Did husbands lock her in the cave?? Colleen: I got the impression that's where she kept them. Hannah: All right. Colleen: But again, there were multiple versions, and it's a fun thing you could ask someone about there. Hannah: Is it like a big cave? Colleen: It's a really big cave. Hannah: So she could fit a 1,000 husbands in there? Colleen: Maybe that's why they said she had a 1,000. It's a really big cave! Colleen: Also out that direction is a place called Chami Rezan where there's ancient carving--some Zoroastrian and Assyrian style carvings there--and there's a hole in the wall, really high up in this cliff face, and there's a little staircase that goes up to it now. Itt's metal. It's been added. And also a lot of interesting stories regarding that one. Some people were like, "Oh it's a tomb!" And some people were like, "Oh, it's a bathtub!" And some people are like, "Oh, it's a place where they would hide out and wait for approaching armies to see!" Because you can see pretty far out from there, like a lookout tower! But yeah, I also don't know what that one really is again: that whole sense of like these old things, they're just here and no one's ever really taken the time to know what they were there for and no one really cares. Hannah: Not a lot of archeology. It's hard to do a lot of archeology in generally unstable region. Colleen: The other place that we often went or places that tourists often go are waterfalls. And we'll talk about several waterfalls, I think, today. One of the ones that is very popular is the Ahmad Awa waterfalls and they've got these giant, not stairs, but like stairs. Hannah: They are like steps. Colleen: Steps for giants, really, because they're like knee to hip height. It's more of a climb than walking upstairs. Also very crowded with people, a lot of trash, a lot of… Hannah: Tomfoolery? Colleen: Tomfoolery. And, you know, a restaurant right next to it, but also a genuinely cool waterfall. Sergalou is another area that's like a tip-top picnic spot in the spring. Beautiful water, kind of running down a mountain side, not really a waterfall, but little tiny waterfalls along the way. Also just really full of trash and people. We would drive through there every spring as we kind of took a little tour of the scenery when it's beautiful and green. Kids would be out on the side of the road near the villages selling bunches of Nergiz flowers, little daffodils, and we would end up driving through Sergalou and… Hannah: It's also really fun to say. Colleen: It is. Is is! Colleen: As we drive out of Suly towards Erbil, there are a couple of other places that are really high traffic tourist areas. Rawanduz and Soran are really close. Rawanduz is a valley or canyon. It's really beautiful! Hannah: Yeah, it's like the Grand Canyon of Kurdistan. Colleen: The top of it has like a resort and ski slopes and stuff up there, at least in the winter. Hannah: Is that like Korek mountain? Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, now that you say that, though, I may be confusing the two. There's something at the top of the Rowanduz area. It might not be… no, you're right. Korek Mountain is where there's the ski slopes, which is also up that direction. I've never been there. Hannah: Me neither. Not big skiers… Colleen: Well, it didn't really didn't take off until after I left. Hannah: I remember someone taking me to Rowanduz, but not telling me that they were taking me to Rowanduz, and just coming around a corner and being like, "Holy Cow!!" Huge, beautiful ravines with water at the bottom and, like, not anything I expected to see. Colleen: Yeah! Hannah: It was a nice surprise, but it was also a little bit like, "You couldn't give me any warning?" You could have been like, "We're going to go see this really cool thing!" You were just like, "We're on a roadtrip!" Colleen: The other big city, not big city, but the other city that's on the way to Erbil that we've both been to that's a popular location is Shaqlawa. Hannah: Ah, Shaqlawa. Colleen: What do you remember of Shaqlawa? Hannah: Shaqlawa. The first time I ever went on a Kurdish picnic we went through Shaqlawa. That was part of it. And it was definitely hyped to me as like this beautiful mountain town and it's so lovely and the weather is so nice and you're really going to love it and we ended up just kind of, like, hanging out in the main shopping street. And like, I mean, we wandered up and down the streets and ate nuts from different vendors and like, but I was just kind of, like this is not. I don't get it, I don't get why people love this and I went back to Shaqlawa later to stay with some friends and it is beautiful, beautiful countryside, but I mean also grew up in Western North Carolina where everything is beautiful all the time, so my standards maybe a little different. Colleen: Yeah, I remember getting talked about as, like, this really like stunningly beautiful place, and to me it didn't look that much different from most other small mountain towns. Hannah: It is the place, though, that lots of people from the South have houses, because it's cooler. More of a resort town, like a vacation getaway kind of place. Colleen: I mean it certainly is cooler than Bagdad Hannah: Or Erbil, even. Colleen: Yeah, well, Erbil I will say is pretty stifling in the summer, especially. A little bit of mountains is nice. Hannah: For sure. Steve: Hey, this is Steve, my wife and I have been with Servant Group International for quite a while now, which means that we're sort of old, which also means that we need some fresh new faces here at Servant Group. We love for you to join us! Hannah: In Erbil, though, there's also lots to do. I think we talked about this when we talked to Victoria about Erbil being one of the longest continuously inhabited cities, and that specifically is downtown, the Citadel, which is kind of at the center of the city. Colleen: It's upon a tell, so its an ancient mound of city built on city built on city for generations and generations. Hannah: And that's one of the places where there has been a lot of archaeological things. My first year living in Erbil the people renting the house next to us were Italian archaeologists, Italian and French archaeologists, who have been working at the citadel, which was kind of neat. They were loud, but… Colleen: They were Italian! Hannah: There's a lot more signage up there telling you about what what all the different things are and how old they are. Colleen: There's kind of neat little museum up there, too, with explanations in English and Kurdish. Hannah: There's two musueums up there now, because there's also a textile museum. Colleen: I think the textile one is actually the only one I've been to. Hannah: Because there's a textile one and then there's the archeological one. Colleen: Yeah, I don't think the archeological one was open when I was up there. Hannah: It's pretty cool and they're working on restoring it because it's in pretty much disrepair. Even in the ten years since I first moved there they've really done a lot to make it beautiful. And then the citadel kind of looks out over the main bazaar in Erbil, which still feels very old school. It still looks very ancient and they built a big fountain and a park on one side of it now, which is also very beautiful. And they're kind of trying to build like a new sparklier bazar, but I don't know if that ever went through because I think most of the Kurds are like "No. Why would we want that? Why would we do that when we have a perfectly functional, lovely ancient bazaar, right here?" Colleen: Yeah, there's there is a little bit of that competition between the old and the new that I think you find in almost every culture. Some people want something flashy and new and other people are, like, "but the old is good…" Hannah: So that's probably the biggest tourist thing in Erbil. It's really easy to get to. There's also an old mosque out there. I went to a really cool photography exhibit in the old bath house at the top of the citadel. Colleen: Huh! Hannah: It was weird, but very cool, very artsy. But yeah, it was pretty cool, and that's the only time the bathhouses has ever been open for people to go in for the artist exhibit. Colleen: That's pretty awesome. Hannah: There's also a really big park in Erbil, Sami Abdul-Rahman Park. It's several acres. And, I mean, it's a park: green grass, trees, people wandering around. There's a train, like the little trains that you can ride like in the zoo, that drives around the park and you can pay like, I don't know, 1000 dinars to drive around the park in the train. And, I mean, the park is big enough to justify a train! Hannah: So that's kind of fun, too! They do a big Nowruz stuff in the park. Colleen: Oh, and there's a really big, beautiful mosque there that I never went in, but if you drive past it you know that it's the big, beautiful mosque. Colleen: Yeah, I've seen pictures and, I mean, I've probably driven past it, but… It's blue, mostly blue. Colleen: Very blue. And near where I lived in Erbil there is a really, really, really, really old mosque that they recently have been restoring. I noticed it the last time I was in Erbil. It was just the tower and minaret, but they've rebuilt the mosque next to it and it's also really beautiful in a very modern sort of way. I don't know if it's touristy, but definitely people within Erbil, are like, "Oh yeah. Have you seen that mosque? It's really beautiful." Colleen: Ah, OK. You mentioned Nowruz as one of the things that is parties in the park. The place that has the biggest parties is Akre, right? Hannah: Yeah, Akre. So that's a city built into the side of the mountain. Colleen: That's not far from Erbil? A couple of hours? Hannah: Maybe an hour and a half? So a lot of the houses are actually, like a house front, but the inside is like a cave. I'm pretty sure that's to keep it cool in the summer time. Colleen: That is nice. Hannah: But every year for Nowruz they do, like, a fire walk where everyone in the town gets--or a lot of people in the town have--torches. And they walk up the side of the mountain to the very top and light a big bonfire and have fireworks at the top. And all around the sides of the mountain, because it's pretty much sheer rock in most places, they have long Kurdish flag banners that they drap all along the sides of the mountain. So it's very spectacular! Colleen: There are videos. We'll have to link some in the show notes. Hannah: Yeah, I never actually got to be in Akre for Newroz, but I kind of always wanted to go because they do it at night, so it's like this line of fire winding up… Colleen: It's really spectacular! Hannah: It's really cool. Colleen: I've also never been there in person, but I've seen videos. Hannah: The city itself is beautiful. Colleen: It's also the city that was the encampment of Alexander the Great. I think he theoretically founded it. Hannah: Alright. He wasn't there when I was there… Colleen: Really? That's too bad. Colleen: That was the one place we never did actually find or get to go to. We decided it was maybe a little too close to Mosul, but, like, the battlefield of Gaugamela, where Alexander the Great defeated the Persian army or had a battle with the Persian army or something. I used to know more about that. Hannah: Yeah, there are definitely places that it was like I really want to go there, but we never could, because it was never safe enough, but there's not not plenty in the North to see. Colleen: That's true, because we're only half-way through our list! Colleen: The next place over that I was thinking of Amediya. Hannah: Or Amedi. I think that's a Bahdini-Sorani difference, but I don't know. Colleen: I actually think it's a Kurdish-Arabic difference because on the maps and things it's Amadiya, but there I always heard it called Amedi. Hannah: Yeah, I had a lot of students who Amedi was their village, like their family village, in Duhok. Colleen: It is beautiful! Hannah: It is really cool! Colleen: It is built on a high plateau, but like the city is built all the way to the edges of the city on the plateau. Hannah: It's kind of a plateau in the most classic sense, like there are no other plateaus around it. There are some mountains. You can get up on a mountain and look down at Amedi. Colleen: But you can get to it from there. It's far enough away. It's surrounded by flat space. Hannah: Yeah, and it's cool when you're in the city you can look out, down, at the plains of Dahuk or between Amedi and Duhok. It's very cool! But also a Roman City. Colleen: Right, and it's got an old Roman road leading up to an old Roman gate that you can go see and that a lot of people go see. It's certainly not the road anyone uses to get in now. It's not in good enough repair and it's also narrow, too narrow for cars. Hannah: I think there's also some Biblical person's tomb up there. This was another one of those someone said that to me after I had been there, but they couldn't tell me who it was. I remember kind of seeing like a churchy, tomby looking building, but I don't know. But it is really popular for Kurds and Westerners to go up there. Hannah: On the trip where we went to Ahmadi with some American friends who were very explorey: Katrina's husband, Kinley. Kinley and Katrina, I should say, took us on this trip and one of the places we went was Dwin Castle. And there were actually two different places that we stopped and I'm not actually sure which Dwin Castle, if I'm being completely honest, because it's kind of it's off the main, beaten path and I don't think you could find it unless you knew where you were going specifically. Hannah: So one of them is kind of up on a hill and its ruins of a castle, but they're still a tower standing and then the other one is as you come down off the mountain there's kind of this, I guess it would be like a really small tell, more like a hill, like you can walk up it very easily. But it also has the ruins of a castle on the top of it and so I'm not sure which one is which. Hannah: But I think for the lower one the story was, kind of like, that no one lived there as a castle: it was kind of like a look out so if something was going down, everybody would flee there, but that there was some princess who was fleeing her father and locked herself into it and it got knocked down and that's why it was in ruins. But it was one of those places where there are no signs, there are no, like, guard rails, and so we have pictures of us climbing just like all over this ruins of a castle. And it was really cool! Again, I couldn't tell you where or how we got there, but it was pretty awesome! Colleen: That does sound awsome! It reminds me, actually, out in that same area, somewhere out on the way to Amedi, we visited one of Sadam's old palaces that is also a ruin, not necessarily just from time, but definitely from active destruction and, like, vandalism and attack on this particular space. And I don't have very many photos up there because the walls were just covered with all sorts of profanity. It was an interesting place to see the demise of someone who, you knowm, was like, I don't know, part of history that I was alive for, right? Not as in ancient history where no one knows the stories of like these things and it's all vague. It's like here, everybody knows, and they're still made about it. Hannah: Yeah, for sure! Let's talk about some secrety places… Colleen: OK. So Lalish is the center of Yazidi faith and area and culture. Hannah: We talked about Lalish a lot in the episodes about Yazidi faith. I have never been there, much to my regret. Colleen: That's really sad. It's really fascinating and beautiful. One of the distinctives I remember thinking was that they had a lot of trees on their streets and even in and around their temple and obviously it was an area that was well cared for…and those distinctive towers with the ridges on them. Hannah: Yeah, they almost look like a citrus juicer but pointy. Colleen: But pointy. Hannah: Not rounded. Colleen: Yeah, they're very distinctive and very, very beautiful. Hannah: Yeah, they are very beautiful. A lot of history. We talk, again, we talk extensively about Lalish in those episodes about Yazidism. Colleen: But that's a place that local people don't ever really go to. It's only really internationals who have some sort of interest in world religions that end up going there. Hannah: Or Yazidis. Hannah: So did you actually go into Lalesh? Did you go into the Temple? Colleen: Yep. We got a full tour. Hannah: Did you have to take your shoes off? Colleen: Uh-huh. It was cold that day and we were able to ask a lot of questions and the people were incredibly hospitable and, you know, guided us through all of the inner areas where there's vats of oil stored and, you know, little cubby holes with fire in them. There's a tomb down there that people throw scarves at over their shoulders to get wishes granted to them. Hannah: Maybe the next time I go to a Iraq I'll have to go up there. Because now that I know more, I really, really want to see it! The other place that I feel like many more people go to eagerly is Alqosh, which we do reference in the Chaldean Church episodes, because it's one of the seats of the Caldean church. Colleen: Ancient. Historical. Hannah: There's kind of three parts to Alqosh. There's the ancient monastery that's up on the hill. Colleen: So the Rabban Hormizd Monastery. Hannah: And there's a kind of a family that lives up there and maintains it, at this point, and that's really cool… Colleen: Be careful. Go with the guide. You could get lost forever. Hannah: Yeah, there are deep, deep caves that go way, way, way back into the mountain. Colleen: And there's no light. Hannah: No light! That probably is one of the freakiest experiences I've had as we kind of blithely just wandered into one…. Colleen: Oh dear! Hannah: And got far enough back in there that, like, I was like, ok, at this point, I could find my way back out. If I go any further and we turn off in any direction, I'm not going to be able to find my way back. So I was like "Guys, I'm not going to go any farther." And I turned around and came back by myself, and I was like "I'm walking through the dark with a flashlight and if I get lost…" Like, this feels really dangerous to do this by myself, but I'm confident enough to know that I can get back. And I think they maybe had a guide at the front or the guy who runs the place went in after them, because he brought them back out like a totally different way. Colleen: A totally different? I've been there multiple times and, like, I still have no idea how to get around in there. Hannah: The main monastery part is not maze-like. It's just if you get back into the caves where they hid.. Colleen: Or lived. Hannah: Or lived. But the main monastery is really beautiful. It gets a lot of light. It's on top of the mountain. It's all whitewashed inside, so it seems even brighter. And there are Scriptures carved into the walls in Aramaic, I think, which is really cool to see! Colleen: It's a beautiful script, too! Hannah: There are seven curves in the road coming up to the monastery and it's because Chaldeans use it as the seven stops on the walk of Christ. Colleen: I don't think I knew that! Hannah: You didn't know that? So it's really common--and we had some Chaldean people with us when we went-- for them to walk up the road and stop at each of the 7 sides of the cross and pray…which is dedication, because that is a steep hill! Colleen: It also needs those seven switchbacks, because there's no way you're getting up it otherwise. Hannah: And I think the people who decided to walk, I think it took them a good two hours. And I mean they were stopping and praying, but it took them a long time. We were all done being up there by the time they got there. And they are like, "Yeah, we're done, too." Hannah: So that's the main one and that kind of looks out over the Nineveh plain. It's really beautiful. Colleen: At the bottom of that hill there is another monastery, the new monastery. Hannah: Also, the same name, though. Colleen: Yeah, I think it's just the modern one, although, I mean, it's also a little old… Hannah: And it has a big chapel. Colleen: And that's where the monks live and still do work still. Hannah: I think there's a boys' orphanage there, too. Hannah: Also really beautiful. We accidentally stumbled into where the monks private living space was and were told to get out…very nicely. But still like, "You cannot be in here." And "We're really sorry! There were no signs." How are we going to know? Colleen: Crazy woman running around in the men's monstery! Hannah: Yeah…but also very hospitable people. They had, I think, water and oranges for us when we came down off the mountain and gave us a place to sit and eat lunch together. There's also museum and archive there with ancient texts which, if the right monk is around, you can get in and they'll show you some of them. Colleen: Oh really! Hannah: We had bad timing and the correct guy was not at the monastery. Colleen: I'm not sure it even occurred to us to ask, because I think the correct guy probably was there. We met a guy, who, and I'm sure I mentioned this when we talked before about some of this, is the funniest, most interesting monk with his leather jacket and his black sunglasses and, you know, black jeans and doesn't look the way you think in your head. Hannah: The cool monk. Colleen: He was definitely the cool monk. And he was working on translating a lot of ancient texts into modern Arabic, actually, and putting them online so that the youth could have access to the ancient documents. Hannah: Probably the guy! Colleen: Probably the guy. Hannah: Man! Missed your chance! Colleen: I did. I didn't even know there was a chance! Hannah: So if you go into, the town that's next to Alqosh, kind of the third part of Alqosh… Colleen: I mean, the town is Alkosh. The monastery is not Alqosh. Hannah: That's true. The town, not the monastery, there is an ancient synagogue, which is kind of mindblowing to me. I was, like, I did not even think about their being Jewish people… Colleen: But there were Jews who lived all over Iraq! Hannah: And the synagogue is ancient, but it's also hasn't been that long since it's been in use. The story that we were told was that during World War II, the Jewish families that were living in Alqosh decided to go to Israel once the nation of Israel had been established to kind of flee, I guess, and left the keys with their Muslim neighbours and asked them to take care the synagogue while they were gone. So you can go into the synagogue now. Colleen: Provided you can find you can the neighbors with the keys. Hannah: Provided you can the family! Hannah: Which, if, in our case, a busload of white people kind of roll up to where the synagogue is, the neighbor comes out and he's like, "You want to go in?" And we're like "Yeah!" Hannah: So, in the synagogue is the tomb of… Colleen: Nahum! Hannah: Nahum, yeah. Allegedly. I think there is some debate. Colleen: I mean, there are some other places that claim to be the tomb of Nahum, so there is only that debate. I don't think there's any debate about, "Was it is somebody else?" Hannah: Oh sure, yeah. Colleen: There, it is the tomb of Nahum. His bones are not there anymore, though. They have been taken, I mean years ago, up to a Christian church and they are in the wall crypt… Hannah: I can't say that word… Colleen: Reliquery? Hannah: That's the one! Colleen: I don't know, but there's like a plaque on the wall and, you know, it says that this is where the bones of Nahum have been interred. Hannah: The tomb of Nahum is really cool because there are Hebrew writings carved on the walls. Colleen: All over the walls! It's really interesting, too, because the style of the architecture and the decor in there really is different. So all of the light fixtures, what's left of them, and the other decorative carvings on the walls have a very different feel than anything else you run into in Iraq! Hannah: It is really cool! That's also the only place we ran into a fence. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: They have the area where his tomb is kind of fenced off so you can't actually like approach it directly. You can reach through and touch it, but you can't like get up by it or on it, and I think the neighbour put it up so that people wouldn't bother it. Colleen: There's a second tomb in there. Did you know this? So there's a second tomb in the same synogogue area. It's outside, kind of in a corner, and it's either Nahum's wife or Nahum's sister, whose name was Sarah. Hannah: Oh! Cool! Colleen: So they're both kind of equally cared for, which I thought was really neat. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us a Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servant group.org! Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next! Colleen: Thanks for listening! Hannah: Yeah, some things fall out of your brains. Colleen: Yeah, they do.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 54 Hannah and Colleen have a conversation with Victoria, who went on our teacher training trip back in August of 2021. Hear her reactions, culture shock, what she learned, and whether or not she'd ever go back! Also find out about what to do when you break your ankle on a mountain hike! Lear more at www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq and email Hannah at hannah@servantgroup.org with questions, comments, or suggestions! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place! I'm Hannah! Colleen: And I'm Colleen, and we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Hannah: We have a special guest today. Victoria is here with us to tell us about the trials and tribulations of going to Iraq with me. Colleen: Trial and tribulation, I'm sure, although I've never actually experienced that. Hannah: It's true, it's one of those weird things about us. Victoria: That is not how this was pitched to me, it is not what I'm planning on talking about. Hannah: So Victoria and I and four other people, four and a half other people, I don't know how you count a child. I guess they're a whole person, Colleen: They are a whole person! Hannah: We went to Iraq in August to help do some teacher training for the national teachers at the three different schools in Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyah. I was in Erbil and Victoria got the joy of being in Dohuk. So yeah, we're just going to talk to you a little bit about what your experience was like because you were new and maybe you have some different perspective than me. Who was not new. Victoria: Sounds great. Colleen: So how did you become interested in this trip? Victoria: Well, I had been volunteering at SGI, and Colleen asked me if I wanted to go to Iraq and I said, Yes. I am an ESL teacher by training and trade. So I have a natural interest in teacher training in non English settings or non native English settings. So Colleen knew this and asked me if I wanted to go, and it really was that quick. I knew immediately that I wanted to go and had the flexibility to go. So I went home. I think that night I asked my husband, like, What do you think? And he was like, Sure. And so I'm pretty sure it was like a day or two later I was like, Yup I'm in, like, I'm all in, let's go. Hannah: Yeah, I think you were one of the first ones because I think we talked to you about it like two or three days after we found out that it might be a possibility. So thanks for signing up so fast because I was like, I don't know this going to work. And I was like, I got one, and if I can get one. I could get more. Colleen: But even before I asked you, I had told Hannah that I was going to ask you and that I thought you would go like I was. I was already like, I've got to find an opportunity to ask Victoria because I think she's going to go on this trip. Victoria: Well, it ended up being perfect. Like, right after I got there, I'd been there, maybe three or four days. And I remember just reflecting on so many things that God has already taught me and experiences He's already given me and realizing that this trip was sort of like perfect for who God has made me to be. I think I wrote something along the lines of like, I was made for this. And so I really do see God's hand in the fact that he put in your mind to ask me and that I was able to go and learn a lot about myself and get to put a lot of the gifts and experiences I've already have to use. So it was great. Colleen: Yeah, because Iraq's not the first place you've gone and traveled, right? Victoria: I lived in Central Asia for two years and taught English there, in a bit of a different setting. But yeah, I lived in Central Asia for two years and I've traveled. I always say, like all over the Muslim world, like if you can imagine a sort of continent or area of the world where Muslims live in different cultural pockets. I've probably been there. Hannah: So did you go into this trip with certain expectations of what it would be like because of those experiences? Victoria: Some of my expectations were around myself, like, I thought that I would be cool and fine, and I thought I kind of knew what I was walking into, and to some extent I was. And in other ways, the uniqueness of Kurdistan sort of… I had culture shock that I did not expect. I've lived in the Middle East briefly, and so I was sort of expecting Middle East vibes, but also it's Central Asia. So I was expecting Central Asia vibes, and that was true. It felt more Middle Eastern than Central Asian to me in a lot of ways. I had sort of forgotten how hard that can be when you're going as essentially a single woman, because I was there without my husband. And just in general, how hard it can be to live in a culture that's different from yours and more restrictive than yours, for both men and women. So, yeah, I had more culture shock than I expected to have, for sure. Hannah: Yeah. Was there anything specifically that you like in the moment were like, Oh, this is really different than what I expected? Or was it more of a general? Victoria: This is going to sound so funny because I know better because I was warned that it was hot and I've lived places without AC and I know how heat can affect you. But just how hot it was and how much that took out of me and how angry that made me and the whole world for existing was a little unexpected. I was like, I didn't anticipate not handling this as well as I'm not handling this. Or however you say that. Colleen: That's a great example of something that you can tell someone ahead of time that it will do this to you or that this is the experience. But it's different from actually feeling it and having it change what you can and cannot do. Victoria: Well, it's strange too, because it's not the first time I've experienced that. And so I like anticipated like, I know that jet lag is hard, and I know that cross-cultural living when you don't have language is hard and I know that heat is hard. And I got there and it all hit again, and I was like, I hate this place. I don't want to be here. I don't want to ever come here again, which did not stay that way. By the time I left, I very much want to go back. But at the time, I was just like, What am I doing? This is so hard. Hannah: What did I sign up for it? Yeah, yeah. I honestly. The heat for me was a struggle, too, because I've never been there in August, really? So, yeah, even for me, I was like, OK, it's going to be hot. We're going to be fine. We're going to be fine, but it's going to be hot. And then the first night we got there, I was like, Oh, yeah, it's hot. I forgot. I forgot how much I hate this. And how much. I don't want to do anything because it's so stinking hot, right? But everyone else feels that way, too. And so it's kind of like nobody's doing anything. Victoria: It's true. I think the other thing that what made it even more interesting was the fact that I was in a classroom teaching 10 hours after arriving at the place that I would stay. And I don't know that I ever had that fast of a turnaround on any trip or like cross-cultural, longer experience that I've been on, like we were expecting you to perform, this quickly. And that was fine once I got used to it. But I think that that definitely slowed my acclimation by quite a bit because I didn't have time to like orient before. It was like and now, Hannah: Right, because you got there and pretty much got up the next morning and there was a taxi at your door to take you to the school. Victoria: It was one a.m. when we were like, People are out of our house. We can go to bed now. And someone picked us up at 7:30 a.m. We had a meeting with school administrator and we were… I had a few hours or an hour. My coworker compatriot, roommate was teaching at nine. Like, that's how much time we had. Hannah: Which is less than ideal, but pretty much the way that it works in Iraq. Victoria: And I think truthfully, I think that knowing that that's the way it works in Iraq made it worse, not better, because it wasn't like, Well, this just happened this time or like, this just happened to me. It's like, this is representative of the way this is expected to go. Oh crap, what am I doing? Colleen: Was there any of your expectations that you were thinking that were good things that did happen or that were met in a way that you found really valuable? Victoria: I mean, I expected people to be warm and they were. I was hopeful to get to connect with people like one on one to get to go to cafes or go on walks or be in people's homes. And that didn't happen as quickly as I was hoping for because I kind of thought having this sort of established relationship might have made that happen more quickly. But it was more like what you might expect with a culture like that where it's like, really, it takes time for people to trust you. And by the time we left, we had gotten to do quite a bit of that sort of one on one relationship building. And so that was really sweet. And I guess met expectations eventually. Oh, this is an interesting one. It's not your question, but I expected good food and that wasn't actually the case. Colleen: I'm sorry we failed to prepare you. Victoria: You didn't. You told me. I just made it up in my head that if you were probably not right about it and I don't know why I thought that. The fruit was great. The rest of the food was fine. But it's like imported Middle Eastern food versus like fresh Middle Eastern food, and it's just not as good and it's still Middle Eastern food, even though you're starting to get up into Central Asia, but you're still in the desert. So you don't get like all that really yummy Kafka's food or whatever, that's a little further north. Hannah: Yeah, it's one of those things that also makes it hard sometimes because you're like, not only is it hot, but also all the food tastes the same. And this is very boring, Colleen: Which I mean, I can understand why you maybe didn't believe us on that one, because food is somewhat a matter of taste and … Hannah: Good pun, Colleen. Colleen: … but that there are people and team members, even though I've had in the past that love the food. So it's a little bit of a toss up. Victoria: Well, truthfully, I was like, you lived there for a long time. I also lived in Central Asia in a different place for a long time. And while the food there was delicious after a couple of years, it is kind of samey. And so I was like, Maybe it'll be fine for a month. Like, maybe I'll love it for a month. It was not. I did not love it. Hannah: I mean, that's a that's a fair bit of advice that like, food: lower your expectations. I think that's fair. Any particular adventures or weird happenings that you're like, Oh, people need to know this story? People need to know about this thing that happened to me. Victoria: I was really blessed with a roommate slash partner in crime in Dohuk, who had the same approach to that month that I did like. We ended up getting to do a lot of things together that we both wanted to do, which was great. Since we were both single women, we kind of needed each other to, like, navigate. So we did a lot of the things I've already talked about together, but we also both really wanted to experience nature, which exceeded my expectations. Going back to your previous question, I sort of expected it to be boring and drab and brown, and instead, it's beautiful and drab and brown. But we were like, we both really wanted to like do some hiking and exploring. It's also like phenomenal history that struck me really differently than… I've been in Israel, and the history in Israel is beautiful and amazing. But being there and realizing you're really in the cradle of civilization is hard to put your mind around until you're there. So one thing that happened, we went on several hikes and historical explorations. But when you're driving around Dohuk, there's some Assyrian carvings that you can see on the mountainside, and the top of the mountain is a--it's not really a tourist attraction, but it's an attraction for the people who live there. You can drive up and there's a park and it's really beautiful. You can also hike up. It's a small mountain, it's a rocky hill. Colleen: But it's called a mountain. Victoria: It is called a mountain. And so anyway, you can see these carvings on the side of the mountain if you know where to look and you can hike up to them or down to them if you've driven to the top. So we got up really early, like really early one Saturday morning, I think to go before I got hot. Hannah: Yeah, you don't want to be hiking in the middle of the day. Victoria: We wanted to be down. We wanted to be down before eight a.m. so that the heat was not desert intense. And so we go we meet up with a bunch of people. One of them, we had met briefly before the rest of them. They're all expats. The rest of them were new to us and we'd go exploring. Nobody had done this hike before. We'd all just heard about it and talked to people who had done it. Some of us had talked to people who'd done it. So we like scramble around for a while trying to find the trailhead. Finally find a goat path to go up. There's not really a trails. Yes, which is fine where I lived in Central Asia, I did a lot of mountain climbing, hiking, whatever, and I'm quite used to like, go path equals trail. So it was fine. So we're scrambling up and it was moderate to extreme. Like, it wasn't super difficult. I was wearing chacos like and it was doable. So we go up. One of the gals who is with us rolled her ankle, or so we thought, so she was not feeling great. She sat down and tied it up. We went on to go and try and find the carvings she rested for a while, eventually caught up with us. We found the carvings. They were amazing. They are faces carved into the mountain. So there's this moment where it's like I'm face to face with history. And it looked like a Bible play of Daniel or something like, it's just amazing. So anyway, so then we go to go down and she's not doing well. This girl that had rolled her ankle is just really not doing well. And so we kind to stop and have a powwow. And several of the group had church that they needed to get to because Saturdays are one of the weekend days where they're able to do church. And so they really needed to go. So they went on down. I didn't need to go and was like, You can't get down the mountain and it's actually not safe for you to go down. It's better to go up if you're injured, because what we just climbed up is very unsafe. I'm afraid to go down it on two good legs. Why don't we go up since it's drivable? So the gal that we had met before went down, got her car and drove around to meet us at the top. Meanwhile, my roommate, co-teacher and I stayed with this girl who had rolled her ankle and started to try to make our way up. It took us, I don't even remember, like an hour and a half. It took us a long time to go like a fourth of the mountain was all that was left to go up and we had to like, pick our way across and like, go up these big boulders. And she was a trooper. It was really tough and it got hot. And then we got up got in the car, drove back down. She drove us back to like where her apartment complex was because that's where we had plans later in the day and then texted us that night and said, "My teammates said, I need to go get it X-rayed. So I did, and my leg is broken." Yeah, so like the bottom, like close to her ankle, she had, like, fractured her leg. And finish climbing a mountain on it. Colleen: I feel bad for her. Victoria: And I'm really sad that that happened, but I'm also grateful because I think if it hadn't, we would have met her that day and all gone our separate ways. But because that sort of traumatic experience happened and all of us were involved, Abby and I ended up going back to see her the next day to still, like, help her process. And then we had just the sweet time, like she was just this really beautiful, amazing, strong human that we had a great time with. So then we ended up hanging out with her two or three more times, which doesn't sound like that much until you realize we were only there for four weeks, right? Hannah: Yeah. Victoria: And she came to our place. We went to her place a couple more times and she was just a joy to get to know. And I think we never would have like connected that deeply that quickly. And she's busy. If that hadn't happened, so there's a very long adventure story for you. Colleen: Good trauma bonding. Also, I think one of the positive features of both. I mean, my time and I can't speak for Hannah's time in Iraq, but we did often make friends with other expats or team members and build relationships with people that are never going away. Yeah, and that's one of the neat things. Hannah: And people that you may not otherwise have built those relationships with. Like, if you had been their neighbor in America like, you might not have built that relationship. But because you're in kind of that like it's us or no one situation? Yeah, you build some really beautiful connections. Victoria: I think one thing that I've been thinking about around that recently since since getting back from Iraq specifically is like, Abby, my roommate and co-worker and I, we did everything together. We had a great time. Like, we really enjoyed each other's company. We got to know each other really well, and we haven't really talked since we got back. But like that month, we were each other's person and it was beautiful and wonderful, and we were both really grateful for each other. And since we got back, we've texted and checked in a little. But not like we're not, I think, going to be a regular part of each other's lives. And I think the more I've traveled around the world and seen like those intense experiences that you can have together are really beautiful and show you some of what like being a part of God's Kingdom together can be like. But it doesn't mean they have to be your best friend for the rest of your life. And it makes me look forward to eternity when I really will have enough time and capacity to actually stay friends with all of these wonderful people that I've gotten to meet. Colleen: Yeah, absolutely. Hannah: It was really encouraging to me to see the two of you get along so well. I I was a little bit like, Well, I'm tossing these two people who don't know each other into the pot of soup that is Iraq. Hope this works out, OK, bye. Colleen: It's not quite that flippantly! Hannah: Not quite. Colleen: We do carefully consider everybody that applies and pray over the situation. Hannah: I do my due diligence for sure, but there is also an element of just like these people are strangers, they will either get along or they will not, and I can't control that. And so it is really encouraging to me to see just how God brought the two of you, and then the other family that was in Suly kind of all together. When we all got to get together for that that long weekend and how everyone just like, enjoyed each other. I was like, Yes, this is what like, this is what the Bible means when it says they will know we are Christians by our love. Like we don't know each other, but we all love each other and we want to be together. And for me, that was the highlight of the whole, the whole three and a half weeks that I was there. How about you? Did you have like one thing that was like, yes, this was perfect and beautiful, and if I could recreate that in my own life, that's putting a high expectation on it. Did you have a moment where you felt like this is this was the best part of this trip for me? Victoria: I loved being in the classroom with teachers. Like I said at the beginning, my background is in teaching English to non-native English speakers. I've done that in public school settings in the U.S. and I've done it some overseas with like wee children all the way to adults. And getting to teach teachers was really fun and like, build those professional but also sort of friend relationships like, I just loved teaching them and the relationships we got to build. But I really loved the content and getting to like do professional development with teachers. I actually loved it so much that I came home and got a job doing it in America, Colleen: Which you hadn't planned on doing before you took this trip, right? Victoria: Completely unplanned. Like, I went on this trip thinking I would come home and I wasn't sure what I was going to do and actually God used to just being away from my husband and having sort of a limited set of things that I could do while in Iraq like help clarify a lot of things about my own personal goals and what I needed and wanted next. And sort of, wow, you're really good at this. And like, he's made these things that are part of how he designed you to be. Like, how are you going to leverage them for his kingdom? And so all of those things sort of came into focus for me while I was there, which was really sweet because I had been living overseas and came home and got married. And there was a lot of like, my life is in all of this transition and somehow like being in Iraq for that month gave me a lot of like, brought it all together and was like: this is a good example of how everything works together. And that allowed me, I think, to come out of that trip with like, I want to replicate some of that in my life. Like exactly how you just said it, like this part of this I can do, even in Nashville, I am going to try and find a way to do it. And I didn't know that the job I have now is how I was going to do it. I was still kind of exploring and then when I came back, there was a conversation I had and it was just like, Ah, this is exactly what I want to do. Colleen: Teach teachers. Victoria: Yeah, so that's what I'm doing now. Hannah: Also, the thing that I love, like, you know, as much as I would love for you to go back to Iraq and live there forever, knowing that you have found the thing here in the U.S. that is that fulfilling moment for you, that fulfilling, I mean, ministry and a lot of ways it's more than a job… vocation, I think, is the Christiany way to say it. I think for, for for SGI and for me, like, that's the outcome that I want for anyone that I take to Iraq is like, find the thing that God has for you and then do it. Maybe it's here. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's not with us, but it's been neat for me to see you find that, and I feel like Abby has found that on some level. So look in a little bit, but has found found the next thing and even the family that was in Suly, you know, they went back to where they were before, but I think they took a lot of things with them. And it's been it's been cool to see that happen out of that very short trip. It was a fast trip. Victoria: It was! The whole from like, "Do you want to go?" to like "We're back!" was like maximally two and a half months or three months? Like, it was not a very long trip, even in your own mind. I didn't want to add to what you said that I think this trip was a great example of how God sometimes just asks you to do the next right thing (to borrow from Frozen). It's not that this job that I have now is the thing that I'm going to do for the rest of my life or even the rest of the next five years. It's just the next right thing of how he wants to use the like time, place, gifts, availability that I have and Iraq was exactly that, too. It was like it was the next thing that I could do, to follow who he made me to be and who he is asking me to become. And so, I was grateful for that opportunity and how it sort of dominoed right into this next one and my own personal journey. Hannah: Yeah. Is there anything else that you can see that, like, "My time in Iraq really influenced this aspect in my life now that you're back here?" Colleen and I talk about this quite a bit, but something that was like cultural, a cultural difference that you saw that you're like, I want to do this in my own life. Beyond just teaching teachers or even a like, I have to remember that I'm not in Iraq anymore, so we can do this instead. Victoria: I don't know if I was there long enough to, like, get those things that happen in your brain. They're like, Oh yeah, I can do this. It reminded me how much I love cross-cultural work and just how much I am made to need that in my life and how God wants to use that. And so that's probably not like the huge moment you're thinking about, but it's definitely… Colleen: Not everything has to be a huge moment. It's OK. Victoria: It also has been I mean… This is really small, but it's like it's really fun that like now when I think about Kurds or Iraq, I like have a visual and I'm way more interested in like the history and development of that place than I could have been before. I think I had a fun. This is not really related to your question, but it's a story I want to tell. I bought a keffiyeh. Is that how you say it? Hannah: Mm hmm. Victoria: The scarf that you see in like pictures like red checkered thing. I bought one for me and for my husband, but I wore it the first day it was like chilly to work to Metro Nashville public schools, and I was like going to get my name badge. So it was outside of my normal context. And there was a gentleman in the waiting room and he was like, "That's a blah blah blah." He said the tribe like, keffiyeh. Like, "Where did you get that? Like, that's from my country?" And I was like, Oh, I was in Kurdistan teaching, and that's where I bought it. And he was like, "No way I'm from Dohuk." And I'm like, "Well, that's where I was. I was in Dohuk." And I was like, This is just so sweet. Like, I never would have had that connection. And I have this like tangible souvenir that allowed me to, like, make a small connection with another human. And it was great. Hannah: It's really fun that he was like, This is the tribe that that is because I could never figure that out in Iraq. Colleen: No. Victoria: He told me like three times and I was like, tried. So hard to remember, but I can't remember. Colleen: So would you go again? Was the trip so scarring, the heat so awful that you would never set foot in the country ever again? Or if? It worked out… Victoria: I would love to go back. When I left, I was like, I want to come back, maybe in the spring. But it's a little less hot. But like I went to my husband and I both love biking and mountaineering. So purely for my personal enjoyment standpoint, I was like, I would love to come back and like, Do all this hiking? That's awesome that I didn't really get to do because it was so hot. We also got to go to sort of a cradle of Christianity location in Al Qosh, and that was a really phenomenal trip for a lot of reasons. But being there made me really want to bring my parents. My parents travel a lot and I think that they would just be really moved by seeing through that faithfulness of the Christian witness and Christian history that's so old. Yeah, there. And so it's weird. Like, I just got this feeling like I really should bring my parents here. So I would love to go back and like with my husband and my parents, and if I can't go with any of them, I would still love to go back so I can picture a lot of different ways in which I could go back. This trip again would be an easy, obvious one. A year in the school, a tourist trip like, but regardless, it's like it's super easy to get there as an American. I would love to. Yes, is the short answer. Hannah: And I really hope we get to do another teacher training trip. I feel like it went way better than I expected it to go. To be frank. Colleen: Not that it didn't have its challenges! Hannah: It had its challenges. Colleen: Your classroom was missing its roof one day, right? Victoria: Not my classroom, the classroom across from my classroom. One day it was the teacher lounge, and the next day there was no roof. Victoria: Oh fun! Victoria: And they were doing renovations the whole rest of the month. They were like, "This will be your teacher lounge. We will give you a locker." Two days later, it had no roof. Hannah: Did you get a new locker in a different room? Victoria: No, I never got it, and I never got a locker. Hannah: Never, ever. Victoria: No. Hannah: That doesn't surprise me. Victoria: That's fine. If I ask for one, I might have. They might have found me a hole somewhere. Hannah: I mean, again, I feel like you got a genuine Kurdistan experience. Victoria: Here's a fun story I should tell. Hannah: All right. Share. Victoria: That related to lockers. So one day I took chocolate that I brought from America with me to work. But because it was so hot, I left it in the fridge and I was taking it to a friend that I was visiting after work, so I left it in the fridge. But then I was gathering my things at the end of the day. I went to get my chocolate and the room was locked because literally everyone had left already because in the ten minutes it took me to get my stuff together. Everyone else was like, We're done. It's time to go. I'm pretty sure they left before the workday actually ended. But the teachers and me, were still finishing our class. So I went and hunted someone down and was like, I need my chocolate. I actually just told them it was my lunch. My food is in there. I need my food. And so they went and found somebody who, like, climbed up the stairs and unlocked it. And I had to call like four people to confirm that it was OK to unlock the door. And then I got my food, and I just thought that was the like most hilarious little like, This is exactly what you would expect to have happen. Hannah: Who knew there would be so much bureaucracy around a door. Chocolate, I totally get the bureaucracy around that. Victoria: That's why I didn't tell them it was chocolate. Hannah: I know if they knew it was chocolate, it probably would have been a longer experience. Colleen: But you were very smart to put it in the fridge. Because outside of the fridge, it would have turned into a puddle. Victoria: Exactly. So I just thought that was a really good example of like a couple of things. It's a good example of like, this is funny when you live in a different culture and you don't speak the language, like things like this just happen that you would know unspokenly to not do. It's also a good example of like how culture stress doesn't have to be something that anybody else would think is traumatic because it can be really stressful when, like, you think things are going to work this way and then they just don't and you're like, But I need this or I had a plan. Hannah: Right. And now my plan is gone! Victoria: So it's like a hilarious story that represents a couple of the like lighthearted and more serious sides of being cross-cultural. Hannah: Yeah. Well, thanks for sitting down to talk with us. Thanks for coming. Victoria: Thanks for having me. Yes, it's great. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 53 Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah! Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. Hannah: I hope so. Hannah: All right, part three. Modern Chaldean Church history, Colleen: Which you said was like let's go talk about persecution? Hannah: I mean. What a lot of the modern Chaldean Church history is because they stopped all fighting with each other. You know they got conglomerated into one pretty solid group. Colleen: And now they're a threat. Hannah: Now they were a threat. Apparently. So we're going to skip. We. We ended in like the 18 well… the early 1900's. We're going to skip ahead to the two thousands. Colleen: That's like actual modern history. Hannah: Actual modern in the last 20-ish years. Colleen: Wow! Hannah: Again, which is not to say that there wasn't persecution in the between times of that. Colleen: Right. Hannah: There was a lot of upheaval in the Middle East in general. Not great times to be living in the Middle East. Colleen: But that's when both of us lived there. Hannah: Well, post 2000… Colleen: Yes… Hannah: Yes, the before 2000 times also not a great time to live there. Colleen: Also, not great, okay, Hannah: So we're going talking about the 2000s onward, because there are two big exoduses of Chaldeans during this time. Colleen: All right, Hannah: There were some before, but for the most part, the Chaldeans stayed where they were. They were going to tough it out. But the first one happened in 2003. Can you think of anything that may be happened previous to 2003, that would make them want to skidaddle? Colleen: I mean persecution from Saddam? Hannah: You got Saddam. There was kind of a big thing that happened in Iraq in like 2001 and 2002. Colleen: The Second Gulf War, or whatever title you want to give it? Hannah: Right, the Iraq War. Colleen: The Iraq War. Hannah: Post 9/11 happens in 2001 and 2002. Colleen: Right. Hannah: As that conflict kind of starts to come to, not a close, because it's kind of still going on, but to a settled level of, you know, Americans aren't constantly bombing Iraq, a government is being set up kind of place. About 60,000 Chaldean Christians said we're out of here, we want to leave, we don't want to be here anymore. Colleen: Was that because of the new government, because of the war that had been happening in the past? Hannah: A little bit because of the wars that have been happening in the past, so the government that the US started to set up was supposed to represent each religious people group. Colleen: Right. Hannah: So, really, the Christians were getting a voice in the government in a way that they hadn't before, but I think a lot of them were like, we're tired of being at war all the time. Christians in the West are now aware that we exist and would be more likely to give us refuge. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Because the dislike of Muslims is high, and so they're going to give us refugee status, because we are Christians living under persecution in the Middle East. It is a chance for us to get our families out of here and into countries where they can have a future. We see no future in Iraq. Colleen: Even though they'd had hundreds of years of history there? Hannah: Yes. But then hundreds of years of war, as well. Colleen: Right. Hannah: So they kind of go. "This is our chance to get out and start a new life." And they start immigrating, finding refugee status in the US, Australia and Canada. Those are the three big places, so not a lot in Europe, but a little farther out. And it seems like they probably made a right, a good choice, because in 2007 there is the murder of Father Ragheed, Ragheed Aziz Ganni and three other church leaders which happens in Mosul. Colleen: All right. Hannah: So Mosul at this point is Christian, Arab Muslim and Kurdish Muslims kind of forced to be mixed together? Where it has historically been Christian with Muslim minority. So this is kind of a big statement by the Muslim population of we don't have any respect for your church leaders so we're going to kill them. Colleen: I bet that shook things up. Hannah: It shook things up a lot. And the Catholic Church looked at it and were like well, this is real bad. This guy was doing a lot of good. We're going to give him the status of "servant of God." This murdered priest Ganni is his last name, and that's kind of significant. Because servant of God is the first step on the way to Catholic sainthood. Colleen: Oh! Hannah: So he would be, should he become a saint, he would become one of the first Chaldean Catholic saints in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in modern times. Colleen: Right. Hannah: I don't know how that's going, I mean it's been a while since then. Colleen: But it usually takes a significant amount of time. Hannah: It takes a significant amount of time. Mother Teresa hasn't gotten sainthood yet and I feel like she might be a priority a little bit. People recognize her more, so the Catholic Church might want to push that a little faster, so it's not really surprise he hasn't become a saint yet, but it seems like he might be eventually. Colleen: Interesting. Hannah: And then in 2008 there's another murder in Mosul. Also a church leader and three companions like the other one, but this is an archbishop. Colleen: So he's a little higher ranked. Hannah: Little higher ranked, which means that it's definitely dangerous for Christians to be in Mosul at this point. Colleen: Okay. Hannah: Safety is not guaranteed also in 2008, 1000 Assyrian families from the Assyrian Church of the East. Who had been split off for a while. They split-off in 1672. They come to the Chaldean Catholic Church and ask if they can be in communion with the Chaldean Catholic Church. Colleen: More unification. Hannah: More unification. Colleen: Also feeling threatened by the persecution, perhaps? Hannah: Probably. Probably feeling a little threatened, probably also watching their numbers dwindled due to violence and so wanting some solidarity of church leadership. Colleen: Community. Hannah: Yeah, and this is not all the Assyrian church of the, it's about a 1000 families, not everybody, but a significant number. So that's the first big exodus in 2003. Then we get the second one in 2012, which is after Saddam has fallen. After all of that is over. This is the point where they say we need to get out of here, because the Muslims are all fighting with each other and we're going to get caught in the middle. Colleen: This is not necessarily based on like themselves being persecuted. It's that there's enough violence here, and we don't want to pick sides and we don't really want to be part of it. Hannah: Right, we don't want to be part of this any more. The power structure has been destroyed, so there is no stability and all of these Muslims are going to start fighting each other and then they're going to turn and look at us and we're in trouble, Colleen: Which, I mean, considering what happened in the next few years seems a little prescient? Hannah: Yes, little, they learned their history; let's put it that way. So this isn't just 60,000, this is hundreds of thousands, the numbers are hard to quantify. It's hard to know because not everybody left as a refugee, some left as immigrants, some just left. Colleen: Did family reunification, started businesses in places… Hannah: So it's hard, it's harder to track the numbers exactly, but again still going to the US, Canada and Australia. In 2013, it was the first year that the current patriarch was appointed. His name is Louis Raphael I Sako. And I wanted to talk about him because he's still the patriarch there, but he was born in Zakho. Colleen: It's righ on the Turkish border between, like near Dohuk. Hannah: Which is also historically a Christian town, which I didn't know. Colleen: I don't think I knew that either! Hannah: Until I started reading about Sako from Zakho, I also liked that combination. And he tried to reunite the ancient Church of the East, the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholicism all back together again. Colleen: Yeah! Hannah: He talked to the leaders of the other churches and was like: Hey, why don't you just come come back, come back together with us, and they were kind of like, no thanks. They didn't really put any effort into it. Colleen: I mean it's also understandable, like there's enough other upheaval in life. Why do we need more? Hannah: Right, they're like, well, just let things be what they are. And then Sako was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 2018, so he's both the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and now he is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which means he has a lot of power and influence, which I suspect is why things that happened more recently, happened. I will get there. Colleen: That's a little ominous, but also a little intriguing. Hannah: It's not ominous. So then, in 2014, we have the rise of ISIS. Colleen: Right. Lots of problems. Hannah: Lots and lots of problems. So up to this time, Mosul and Alqosh really have been the centers of Chaldean Catholicism in Northern Iraq. ISIS pushes up from the south into Mosul and just destroys everything. They tear down churches, they tear down mosques of Muslims, they don't believe what they believe. They kill a bunch of Yezidis. They push almost the entire Christian population of Mosul who have lived there since 431 or before. They push them out of Mosul. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Almost all of them, Colleen: And out of a lot of the Christian villages surrounding the Mosul area, if you're a Christian, you're allowed to leave with little to nothing. But you have to leave or be killed right. Hannah: You could stay if you pay extraordinarily high taxes, and are all right with living with the idea that you could be killed at any moment and you're not allowed to go to church. So basically get out. That's the first time in church history that the church has been pushed out of Mosul. They destroy the majority of the churches. They tear down all the crosses, they get rid of all the iconography. They burn as many Bibles and christian books as they can get a hold of, along with a lot of other historical records of Mosul. Colleen: Yeah, I remember hearing stories of church leaders early on in those days, like filling up their cars with like manuscripts and documents from over 1500 years ago and trying to get them out and save them. Hannah: Right, and there's the monastery in Alqosh that has been around since the 400s. That holds a lot of those historical records and there was a lot of concern for Alqosh. ISIS never got to Alqosh. Alqosh was protected in part by the Kurds. Colleen: Yeah! Hannah: And a lot of the Christians in Mosul fled to Alqosh because it is now the seat of the patriarchate, in some ways. The Catholic Church previous to this actually made the seat of the patriarchy in Baghdad. To kind of centralized the church a little bit better, but historically Alqosh has kind of been the home, as it were. Colleen: That was where the school was for the monks and the priests, and there's a lot of educational flavor there even still. I remember meeting one of the monks there who did not look in any way the way I thought a monk would look. He had like buzz cut and sunglasses and a leather, black leather jacket, and I remember him talking about how he spent a lot of his time with the youth and also working on translating manuscripts from like 500 into modern languages and putting them on the internet so that the youth would have access to the ancient teachings and the ancient books. He was a fascinating, fascinating person. Hannah: Yeah, yeah, they also run a boys home out of the monastery, which I remember when we went going and being like all these teenage boys, like, running around what is going on? Because I didn't know. And one of the monks, or maybe one of the priests, came out and, like explained to us who they were. And what they were doing. And to let him know if they were bothering us, and yeah, so it's pretty cool pretty vibrant place and I was in the US when all of this was happening and I remember watching some of the videos of the destruction of Mosul and I was like: they're coming.. Colleen: What about my friends in Alqosh! Hannah: Right, they're coming for Alqosh next. Colleen: I remember feeling that, too. Hannah: What are we going to do and also being really annoyed that they destroyed the tomb of Jonah? Because, like some day I wanted to go there. Colleen: It had never been safe enough theoretically, you know, for me to go to see it, but I wanted to. Hannah: Yeah, so some of the Christians fled to Alqosh. A lot of them also fled up into Kurdistan, because the Kurdish government said we will keep you safe. If you come up here you are welcome and Dohuk and Erbil both have fairly large. Christian populations. Again Zakho is not far from Dohuk and is a Christian town. A lot of those people also live in the Dohuk area. There are a couple other smaller cities between Alqosh and Dohuk and then there's an entire suburb of Erbil that's just a Christian suburb and we'll talk about them in a minute. Colleen: Just to interrupt, if you really want to help us out, give us a review on Apple podcasts. Even if you don't use Apple podcasts, the reviews there really help us get found by other people. So if you could do that for us, that would be great, thanks! Hannah: It seems highly unlikely that any of those Christians that fled Mosul will go back to Mosul. There has been some expectation that they will go back. Most of them at this point say it was our neighbours who betrayed us. Why would we go back to live amongst them? Like, part of the reason that they lived there for so long was they had what they thought were good relationships with their Muslim neighbors, and now they don't feel like that's true anymore. Before I left for the summer in 2014 I had arranged to rent an apartment from Christian friend in Dohuk. That was above his family home and he emailed me when I was supposed to come back and was like so, you can't live with us in that apartment any more, because we have rented it to, we've given it to Christians from Mosul who didn't have anywhere else to live. We've given them both the upstairs apartments, so you can't live there. Most of the Christian families that I knew had taken in Christians from Mosul. The church in Erbil set up basically a little refugee camp in and around the church grounds for people to live. Colleen: I visited one on one of my visits, I think in 2015 or 2016 in a church in Suly, and basically the entire church building had been strung up with like fabric, canvas, you know dividers and you know they turned a whole section of the outside into bathrooms and washing machines and a communal living kitchens, and that it was essentially now a village on in and on a church. Hannah: Right, and that kept a lot of the Christians out of the UNHCR refugee camps, which were full of Yezidis, and some Muslims as well, which is kind of a testament to the church taking care of itself. Which was very cool to see. A lot those Christians didn't want to establish lives for themselves in Kurdistan. Even though Kurdistan said, Live here, we'll help you as much as we can. A lot of those people were like: we don't we don't want to be in Iraq anymore, we dont want to live here anymore, we want out. We want to live in Christian countries like America, Canada and Australia. A lot of my Christian friends who lived in Kurdistan, not fleeing from Mosul, also took that opportunity to apply for refugee status because they had the same feeling of it's just going to get worse. Like they've kicked us out of Mosul, there's no point in us staying any more. The church is being established in other places. We'll we'll just leave. We'll just go and a lot of western countries opened their doors to fleeing persecuted Christians. The church in the West did a good job of pushing for their countries to take in Christian refugees. So in the US, most Chaldean Christians live in Michigan, California or Arizona, very different places. Colleen: And very spread out across the US. Hannah: Very spread out across the US. In 1982, the Chaldean Catholic Church established the Diocese of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, and from 1982 to 2002 that was the only Chaldean diocese in the US. Colleen: All right. Hannah: So it covered all of the US. Any Chaldean Christian living in the US was within that diocese. And Detroit has the largest population of Chaldean Christians outside of Iraq. There are about a 150,000 of them living in the Detroit area as of 2016. Colleen: All right. Hannah: So that's five years ago? There's almost definitely more now. At this point that diocese covers all of the eastern US. Colleen: Okay, so there's a new one, then, for the western US? Hannah: There is. In 2002, the Diocese of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego was established and it covers all of the West. Colleen: Okay. Hannah: There obviously was a big enough Chaldean community in the San Diego that they were like we need our own administration here. A lot of my friends that have moved to the US have moved either to Detroit or San Diego. I don't know of a lot that have moved to Arizona. Colleen: Yeah, I don't know. Hannah: It seems… I mean it makes sense. It's deserty there, it seems… I personally don't have any experience with that. So that's kind of where people are in the US. There also is a diocese that was established in Canada. I don't know about Australia. I don't know if there are enough there that they have their own diocese or if they're under something else. I don't I didn't really look into that. Australia is a long way away. So that's kind of the status of the diaspora of the Chaldean Church. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: In Iraq the Chaldean church definitely still exists. Most recently, in March, they were visited by the pope. Colleen: Oh yeah, I read all about that. Everyone was so excited it was going to be the pope's first international trip since the beginning of the pandemic and there was a lot of debate over whether or not he should come or not and what that would do with gatherings of people, and but at the same time I feel like the Christians there were starting to feel more forgotten, and so I know that it was a really big deal for him to come and visit and travel through northern Iraq. Hannah: And he is the first pope to have been there ever?… in recent history, at least. Colleen: A long long time. Hannah: It's been a long time, so it is a very big deal. Very, very celebratory. It is a little bit of what started me down the Chaldean Church rabbit trail, because I was like, but they're Chaldean not Catholic. So why are they excited about the Pope? But now I understand. They are Catholic, they're just Chaldean Catholic under Rome. So the pope is their leader and they would be excited to see him and I get it now. Colleen: It all makes sense. Hannah: It all makes sense, and while the Pope was there, he encouraged forgiveness, peace and unity. Forgiveness presumably towards the Muslim population, peace between Muslims and Christians and unity as a whole outside of the church as well as inside of the church. None of Chaldean Church leadership really pushed people to move back to Mosul. They're not saying this is what you have to do. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: This is what we're recommending that you do. They're kind of going. We would like for the church to return to Mosul, but we also understand why they don't want to. So choose, choose what is best for your family and again… Colleen: And that's not even taking into account the sheer difficulty of rebuilding homes, businesses, infrastructure. There are a lot of villages that people don't want to go back to or can't figure out how to rebuild, for the very reason of the physical difficulties of doing that, let alone are you going to trust your neighbours? Are you going to be able to invest in your life? Hannah: Physical and financial, like, when a town is destroyed, there also is no commerce in that town any more. Colleen: Right, if the school doesn't exist any more, are you going to take your kids away from where they can get an education, to some place where they are not going to get an education until you've spent long enough there to rebuild your home, rebuild your business, and then rebuild the school? Hannah: So at this point in Iraq there are still a lot of Christians in the Alqosh area because it did not fall and there are one or two smaller towns around there that also hold a lot of Christians. The next biggest enclave is in Ankawa, which is… well it used to be a suburb of Erbil, Erbil has kind of expanded into Ankawa. Now it's definitely like the Christian section of Erbil. Colleen: It has a very different feel and culture. Hannah: It does, and we used to go over there. I used to live like really close to Ankawa, so we go over there quite a bit. Lots of really cool churches, not ones that I would call ancient and historically beautiful. A lot of them have been modernized to some extent. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Which is fair. So Ankawa is one. And then there is also a pretty big community in Dohuk and they don't have a separate, like the Christian neighborhood. They're kind of scattered throughout Dohuk, but there are quite a few of them there as well. So that's kind of where they are in Iraq. But there are less than 200,000 remaining in Iraq total. There are not very many of them left and there are a lot of international groups that are offering aid to those who want to stay, who are saying we'll come back and help you rebuild your house and rebuild the church and will support you financially and will help establish schools if you want to stay. Colleen: But still don't address the long term personal connections or lack of personal connection that exist. Hannah: So it seems to me, I don't really want to predict, but it seems to me that the Chaldean Church, if it's going to continue to exist, will move into the US. Probably it seems to be. I mean, when there are a 150,000, just in Detroit and 200,000 in all of Iraq, it seems like that shift has already started, so I think I think that's going to continue. I hope that they can hold on to Alqosh. Colleen: Yea and some of those…I don't know those traditions. The history of who brought your people their faith, like that's not something I have as an American Christian. And it's cool having some of that history. Even the idea that you know your bread over the years has come from a piece of bread that was brought by an apostle. You know, like there's a depth of history in connection to that that's really neat, that it would be sad for them to lose entirely, because I'm sure that's not the only example of that kind of story in history. Hannah: There's hope. In sort of a sad way, the Christians will remain in Alqosh. I hope that they do for the sake of history, but I also understand why why they would want to leave. That's everything that I know. Colleen: All of your brain! Hannah: My brain is now recorded onto a podcast. You can upload it to the internet and I can cease to exist. Colleen: No, not quite! Hannah: Not quite. Colleen: If you have any Chaldean friends or stories about how, maybe in your life, if you are a Chaldean Christian, or other stories of history and how it has been taught to you we would love to hear some of those stories! Hannah: Yeah, and if you've been taking notes and I got something wrong, please let me know. I'm happy to issue a correction. I just covered centuries and centuries of church history, and I'm sure I got something wrong along the way. So let me know and I'll issue a correction. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us a Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: It's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next! Both: Thanks for listening!…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 52 Hannah teaches Colleen more on the history and beliefs of the Chaldean Church in this, part two, of a three part series. This episode covers the re-unification of the Chaldean Catholic Church with Roman Catholic Church along with some of the distinguishing features of the Chaldean Catholic Church liturgy and tradition. Keep an ear out for the best sourdough starter ever! Yeah… that will make sense later. To learn more, visit our website at www.ServantGroup.org ! Here's a video of a Chaldean Catholic Mass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSD5BM17f9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSD5BM17f9A Make sure you skip forward to catch some of the music! Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. Hannah: I hope so. Colleen: And now it's time for part two. Hannah: That's right. We're going to do a quick review, because while for you and me, it's been like five minutes since we were talking about church history, for everybody else has probably been at least a week. Colleen: I mean, it's going to take us at least that long to edit and transcribe and post. Hannah: It's a lot of work. We really got to get on our production team to start moving faster. Colleen: Hannah, we are the production team! Hannah: I know. We deserve a raise. OK, so we were talking about the Chaldean Church. Chaldean Church is the first… Well, the Church of the used to the first break off from the great church. And it is known in church history. The Church of the East breaks off. Colleen: Yes. Hannah: And then the Church of the East breaks again with the Eliya line. Colleen: and the Shimun line? Hannah: We're going to get there, OK? We're going to talk about the Eliya line first and the Shimun and then the Josephite. So the Eliya line is part of the church of the East. They maintain that through now. They have never aligned with the Roman Catholic Church. Up to this point, as we are talking about them in history, not like this point that we are present and in history because we got to 1670, the 1670s. OK, the Eliya line still Church of the East has never aligned with the Roman Catholic Church. Now we have the Shimun line, which is the Chaldean Catholic. They started the Chaldean Catholic Church, and then they broke away from the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1672, denounced Rome and formed the Assyrian Church of the East. Colleen: Right. Hannah: OK, so now we have three church lines, the Church of the East, which is the Eliya line. The Assyrian Church of the East, which is the Shimun line. And then the Josephite line are the Chaldean Catholics who have never split from Rome. OK, so you got the Josephite line. They have always been Chaldean Catholics associated with Rome. The Shamoon line were Chaldean Catholics, then they renounced Rome and are now the Assyrian Church of the East. And then the Eliya line, which is the Church of the East. Colleen: This helps explain some of the confusion that I had when people would ask me, like, is the church in northern Iraq Catholic? Because some of them are and some of them are not. Hannah: Right. Colleen: And even the ones that are aren't necessarily Catholic in the same way that like Roman Catholics are. Hannah: Roman Catholic. Which we will get to and explain. There's also like Armenian, not Armenian, Aramaic Orthodox Church that are split off of I'm pretty sure the Assyrian I don't really know. Their history is harder to suss out. Colleen: All right. Hannah: But since we're talking about Chaldeans, just remember those three. We got the Eliya line, the Shimun line and the Josephite line. Colleen: Great. Hannah: OK, we left them in 1672. We're going to come back to them in 1778. Colleen: All right. Hannah: Which is when the patriarch of the Eliya line. So this is Eliya, the 11th. This is the Church of the East. They've never been associated with the Roman Catholic Church. He petition's the pope to not reunite, but to unite with Rome and reunite with the Chaldean Catholics, because the Eliya line, the Church of the East is starting to dwindle. There are not very many of them left, and they live in the same place. Eliya based in Alqosh, the Chaldean Catholic Church based in Mosul. So he says, can we get back together? Colleen: Back together! Hannah: Exactly. Colleen: Does it work? Hannah: He, Eliya the 11th, and his successor Eliya the 12th, both professed Catholic faith and both of them were accepted into communion with the Chaldean Catholic slash Roman Catholic Church. So they said, yes, come back. Welcome! Colleen: Yay! Hannah: And then Eliya the 11th dies. And Eliya the 12th says, "Psyche! Just kidding. I don't want to be Catholic. I want out." Colleen: Like I got a taste of this and I don't want it. Or maybe I don't want to lose the power. Like I'm just going to become a nobody? Hannah: Right. He's not a nobody! He takes his people with him. Well, or tries to. Colleen: He's afraid of becoming a nobody. It was like subsumed into the Roman Catholic world. Hannah: Right. So he says, forget about it. I'm out of here. He is opposed by this guy named Yohana Hormizd. It's really hard for me to say his name. Colleen: Is that the same name as the guy at the Alqosh? Alqosh monastery? The Hormuzd thing? Hannah: Yeah! Do you want to explain that? Colleen: Uh… No. Hannah: OK. Colleen: Like I just recognize the name and it's like all over like the monastery. And it's like the Hormuzd monastery and like the church that's there has like his name on stuff. That's all I really know. Hannah: OK. He was a monk at the Alqosh Monastery. And he said, no, no, no Eliya, You said you were going to be Catholic. You brought all of us into this. We were in agreement. We're staying with the Catholic Chaldean Church. Colleen: All right. Hannah: So he took a lot of those Eliya line followers and kept them in communion with the Roman Catholic/Chaldean Catholic Church. Colleen: All right. Hannah: He becomes kind of their default leader because of this. But he's not recognized as the patriarch of Alqosh. For a lot of reasons, most of them political. They don't want to offend the Chaldean patriarch of Mosul by then lessening his power by giving someone else the patriarchy of Alqosh. Colleen: Right. Hannah: So the pope recognized him, recognizes him as the administrator of the Catholic patriarchate. This is a lot of Catholic things that I don't understand. My understanding is that, like, he's not the spiritual leader, but he's kind of the like administrative, deals with the details of the running of the church. Colleen: The organizer. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: I mean, that's valuable. Hannah: It is valuable. Colleen: We need both of those roles. Hannah: It is still a pretty powerful role. This upsets the Josephite line. Remember that line that has always been staying with the Roman Catholics when the Chaldean Catholic Church split Chaldean Assyrian. Colleen: So when the Eliya line like was joining them again, they don't really want to give up their power to the Eliya line. Hannah: Right. And they looked at Yohanna Hormizd and said, we don't believe that he's really Catholic. We don't believe he genuinely wants to do this. We think it's a power grab. We think he's going to pull the Chaldean Catholics out of the Catholic, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and make them Assyrian. Colleen: OK. Hannah: In spite of the fact that he did the exact opposite of that previous to this. So they're they're a little upset with Rome. So Rome withdraws the administrator role from Yohanna. Colleen: Does that make all the people underneath him kind of angry and upset? Hannah: No. Colleen: Oh, OK. Hannah: I mean, probably, but not in a way that really matters. Colleen: I don't know way that impacts split's and joins of churches? Hannah: Right. Because Yohanna Hormizd did want his people to continue to be in the Roman Catholic Church. And so he's not going to kick up a fuss about it necessarily. He was genuine, which is why he gets everything named after him, because he's a bit of a hero to them. So they take the admin role from Yohanna and then give it to Joseph, the fifth, of that Josephite line. Neither of them are appointed as patriarch. So there is no patriarch of Mosul, Alqosh at this time. There's just the administrator of the Patriarchate. So they're kind of the leader like they're they're running the show, but they're not like in charge of everything. Colleen: Gotcha. Is there anybody in charge? Hannah: No. Colleen: Oh! Hannah: This doesn't last long. So that happens. And this is happening in like the early eighteen… 1818… 1820, kind of around there. In 1828, Joseph, the 5th, the administrator of the Catholic Patriarchate, dies. Colleen: Uhuh. Hannah: And in 1830, Yohana Hormizd, who is still alive, is appointed Patriarch. Colleen: OH! Hannah: So because he bided his time and let things be, he gets appointed patriarch because he outlives the Josephite line, essentially. His patriarchy, which is non-hereditary. An appointed patriarch every year, not someone related to him, has continued to lead the Chaldean Church, unbroken since 1830. This is yet another reason why so many things are named after him. He really is seen as kind of the leader who brought all the Chaldean Catholics back together. Colleen: The unifier. Hannah: The unifier of the patriarchal line. Colleen: OK! Hannah: So important guy. Yeah. Colleen: No wonder his name is all over. Hannah: Right. So we got the Shimun and Josephite line. What happens to them? They split and kind of come back together. We don't really know at this point in our podcast what happens to the Eliya line. Colleen: The part that started to join and then. Hannah: Right and then left. Colleen: And the left again. Hannah: Right. And they die out in 1804 when Eliay the 12th dies. And he didn't have enough people following him and they felt like they could organize a successor. So we kind of like the Assyrians Church of the East still exists, and is pretty small. But everyone else who split off from the Chaldean Catholic Church has come back to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Colleen: All right. Hannah: Or the line has died out and we don't know what happened to them. They got absorbed into something else. So this continues. There aren't really any church splits from 1830 when Yohanna Hormizd kind of conglomerate's everybody back together. So for the last. What is that? Two hundred and ninety years of. Chaldean history, they've all kind of stayed together. Colleen: Unified, awesome! Hannah: As part of the Roman Catholic Church. This is where it gets interesting. Colleen: But I thought it was all like tidy now. Hannah: It's all tidy. I've learned some things about the Roman Catholic Church, which I still don't understand. OK? Colleen: Yeah, we're Protestants. Hannah: We're Protestants. I don't think I've ever even set foot in a Catholic church. Colleen: Oh! I have. Lots of them. You haven't even gone on like a tour of one? Somewhere in Europe? Hannah: No, like when I spent time in Europe, I spent most of my time outside because I was tired of being inside. Oh, no, I've been no. That's an Anglican church. No, I don't think I've ever been in a Roman Catholic Church. Weird. Colleen: We may have to make a trip out just so that you can have an experience. Hannah: I mean, there's one really close to here. We probably should just go. So we're going to wade into what the difference is between Roman Catholic Church and Chaldean Catholic Church. Dave: Hey, this is Dave. I'd love to have you donate to our ministry and you can do that on our website. www.ServantGroup.org/donate Hannah: So the Roman Catholic Church and the Chaldean Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, which is under the Roman Catholic Church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Again, I don't understand the liturgy or traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm probably going to get some things wrong, because I don't have any experience with that. Colleen: All right. Hannah: And my brain was exploding from all of this church history, so I didn't really take the time to research it. I did look at the Chaldean Church rites and liturgy. So I kind of understand that. I don't really understand how it's different. So it's not so much going to be a comparison as this is what the Chaldean Church does, that probably the Roman Catholic Church doesn't do. Colleen: There are a few things, though, that you do know are major differences. Hannah: Oh, sure. Colleen: Like the language, right? Hannah: Yes. So the Catholic Church, the language of the church was Latin at the time when the Chaldean Church came back into the Catholic Church. Part of the the deal was that since the Romans recognized the Chaldeans as maintaining most church traditions, they were like, oh, you don't have to you don't have to do your liturgy in Latin. You can keep doing it in the language that you've been doing it in for centuries, which is Eastern Syriac. Colleen: OK. Hannah: OK, so I watched a Chaldean Catholic Church service, an Easter service, I think. And definitely not in Latin. Didn't understand anything that was happening. Colleen: Do you have a link to that video that we can post in the show notes? Hannah: Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes for sure. So Eastern Syriac, is their a liturgical language? It's not necessarily the language that everyone speaks, just like not everyone in the Catholic Church spoke Latin. But it's like the language that they used to read the Bible and pray and Colleen: …do church things… Hannah: … do church things in. So this liturgy, this Eastern Syriac liturgy is not just linguistically different. The liturgy is actually written from a different church than the Roman Catholic liturgy. So they're similar. But they have different writers. Colleen: Right. Hannah: And there are some things that are different about them. The church in Edessa is the tradition that the Chaldean Catholics follow. And it was written by the two disciples of St. Thomas. St. Thomas establishes the church, makes two disciples who kind of lead the church in the Middle East. They are considered saints in the Chaldean Church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: The Catholic Church recognizes one of them, probably? It was hard for me to like figure that out, because in the Chaldean Church, he's known as St. Addai. Which the Catholic Church has a saint that probably had that same name originally, but then was westernised into Thaddeus. So St. Thaddeus is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church and might be the same guy as St. Addai in the Chaldean Catholic Church. Colleen: OK, OK. The Western linguistic changes to names and places is… Hannah: Confusing. Colleen: Widespread. Hannah: Indeed. So that's one of the Saints that helped write this liturgy. The other one is Saint Mari. Also known as Mares or Palut. And he is not recognized by the Roman tradition. But definitely a saint in Chaldean Catholic Church. So these two guys wrote a liturgy. And it is the liturgy that has been used by the Church of the East and then the Chaldean Church since it was written in 432 or whatever. Colleen: OK. So one of the differences is maybe these two groups have different saints. In addition to their different liturgies. Hannah: Right. Because they had those centuries of separate traditions being built between the Roman and the Chaldean Catholic. So there are different saints for sure. Again, I didn't get into all of that because it's very complicated. Colleen: Fair. Hannah: And we're try and keep it simple. So those are the two saints that St. Thomas appointed to lead the church after he left. They wrote the liturgy. As far as I can tell. The only real differences when both are translated into English, both the Latin and the Syriac, East Syriac, is that there are some differences in wording in the Eucharist service. Which I suspect kind of harkens back to that conflict with Nestorias. Colleen: Mm hmm. Hannah: And the hypostatic union and what that means and what that looks like. I think he maybe wanted the words of the Eucharist service to look different, which maybe led to the misunderstanding, which led to the split. The Catholic Church looked at that. The Roman Catholic Church looked at that and said, it's fine. It's not a big deal. Keep it. The prayers that are given, the liturgical prayers are much longer, much more elaborate and focused differently than the Roman Catholic ones. Colleen: What are some of the things they focus on? Hannah: I don't really know. They're all in Syrian. But like. Didn't you read some translations? No. They're not translate like I couldn't find any of this translated in any way. And even if I had, I wouldn't really know how they were different from Roman Catholic prayers. Colleen: True. Hannah: So there's like a different focus mood of the prayers than from the Roman Catholic one. There's also difference in the vestments of the priests and what they wear, which is no surprise. The music that is used is very different. Colleen: I mean, that makes sense to as far as like clothing and music and language all being very culturally defined rather than morally defined. Hannah: Yeah. So the Chaldean Catholic Church music is very Middle Eastern. It's like it's very beautiful. But it is definitely not like if a Roman Catholic person went to a Chaldean Catholic Church, they probably would not recognize it as being the same. Colleen: OK. Hannah: Aside from that, you know, they do Holy Communion and the the rites generally are the same. There's a priest, all those things. Other than that, they would be like, nope, not the same. I don't understand. One of the things that makes it different is that there are additional feast days or variations on Saints days, Colleen: More holidays! Win! Hannah: Definitely a win…. Sort of. Colleen: Uh oh, there's always a catch, isn't there? Hannah: The big the big main difference is that the Chaldean Catholic Church follows what they call the fast of the Ninevites or the fast of Jonah. Colleen: OK, I mean, that makes sense. They're right next to or in Mosul, which is modern day Nineveh. Jonah's tomb is there like this seems like it would be something that they would connect to. Hannah: And the point of the fast is that they're remembering or commemorating the repentance of Ninevah. So I had several Chaldean Christian friends in Iraq who would do, they called it the Jonah fast. Who would do the Jonah fast, and it's three days with no food and no water. And not in the Ramadan sense of during the day. It was like none. Colleen: All through the day and the night, through all those days. OK. Hannah: And it usually happened around Easter-ish time. I remember it. I'm going to misremember this now. I remember it being a spring fast. And I also had one of my Muslim friends, one of my first years living in Iraq, who came up to me when this fast was happening for her Christian friends and was like, how are you doing? How is your fast? And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm not fasting. And she was like, But you're a Christian. I was like, yes, but I've never even heard of the fast of Jonah. Colleen: Right. Yeah. I mean, I hadn't heard of it until you mentioned it just now, because there just aren't that many Christians in the city in Iraq that I lived in. Hannah: And so I ended up like talking to one of my Chaldean Christian friends and being like, are you fasting? And they were like, yes, of course we're fasting. Aren't you fasting? And I was like, no, no. What? What, what is this? And they're like, well, we've asked for three days because Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days. And so then he came and brought our people back to God. I was like, so this is like an Old Testament fast. Colleen: It's kind of beautiful. Hannah: It is. It is. And the Catholic Church was definitely like, keep that. That is uniquely yours. Keep it. So that's the big one. The big difference. There are some variations in Saint's days as well. More having to do with when those saint days fall. And like when Easter falls. Colleen: Which makes a lot of sense to if you haven't had synchronized calendars and all of that is super, super common in communication across history of different areas. Hannah: Yeah. They have the faster than Innervates is the big one. On the other, big difference, which was happening when the Chaldean Church rejoined the Catholic Church, is that they were using leavened bread for communion. Colleen: Oh. Hannah: Where traditionally the Catholic Church uses unleavened bread. Colleen: Right. Hannah: The Chaldean Church is not doing this so much anymore. They've switched over to the unleavened way. The Assyrian church was doing it for a while, and it is unclear to me if they continue to use leavened bread. But I wanted to talk about this because I think this story is kind of cool. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: About how this started. So the tradition for leavened bread in the Chaldean Church is that when St. Thomas came and established the church, the Church of the East, at the time. He brought with him some of the dough from the bread that was used when Jesus… it was either like from the Last Supper, which didn't make sense to me because that wouldn't have been leavened bread. Or from when they eat bread and fish with Jesus after his resurrection. Colleen: Oh, OK. Hannah: So he brought some of some of that bread yeast dough, Colleen: like the sourdough starter. Hannah: Kind of like a sour dough starter. Yes. His his bread dough. And so when he made bread for their first communion, he took a piece of that dough and made bread with that yeast from that original starter. Colleen: Huh? Hannah: So, yes, it's a little bit like holy sourdough bread. Colleen: It's like the friendship bread of forever. Hannah: Right. Mm hmm. And so then when that dough was made from the starter. Hmm. They took a piece of that dough and saved it for the next week's communion bread. And then they would take a piece of that dough and save it for the next week's communion bread. So there's kind of this tradition of the yeast, of this bread is holy because it came from Jesus. Colleen: Fascinating. Hannah: They're not saying that we've been using the same yeast that Jesus used for thousands of years, but they're saying a little bit of that yeast is mixed in with each bread that we make because it has grown the new starter for the next week's bread. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And so to them, the leavened bread was holy because it came from the yeast of the bread that Jesus used. Colleen: A tradition that ties them back to Christ himself. Like. Yeah, that's cool. Hannah: Which I was like, this is fascinating. And I a little bit can't believe they gave it up. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: I mean, maybe maybe the starter died at some point and they were just like, well, I'm going to go back to the Catholic way. I don't know. Colleen: Or like how far had it spread out among all those different churches? And was it almost a practical like we can't keep doing this? Hannah: We can't continue doing this. Yeah. But yeah… Colleen: It's a cool story! Hannah: It is a really cool story. And it's one of those things that I'm like. do Chaldean Catholics remember that story now? Colleen: Oh, yeah. Hannah: Since they haven't been using the leavened bread. And I don't think it was a like the church patriarch was like, look, we're going to switch to unleavened bread. I think it just kind of fell out of fashion, as it were. Colleen: And, you know, maybe as that story was lost, it was like, well, I mean, they use unleavened bread in Scripture… Hannah: Right. Colleen: Let's do that. Hannah: Let's let's do that instead. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram. And you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both!: Thanks for listening. Hannah: Whoo! All right. I need a drink because I'm losing my voice.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 51 Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. Hannah: I hope so. Colleen: As promised, this episode is going to be about the Chaldean Church. Hannah: That's right. I forgot we gave a teaser about it. Colleen: Yes, we did. Hannah: I even just edited that, and I forgot. Colleen: And it's not even going to be just one episode. Hannah: Oh, no. We're talking about thousands of years of church history condensed into podcast format. So we're talking at least two episodes, maybe three. Colleen: We'll see how many questions I have for you along the way since you did all the work for this one. Hannah: Oh, it's going to be good. Yeah. And I got turned on to this by a question from John, who's a Chaldean living in America, whose parents immigrated to America a while ago. So he was born and raised in the US and he wanted to know the state of the Chaldean Church presently. And I thought most Americans don't know what we mean when we say Chaldean Church or Chaldean Christians. So how do I explain that in a way that can tell them what's happening now? And it turned into this whole research project. Colleen: You went down the rabbit hole. Hannah: So many rabbit holes and bunny trails outside the rabbit holes. But I think I've got it. I think I've got it locked in. So, a little bit of church history and then a lot of church history and then some more church history. And then what's happening with Christians in Iraq now. Colleen: But like not the same church history that most Western Americans normally have. Hannah: Right. OK, so let's start there. We're going to work backwards because I a little bit believe that history should be taught in reverse order. Colleen: Oh. Hannah: Rather than from the past to the present. I really think we should teach from the present to the past. I think it would be more interesting. It's a philosophy of my life. So we're going to start with a touch point. Basically, in Christianity, in Western Christianity, we know about two branches, big general branches, which are? Colleen: Protestants and Catholics. Hannah: Protestants and Catholics. And that started with? Colleen: The Reformation. Hannah: And what's the guy's name with the Reformation? Colleen: Martin Luther Hannah: Martin Luther. OK, everybody knows about the Reformation, Catholic, Protestant. Most people also know that like the Roman Catholic Church, which is how we're going to refer to that church from this point on, the Roman Catholic Church, separated at some point from maybe there are two different churches, but the one that's not Roman Catholic, no one in America knows the history of that church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: So if we walk back from the Protestant Reformation, which happened in the 16th century, we walk all the way back to the 11th century. We have what's called the Great Schism, Colleen: The Great Schism. Hannah: The Great Schism. And that is when the Great Church split into two two main branches, the Catholic Church. So you had your Roman Catholic Church, which kind of shortly thereafter splits into the Protestant church in church history timeline. So you got your Roman Catholic Church and then you have your Eastern Orthodox Church. So Eastern Orthodox is… Colleen: an earlier split? Hannah: An earlier split. Yes. And what it basically means is that the Roman Catholic Church kind of took Europe and west and the Eastern Orthodox Church kind of took Greece, Turkey east. Kind of. So if you take a step back before even that, we're going to get to the first real big church split in church history. Colleen: OK, when was this? Hannah: This was four hundred and thirty one. Colleen: OK, so fifth century. Hannah: Fifth century. OK, so this is the first big one. And this is after Constantine and Charlemagne and all those people established Christianity as part of government. So the church gets together and they have this big council called the Council of Ephesus. And I think some of us know about some of the other councils that happened that like firmed in place the canon of scripture and stuff like that. So in this council of Ephesus, the church sits down and they say, there's this guy named Nestorian. All right, dude named Nestorian. Who we're pretty sure he is an apostate, like he is teaching things that are heresy. He's a heretic, pretty sure he's a heretic and the things that an Nestorian was teaching. So there's this thing called the hypostatic union. Colleen: Great. That's a lot of syllables, Hannah. Hannah: It's a lot of syllables. This is a little bit intense Bible college theology here. So the hypostatic union basically means, this is what the church has believed for centuries. This was the the falling out hypostatic union is that Christ is fully God and fully man joined in one person. Colleen: OK, ok. Hannah: That's the hyp ostatic union. Nestorian said no, he can't be both. He's either fully man or he's fully God. He cannot be both of those things. Colleen: That would be a bit of a problem. Hannah: And so the church goes, no, no, no, no, you're out. When Nestorian leaves, he takes a big branch of the church with him, which calls itself the Church of the East. Colleen: OK. Hannah: We're going to jump forward several hundred years. Colleen: Before before we jump forward, though, he is essentially kicked out of what was at that time you were calling the great church? Hannah: The great church. Colleen: And he and his followers who are where? Hannah: Middle Eastern, primarily. Colleen: Middle Eastern and Central Asia. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: OK. They all decide to follow Nestorius. And the people who were still at the Council of Ephesus create what became the Roman Catholic Church down the road. Hannah: I mean, both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Colleen: So that's still it's pre- Great Church. Hannah: The great church is what it's known as. Yes. OK, so you have the Great Church. It goes on splits in a Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, splits into Protestant, Roman Catholic, Protestants do all kinds of things. And thus church history is born. So this is like really the big the first big… hmmm problem. OK, I just want to get this out of the way now because it doesn't fit in the rest of my timeline. This issue with Nestorias turns out big miscommunication and possibly some language barriers, possibly some letters lost in transit. He didn't really believe that the hypostatic union wasn't true. Colleen: So in some ways, he was kicked out for something that maybe he didn't actually believe. Hannah: Right. Colleen: But enough hurt feelings, enough problems, and probably break is real. Hannah: Probably politics are probably involved in there somewhere as of 1992… Colleen: Oh! Hannah: So centuries later… Colleen: Indeed! Hannah: Pope John Paul, the second and patriarch Dinka the fourth, got back together and said, hey, there was a miscommunication. Sorry that happened. Are we cool? And they are! So Nestorius is no longer really considered a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church. Colleen: Oh, so it's a joining rather than a splitting. That's new! Hannah: The Church of the East, as has been taken off of the Catholic bad list. They're friends again. Colleen: They're friends again. Hannah: So, you know, it only took multiple centuries for them to be all right with each other Colleen: Several hundred years later. Hannah: Hoooee! OK, so let's talk about the C hurch of the East. The Church of the East is not Eastern Orthodoxy. The Church of the East splits before Eastern Orthodoxy does. And according to church history and I think even the Roman Catholic Church would agree with this at this point. It has its roots, was begun by the apostle Thomas in the 1st century. You remember… Colleen: Wasn't he the one who went to India, theoretically? Hannah: Yeah. He gets there eventually. He starts out by going up from Palestine, that area up into Iraq, which is why we're talking about the Chaldean Church, because it's in Iraq. He goes up into Iraq, specifically into the Mosul, Nineveh area, makes a couple of disciples plants to church, then moves on. So Saint Thomas's church planting spreads from there all the way across into India and even into China. He makes his way east pretty rapidly. We're not going to talk about all of that, except to say that there are some St. Thomas churches still in India. The ones in China and farther kind of got wiped out. And the ones in India, held on for a while. Well, still, and they kind of fall in the same category as the Chaldean Church does. Colleen: OK. Hannah: We'll get there. So, yes, he moves. He keeps moving east. It expanded in the sixth century. So they sent missionaries from that central Mosul area out and grew the church pretty big actually in the sixth century. It went from the Mediterranean Sea across Central Asia into India and China, like we just said. Colleen: Yeah, I remember reading something about in China, this pillar from I think that time period, with a bunch of, like, biblical writings on it. And everyone's like, this is old. How did this get to be here so long ago? Hannah: Well, there were believers in China at that time. And then there's a decline in the church, specifically in the Middle East. In part, there's I don't know if you've ever heard of the Mongol horde. Colleen: Mm hmm. Hannah: They come through and wipe a lot of things out. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: They're bad news, for a lot of people. Colleen: Yes. Hannah: But specifically in the Middle East, you start to have the rise of the Ottoman Empire. And there is specifically a ruler named Timur. Colleen: OK. Hannah: Have you heard of Timur before? Colleen: No. Hannah: He's apparently fairly famous Turkish. He's Turko Mongol. So you Turks and Mongols together in one person. I imagine he's very fighty. So he does a lot to diminish the church. It stays pretty strong in Mosul, in the Nineveh area. They stay very faithful. They're pretty well established. They're not going anywhere. So that's the 14th century. OK, in 1552, there is a three way split. Colleen: Ooooh. Hannah: It really is more of a two way split. And then one of those two branches also splits in half, later. This is where it gets complicated. Everything up to now has been easy. Colleen: Yeah, well, once you start splitting into more than two parts, it gets a little more complicated. Hannah: It's true. So we're still the Church of the East, still got the Church of the East. We're going to split now. They call it the schism of 1552, we already used the word schism. So I'm going to call it a split. And we split off into a couple of different things. Here's why: up to this point, the patriarchy of the church so kind of like their version of the pope has been hereditary. Colleen: Oh. Rather than appointed or elected or anything like that. Hannah: But because they hold the same ideas of celibacy in their priesthood, it's not passed father son, because they don't have father son. Colleen: Oh. They don't have father son. Hannah: It's past uncle nephew. Colleen: Really. That's interesting. I don't think I've ever heard of anybody doing it that way. Hannah: I know! My mind was blown. Colleen: What if your brothers don't have kids or what if you don't have brothers or sisters or you'd like wow! Hannah: This is the problem that they ran into because it gets passed down this way. They ran out of eligible heirs to the patriarchy, because it started to be that like you had your patriarch. But his oldest nephew was 11 years old, but he's about to die. Do you put an 11 year old in charge of the whole church? That don't seem right. Colleen: Yeah, that kind of makes the whole system fall apart a bit, doesn't it? Hannah: OK, and that's what happens to (I'm going to butcher this name, but please stay with me). There are a lot of complicated names. Shem'on the 7th. OK, that's kind of his title. Kind of like Pope John Paul the second. It's not his real name. So Shem'on the 7th is known as Isho'yahb. Colleen: All right. Hannah: He made two controversial appointments for his heirs. You're going to understand why. Colleen: You're seeing the confused look on my face. I'm like, wait a second, two? Hannah: You can't have two, OK? First, he appoints his 12 year old nephew. Colleen: Which, you know, maybe traditional, but like, is problematic, because he's 12. Hannah: Right. Everybody kind of goes he is 12. Not to be unfeeling about this, but the problem is solved because the 12 year old nephew dies. Colleen: Hmm. Hannah: So the heir dies. Colleen: Was he assassinated? Hannah: I don't know. There are not really clear records, probably disease. Colleen: OK, I mean, a lot of people died then of diseases. Hannah: So he then appoints his 15 year old nephew, whose name is Eliya. Colleen: Why didn't you point the 15 year old nephew to begin with? Hannah: Maybe he's a little further away. Maybe it's his sister's son instead of his brother's son. Colleen: All right. Hannah: I don't really know. It's the next best nephew. Maybe he liked him less. Colleen: I mean, 15 year olds can be a little trying. Hannah: Sure. And 12 year olds can't be? Colleen: No, 12 year, 12 year olds can be, too. Colleen: If you listen to our podcast for a while, you know that Hannah and I both raise support, as does our ministry. If you would like to help out with any of that, please head over to ServantGroup.org/donate and you can give! Thanks. Hannah: So now we have Eliya, you know, remember the name Eliya… who becomes known as Patriarch Eliya and he's either the sixth one or the seventh one. It depends on how you count the Eliya's. Colleen: OK, but I feel like counting should be pretty straightforward: one, two, three… Hannah: It should be, but like there are some like was this guy really known as Eliya? Was he known as something else? This guy was only there for like a year. Do we really count him? Colleen: So Patriarch Eliya, the sixth or seventh. Hannah: We're going to call him the seventh because we hate to leave anyone out. Hannah: OK, Patrick Eliya the 7th and he began the Eliya line of patriarchs. Colleen: So he got all of his nephews to be named Eliya? So that they could be more Eliyas? Hannah: All of the subsequent patriarchs after him in that line aren't necessarily… mmm. They are named after him. That's their title. Instead of Shem'on the 7th, we get Eliya the 8th. Colleen: All right. Hannah: The seat of that line of power is in Al Qosh. Colleen: OK! Hannah: You've been to Al Qosh. Colleen: I've been to Al Qosh! Lots of times! Hannah: I've been to Al Qosh. What's the big thing in Al Qosh that we go to? Colleen: The monastery. Hannah: Yeah. That monastery has been there since the? Colleen: Six hundreds? Or 5th century? Hannah: Mm hmm. Yeah. Really early on. Colleen: Or four hundred? Hannah: Yeah. It's been there for a long way, Colleen: Like way, way, way back. Hannah: Long time. Yeah. It's kind of always been the seat of some of the power. It's yeah. It's like the school for the priests that then go out. There are a lot of Christian towns. This is one of those bunny trails that I got on we're gonna have to do a whole separate episode on Christian towns in Iraq because it's very interesting. But we don't have time because it's not about church history, it's just about history, history. Colleen: OK! Hannah: OK, so both of these appointments, the 12 year old who died, the 15 year old who did not die, made him really unpopular. Colleen: Right. Hannah: People were like, they're young. Colleen: They're young. They can't leave the church. Hannah: Right. We don't want them to be in charge. And then in addition to this, Shem'on the seventh also got accused of allowing his priests to have concubines. Colleen: All right. Problem if celibacy is your key. Hannah: He sold clerical posts. So like, you couldn't necessarily earn the place that you wanted, you had to buy it. Colleen: Money, money, Hannah: It's a little bit of corruption. And then the other thing he was accused of, which is vague, is living intemperately. Colleen: Oh. Hannah: I suppose we're allowed to leave that open to interpretation. Colleen: But perhaps alcohol, concubines… Hannah: Big feasts… not really being the leader… Colleen: Loud music late at night…. Hannah: Yeah, not being the leader that he should be. I'm sure he had a rock and roll band, Colleen: Right. Electric guitar and all. Hannah: Electric guitar and all. Yes. So people are upset. They don't like theEliya line. They don't like Shem'on the seventh. Colleen: They don't trust his judgment. Hannah: And so three of the Christian districts rebel against this appointment and they say, forget it, we don't want him in leadership. Instead, we want this monk from Al Q osh, which is the patriarchal seat. He is going to be the new patriarch. And they named him Shimun, not Shem'on. Shimun the eighth. Colleen: OK, were there other Shimuns? Hannah: Apparently so. But his name is Yohanna Sulaqa. So he, Shimun the eighth, starts the Shimun line. Colleen: So now we've got the Shimun line separate from the Eliya line. Hannah: So they say, we want this guy. He's going to be our patriarch. Forget you Eliya line, get out of our face. Colleen: OK. Hannah: They run into this problem. There is no bishop of appropriate rank who was available to consecrate Shimun the 8th as patriarch. So he couldn't be patriarch because he couldn't be consecrated into that place? Probably because all the bishops were like, no, we're going to stick with the Eliya line. That seems the right thing to do. Colleen: OK, I feel like this is something they should have planned for. Hannah: Yeah. I mean, people do a lot of things in anger that are not well planned out. Colleen: This is true. Hannah: So in addition to all of these church of these people, there are some Franciscan monks. Colleen: From the Roman Catholic Church? Hannah: Yeah, and these Franciscan monks who have been working to try to convert all of these people back to Catholicism. Colleen: Right. Hannah: They go, we have a solution for you. Colleen: Uh huh? Hannah: You want him to be consecrated? Colleen: Sure. Yeah. Hannah: Send him to Rome. Pope Julius the third will consecrate him. You get consecrated by the pope. That means that, like, you really are in charge. Colleen: There you go. Hannah: Sulaqa travels to Rome, which is a big trip from Mosul to Rome. Colleen: True. Hannah: In the fifteen fifties. Colleen: Right. Hannah: He meets with Pope Julius, the third. Pope Julius the third goes, you seem like a really great Catholic, I'm going to consecrate you as the patriarch of Mosul. Which means that according to the Catholic Church, he is the spiritual head of the Mosul region of northern Iraq at this point. So that happens in 1553. So it takes him about a year from the rebellion to getting consecrated by the pope. Colleen: All right. That's a long time to have your whole church in limbo, but OK. Hannah: It is. But you got to do what you gotta do. This consecration causes a permanent break between the Catholic Church and the Church of the East. Colleen: Because the people who got consecrated are no longer considered part of the Church of the East, they are considered Roman Catholic, Hannah: Sort of. The church of the East would consider them Roman Catholic at this point. OK, so the Church of the East keeps going Church of the East. This new Catholickly Church of the East branch says we're not really Roman Catholic and we're going to get into why they're not really Roman Catholic. We're not Church of the East. We are the Chaldean Church. Let me take a little moment to explain. Chaldean does not indicate their ethnicity. Chaldean is an ethnicity-- ancient people group. Colleen: Right. But Babylonians and Chaldeans from Scripture. Hannah: Right. But the Chaldean Catholics aren't necessarily from that ethnic background. It's just the name that the Roman Catholic Church gave them to distinguish them from the Church of the East. Colleen: Because they're not Roman… Hannah: Because they're not Roman, they're not Church of the East. Iraq as a country didn't exist at that point. So they're like, well, you're an Chaldean Babylonian. We don't really want to call you the Babylonian church. That's sketchy. We'll call you Chaldean, OK? Not not a not an ethnic name at that point. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Even now, I would say not really ethnic. OK, it's a church tradition for sure, and we'll get back into like there's some mingling that happens. We have the Chaldean Church, Church of the East, Roman Catholic Church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: We have the Eliya line and the Shimun line. We got to go back to Salaqa because he… Colleen: Took the trip to Rome and back. Hannah: He takes the trip to Rome. He also gets recognized by the Ottoman Empire as an independent Chaldean patriarch. OK, and this is kind of important because the Ottoman Empire recognized the Church of the East as kind of "people of the book" sort of thing. They were protected under the Ottoman Empire from persecution somewhat, somewhat. So in order for the Chaldean Church to also be considered legitimate, they need to be recognized by the Ottoman Empire. I suspect the Pope, Julius, kind of leans on the Ottoman Empire a little bit and is like, hey, recognize this guy, because I recognized him. Or the Ottoman Empire went, we want to keep the Roman Catholics happy so they leave us alone. So we're going to recognize this new Chaldean patriarch and the Ottoman Empire is the empire in control of northern Iraq at this point? Colleen: Right. Hannah: OK, Salaqa returns to Mosul and starts appointing bishops in the Chaldean church because he doesn't want to run into this problem again, where whoever he appoints to take over from him can't be consecrated. Colleen: Right. So it sounds like maybe he's trying to set up things to be sustainable and continue. Hannah: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Not everyone obviously is on board with the Chaldean Church. Colleen: No, of course not. Hannah: A lot of anger. So Salaqa gets invited to Amedi. Colleen: Also a place I've been! A beautiful kind of tabletop city, ancient old gates and roads and like, beautiful,. Hannah: Historically Christian village. OK, so he gets invited to Amedi by the governor of Amedi, who puts him in prison. Colleen: What!?? Hannah: And then puts him to death in 1555. Colleen: What??! The dude's only been in power for like two years. Hannah: Yep. Because surprise the Amedi government supported the Eliya line not the Shimun line and considered Salaqa a heretic. Colleen: Why did he go? Hannah: Probably because the governor was like, so come and tell me about this new church. Let's let's dialogue about this. Colleen: Uh huh. Sneaky! Hannah: I will say. There is some debate about what actually happened at Amedi. Colleen: OK, there's always two sides to every story. Hannah: There are always two sides to every story. The Chaldean Church is going to stick with "the Salaqa was assassinated", and the Church of the East is going to be like "I mean, he just came in and died and he just happened to die while he was there." Or perhaps he committed a crime. And that's why. We'll never know. There's not really a good counter story. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Which happens. But he had set up a successor whose name was Abdisho the fourth. Colleen: Was he related? Was he a nephew? Hannah: No. That was the whole thing was they wanted the hereditary line thing to be done. Colleen: I think… I mean, it sounds kind of like a good plan, although it does leave things more open to potential conflict. Hannah: It does. Which happens. Colleen: Oh, no kidding!! Hannah: Wait to see the future past. Colleen: I mean, I feel like history repeats itself, all of these things. Hannah: It does. OK, so we got the two the two lines. Colleen: Eliya, Shimun. Hannah: Yeah. The Church of the East, the Chaldean Church. OK, in 1672-- so one hundred and twent- ish years later the Chaldean Church has kind of wandered away from the Roman Catholic Church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Like they've kind of gotten out of touch with them, kind of said you don't really need you anymore. Colleen: We just needed you to consecrate us that one time. And now we got it, right? Hannah: We don't want to follow your leadership anymore. OK, so that's Shimun the 13th that does that. OK, in the Shimun line, his name is Dinka. He, in 1672, renounced his realm entirely and says we don't need Rome anymore. We are our own church. We're not going to follow you. And this branch officially becomes known as the Assyrian Church of the East, but not until 1972. Colleen: OK, Hannah: Three hundred years later. So now you have a Church of the East, no Roman Catholic connection at all. Chaldean Church still wants to be associated with Rome. And then the Assyrian Church of the East who was associated with Rome and then said, no, forget it, we're done. Colleen: OK, so this is kind of our second little split here. Hannah: Right. But that's the Shimun line. So you have the Eliya line, that is the Church of the East, the Shimunn line starts the Chaldean Church and then splits off into the Assyrian church. Colleen: Right. Hannah: But then the little stays with the Chaldean Church and the Catholic Church is known as the Josephite line. Colleen: OK! Hannah: Because it was led by Joseph the first and he stayed with Rome, continued to carry on the Chaldean Church traditions. Colleen: Are all three of these still based out of, like Al Qosh and Mosul? Hannah: Yeah, all out of northern Iraq. Colleen: So complicated and difficult. Hannah: The Chaldean church would claim Mosul as their seat, but probably most of their power comes from Al Qosh. Colleen: OK, I mean, Al Qosh is very close to Mosul. Hannah: Right. And we'll find out a little bit more what happens to the Church of the East Line in the next episode. Colleen: Next episode! Hannah: Dun dun dun. Colleen: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 50 Learn more over on our Iraq page ! And send us questions and comments to Hannah@servantgroup.org. How have you been shaped by where you live? Here's a rough transcript of our episode on how Iraq changed us. Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." It's our fiftieth episode, Colleen! Colleen: I can't believe that it's been that many episodes. Hannah: I know I keep telling people it's our fiftieth anniversary and they're like, well, you don't seem that old. I'm not. But it's our fiftieth episode. So we're going to do something obviously a little bit different. Colleen: Yeah, I think it'll be fun, even if it's a little bit wacky. Hannah: Yeah, it's really going to be more stream of consciousness than, like, planned. Colleen: I mean, we have a topic.. it's just a topic that includes a lot of little bits and pieces. Hannah: Yeah. So it's going to be very reminiscy. Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Hannah: And I'm coining that term, reminiscy. Colleen: I like it. Hannah: All right. Colleen: I think it works. Hannah: So what are we talking about? Colleen: We are talking about ways that we either changed permanently by living in Iraq or things that we still do because of our time in Iraq. Hannah: Right. So it's a little bit of a throwback to our reverse culture shock episodes. But I think because we did that, we've noticed even more things that we do that are odd. Colleen: Well, and since then, we also got a new roommate. And some of the things that we've included today are things that she's actually mentioned to us. Hannah: Right. Colleen: Like, wait, why do you do that, that way? And we're like, that's not normal? Oh, well, I mean, that's the way they do it in Iraq. Hannah: Right. Yeah. I think the biggest thing we get comments on from her is sitting around with the lights off. Colleen: That's true. We sometimes don't think about turning the lights on and kind of just assumed that if the lights are off… Hannah: maybe the power's gone out, like it just seems natural to not turn lights on when it gets dark. Colleen: Yeah, I don't know. We just both got more accustomed to functioning in low light environments. It's not the first thing that comes to mind once it starts getting dark is to turn the lights on. Hannah: Or even in the morning. Like when I get up to shower, I don't turn the bathroom lights on right away. I will shower in the semi-dark because it seems calmer. Colleen: Yeah, it's a little less abrasive. But again, I think we just got used to doing those things in the dark and so it doesn't occur to us that we need to do it any other way. We even get a little bit of a hard time given to us here at the office. People walk by our office is like, what are you doing sitting in the dark? I mean, it's not dark, dark. It's not pitch black. I can see everything just fine. Yes. Hannah: Steve calls me the Child of Darkness for that very reason, although in my defense, the lights in my office did not work for a long time. Colleen: That's true and wasn't your fault! Hannah: I was OK with it, though. I wasn't like, hey, I really need to get my lights fixed. I was like, yeah, my lights don't work. It's fine, it's fine. It's no problem. Which I think maybe is also a carryover from Iraq of like it's going to be such a hassle to fix the things that are broken that I'm just not even going to I'm just going to live with the broken thing. It's fine. Colleen: Yeah. I think along with that comes the I'm going to fix it myself issue. That is also still partly a hangover from Iraq and partly also just the way I was raised, the idea that you could call someone to come and fix something and they would do it in a timely manner and do it well is foreign. Hannah: Right? It's a very American expectation in some ways. Because, yeah, I know we went round and round and round with our water heater and we get fixed and a week later it'd break again and then they'd come and they would fix it. And we went probably more than a month without hot water in the middle of winter. And there just comes a point where you have to be like, this is fine. Like if the water heater never gets fixed, I can obviously live without one. Colleen: And it's not worth the hassle of either trying to communicate to someone that this thing needs fixed or what's wrong with it or deal with the having to stay home to maybe wait for someone who might or might not show up within a week. Hannah: Right. If you're lucky. Yeah. I mean, we've definitely had to wait for a repairman here in the US, but they usually show up the day that they said they would. Colleen: And within the time frame that they say they will. Hannah: Maybe like an hour on either end, but within pretty close. It didn't always work that way in Kurdistan. So, yeah, you start fixing things yourself or like jury rigging things so that they kind of work until the person comes, that can actually fix it. Colleen: I did a lot of really random home repairs in Iraq that were absolutely better choices than trying to find someone else to fix them. Sure. That dryer door still has, I'm sure, a binder clip in its mechanism. Hannah: But it worked. Colleen: It worked perfectly. Hannah: All right. That's all you need. I think adjacent to that is that when repairman repairmen come into our house, we leave the front door open. Yeah, always. Colleen: It just seems so normal. Hannah: Right. It is a weird thing to have a strange man coming to your house and then close the door behind him. Colleen: Yeah, like I open it. Hannah: He could be doing anything in there. And again, in America we know I was a repairman. Whatever. Colleen: It's going to be fine, like, I don't think there was ever any there's, never been any actual concern. I've never been afraid of the repairman who've come by our home. Hannah: But it's just one of those things, the like so that your neighbors think that you are a good person. You leave the front door open. Colleen: So your neighbors know that there's nothing going on. And that you're safe. Because it means that anyone could pop in at any moment. Hannah: And and do our neighbors here in Nashville care? I don't think so. Colleen: Not in the slightest. They're probably not even home. Hannah: If you're one of our neighbors and you care, let us know. I am curious about that. But I really don't. I really don't think they care. Colleen: I don't think they care. Hannah: I don't know how close of track they keep of our goings and comings. Colleen: And that is a big difference. Hannah: It's true. It's true. Colleen: In Iraq, your neighbors keep really close track of you. And I think maybe that's another thing that's rubbed off a little bit like we do watch our neighbors. Hannah: It's true. It's a terrible habit, but it's also kind of like- What's going on? Who is that? Is that person supposed to be there? What are they doing? Why are they doing that? Oh, there's our neighbor. OK, it must be fine. I have definitely stood at our large front windows with my hands on my hips, just watching what's going on. Colleen: We're like, oh, that guy, he ran up the street and that girl who normally is walking with him was jogging about ten feet behind him. And then they jogged back down and then they jogged back up and then they jogged back down. And we're like, Mmm she's getting farther behind! Hannah: Right. Or this random stranger who I have seen before is now walking with a dog. It's a cute dog. Will they be back with the dog tomorrow? I don't know. We'll have to watch. That is something that some of our neighbors picked up on, because you can definitely see us from the street. And we have these neighbors that walk down with their kids in strollers. And then when they walk back up, the dad pushes the stroller, like way ahead of him. Colleen: Every time; it's so fun. Hannah: Every time. And the first time I noticed it, I was like, there's a stroller! Colleen: Because you just see the stroller without any adult! It is a little unnerving. Hannah: Right, and then he walks up and he now always waves at us if he can see that we're standing there, which means that I don't stand at the window quite as much because I'm a little embarrassed about my curiosity into the lives of strangers. Colleen: I mean, but that curiosity stretches into another area: in the cars. Because you also Kurds stare into the cars of other people that are driving. Right. And I don't do it all that often, but I do it enough that I can tell when I can't see in, like when the windows are tinted. I feel like there's something wrong. Hannah: Right. Yeah, but we have this, like, idea that our car is like our little sanctuary. And even if if we in the back of our minds know that people can see in, we're like, yeah, but nobody's looking at me because I'm in my car. But in Kurdistan, everyone's looking at you all the time. Colleen: Even inside your car. Hannah: Even inside your car. Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable sometimes because I'll catch myself doing it. And then the person who I'm watching will, like, turn and make eye contact with me. And I'm like, all right, this is America. I'm not supposed to be looking at it you. So Sorry! Eyes forward! Colleen: I mean, it goes to with the like you said, the tinted windows because in Iraq tinted windows are illegal unless you are somebody important. Which just why all of the SUVs with the important officials all have the super tinted windows you can't see in and nobody else does. Hannah: I never knew that this is new information. Just today, personal boundaries is a is a different animal for sure. Colleen: Yeah. Oh, also in cars. How often do you check behind yourself to see if somebody is following you? Hannah: All the time? Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: I also like alter and I've stopped doing this to some extent because there are really only two ways to get out of our neighborhood. But I do often think about altering my routes and I go places. Colleen: Yep. Hannah: Like I always feel better when the mapping software is like going down that main road is going to take too long. We're going to take you through a neighborhood. I always kind of congratulate myself for like, "Haha no one will be able to keep track of where I'm going." Until I drive that route and realize that everyone else's GPS is also taking them that way. Colleen: and along that same route. Hannah: Forget it. I'm not as sneaky as I thought. Colleen: Yeah. But both of those were things that I feel like I trained myself to do in Iraq and continue to do unless I actively tell my brain to stop it. Be quiet. Hannah: I mean, have you even done it and gotten all the way up to our street and noticed the car behind me was still following me and thought, is this one of my neighbors? I'm going to go drive the like cul de sac and then turn back around and see if they, like, follow me? Colleen: Oh, absolutely. I've totally done that. Hannah: And it was one of the neighbors and I think they maybe thought I was a little crazy. But again, I don't actually know. I don't ask those questions. Please, neighbors don't contact me and be like, yes, we know you're crazy. We know the girls in that house. Colleen: Yeah, I think I think they are. Any of them that know us, already know we're crazy. Hannah: Do you want to talk about spoons? Colleen: Oh, yeah, there's like a whole section for food and restaurants, Hannah: Food and restaurants. Yeah, I don't think I really thought about this as an Iraq habit until we went over to our Iraqi friend's house for dinner and she handed everybody spoons. And that's what we ate the whole dinner with, with spoons, Colleen: Even though it was meat and vegetables. Hannah: And to me it felt very like natural in some ways, like, oh, yeah, this is how you use your spoon to get the chicken off the bone. But I noticed that one of our non Iraq living friends that was with us like picked up the whole piece of chicken and was like, what do I do with this? But spoons, like, I use a spoon now, like a fork and a knife and a spoon. And if I make a meal just for myself, I'll usually eat it with a spoon rather than anything else. It's just a really convenient eating device. Colleen: It's very useful. Hannah: It is very useful. And that's very Iraqi. Is that every meal you get a spoon and a fork or… Colleen: No forks. Hannah: Just a spoon? Colleen: There are not usually forks. Hannah: Right. And and so you have to navigate this like 18 course dinner with one spoon and you figure it out pretty quickly. Colleen: It totally works. Hannah: It does because you can also use bread and like, it's not rude to you with your hands depending on what it is. And yeah. And it's just I don't know, I like a spoon. Colleen: Here's a question for you. Do you like ice in your water? Hannah: No. Colleen: Did you like ice in your water before you lived in Iraq? Hannah: Yes. It has to be a really hot day for me to want ice in my water, like hot. And even then, I'd rather have refrigerated water than ice in my water. Colleen: Yeah, I definitely got used to drinking water with no ice in it in Iraq. And I think the choice there at first, at least, was often you would use bottled water, but the ice would be made from tap water, which isn't always drinkable. Hannah: Right. Colleen: And or at least not always drinkable by week stomached Americans. And so I recently have been experimenting with putting ice back in my water to see if I like it and meh. Hannah: Right. Right. I mean, I like cold water. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And even if I put ice in my water, I usually wait for it to melt before I drink it. So the water is cold, but I don't have those big chunks of ice in it. Colleen: Yeah, it's awkward, it doesn't feel nice. Hannah: And it's even to the point where if we have people over for dinner, sometimes I forget to put ice in cups. Colleen: Oh yeah. I don't usually put ice in cups. Hannah: Because it's like what do you need ice in your cup for. There's ice in the water that's in the pitcher Colleen: I do put ice in the water in the pitcher. But yeah, I don't usually think to put ice in the cups. That is the way of things here, isn't it. Hannah: Yeah. It's, it's bad. It's bad American of us Colleen. It's okay. It's all right. Colleen: So going out to a restaurant, obviously, I would always ask for no ice. The other thing that I realized you always had to ask for at a restaurant is the check. Hannah: Oh yeah. In Iraq. Colleen: In Iraq. Not here. Here you're done eating or you're done ordering things like they'll bring you your check. They want the turnover. They want that server to be able to get the tips from your meal. They want you to be able to leave if you want to. That is considered pushy and rude from a server or a restaurant person. But if you aren't aware of it, you may sit there for a very long time waiting for the check to show up. When really what you have to do is ask for it. Hannah: Which can also be difficult to do because you have to, like, waive the person down. Colleen: Yeah, because they're not hovering over your table wanting to refill your drinks all the time. Hannah: They're busy doing other things. Colleen: Other things, drinking their tea. Hannah: That's another thing that I only ever saw men ask for the check. Colleen: Oh really? Hannah: Yeah. I never saw a woman ask for a check. Colleen: Did you never go out to eat without men. Hannah: No, I mean that's part of the problem. But yeah, it was always the men. And the fighting over the check. Colleen: Oh yeah. Hannah: Is hilarious. We don't do that. Colleen: No. We're not rich enough to do that. Hannah: For sure not. The other thing that you do in restaurants and maybe you do this if you're like me, you do this other places as well. Where do you sit in a restaurant? Colleen: Oh, always back to a wall, face towards the door, if at all possible, and not near the window. Hannah: I'm not near windows and in a booth, if you can get it. Colleen: Yep. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: It's safer. Hannah: Yeah. Hundred percent. This is why we don't go out to eat with each other without other people because we would end up sitting on the same side of the table or one of us would feel deeply uncomfortable through the whole meal because our back is to the door. Colleen: Yeah, yeah. That's why it has gotten better over time. Like, I am less uncomfortable in that situation now than I was when I first came back. Right. Those kind of like weird I don't know if safety precautions I mean, that's what they are originally. Right. Hannah: Like in a little bit turns into paranoia a little bit because I can't I can't not see it like that. Like, if I do, I feel deeply uncomfortable through the whole meal. Colleen: But I will say a large portion of that is not conscious anymore. Right. Like, I choose those spots without thinking about it necessarily. And it's not until I'm seated somewhere different that I go, why am I nervous or why am I uncomfortable? Like, oh, right. I didn't get to sit there. Hannah: MmmHmm. I don't want to be here anymore! And it's because I can't see the door. Colleen: Yeah. Or there's like a flow of traffic behind me all the time and I keep peeking behind me and twisting my neck just further evidence that how messed up we are. It's great! It's so great! Hannah: We're not the only people that do that. Maybe other people also do it, that we're not living in a somewhat dangerous area of the world. Colleen: Yeah. I mean, like, the reason you don't sit next to a window is because if a bomb went off in the street, like that's where you're going to get cut by glass and things like that, pair that with our natural response to a potential bomb threat. And like, it doesn't quite make sense that we would still be concerned about those things because, I mean, it was a few weeks ago, a few months ago that there was a rumor about a bomb in Nashville that was a good long distance from us and our office. Hannah: Well, and by a good long distance, like it was in the same general neighborhood. Colleen: I mean, not…. Hannah: General neighborhood Colleen: It was in south Nashville, I guess. Hannah: It was in south Nashville, it was within where we normally would be driving, like, Colleen: OK. Hannah: We wouldn't have to go out of our way to get there Colleen: Right. Right. But I mean, definitely far enough away that our office and building is not at all at threat. Hannah: Right. Which is a thing that we just knew. Colleen: Right. Hannah: We didn't have to look it up on the Internet. How far away from a bomb do you have to be to be safe? Colleen: And we're like, even if it's as big as a car bomb, like, we're fine here. And one of our other friends was like, are we going to be OK? Is this OK? Hannah: Do we need to leave? Do we need to go somewhere else? Like, no, no, you're fine. You're fine. You're in a cement block building. You'll be fine. You're like fifteen blocks from there. You're fine. It's not a problem. Colleen: But yeah, this is knowledge that we absorbed in Iraq. Hannah: Do you feel like it takes a lot to freak us out about something? Like even the bombing that did happen in Nashville at Christmas time on Christmas Day, which was terrible, it was a terrible thing. But I remember hearing, learning about it from my sister who texted me. I'm like, sorry, I heard about the bombing, what's going on in Nashville? And I was like, what's going on in Nashville? Colleen: I had the same thing happen with my uncle. Hannah: And then I read some news articles and I was like, oh, like, no, no one was killed. It is a big deal. It caused a lot of damage. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not the horrible thing that you think that it is. Where like the bombings that happened in Erbil were like mass casualty events. Colleen: Or the explosion in Beirut. Hannah: Yeah. Oh my word! Colleen: Where you have just a whole different scale of what is worth getting, really, like what's worth getting worked up over. Hannah: Which again, is not to minimize the damage that was done to buildings and businesses in Nashville. But if we we hear about those things and we hear that no one was killed or injured, our reaction is going to be like, well, yeah, that really sucks. Not like deep grief, necessarily. Which I think is the Iraqi sense of like, things are bad, but they could always get worse. Colleen: A little edge of pessimism, there! Hannah: A little bit! It like bleeds over into my life in weird ways. Colleen: Definitely. Hannah: What else? Colleen: Hand gestures. Hannah: Oh, yeah. Colleen: Are there any hand gestures you still use that you learned in Iraq? Hannah: The biggest one I think that I use is when I see someone that I know, but they're too far away for me to talk to or in Covid times we don't shake hands. I wave at them with my palm open facing them and then put that palm to my heart and pat my chest a couple of times to be like, I see you, I acknowledge you, you're with me. Total, total Iraq Kurd thing. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Never, ever did that before. I lived there. Colleen: Yeah. There. It's the greeting that you use for people that are either too far away or of the opposite gender. Like you don't want to touch them. Hannah: Even older people I think it's done with someone that you're respectful there. Colleen: Yes. Respect. Yeah. I do that still as well. The other one that I have found myself using occasionally, although primarily in the car where no one can actually see it, is the wait symbol, which is when you take all of your fingers together in a group and point them upwards. And like it's described, I think kind of is like making your hand into a pair shape. Hannah: I would say, teardrop. Colleen: A teardrop shape with the fingers all together at the top and the palm facing up. But at the bottom. Hannah: Right, right. Like if you think of it like that classic Italian gesture of the pointer and thumb together and then you just add all the other fingers to it. Colleen: This is the the wait from either like in Kurdistan, it's the wait from the police officer who wants you not to go yet. Like wait from a parent to a child or the teacher to the student or Hannah: It's a downward wait, not an upward wait. Like you would never do that to somebody in authority over you. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: You would drop everything and listen to them. That one the other one that I use a lot is the dusting of the hands. And then pushing them away. Oh, like it's finished, it's done, and I don't know if that's common or if it was just the way that the man who helped me get my visa explained to me, communicated to me that the process was over the, like, wipe their hands and then like like you're throwing the towel down. Yeah. And I was went with ta-wow. Ta-wow. It's done. It's finished. I use that one today. Colleen: There you go. The other one actually goes a little bit with some of the other ones with the other topic. But the asking for a check, which maybe because you never had to do it, but you hold one hand out and you take your other hand and your four fingers together, kind of run it across the top of your palm. Hannah: Do you do it down in front of you or up like pointing at them? Colleen: Yeah, you point you point at your open palm so they can see or like it could be… Yeah no… Hannah: Because you want to get their attention. Colleen: Yeah, we wouldn't do it down low. So, yeah, you do it usually up high. Hannah: I've seen that and I've also seen just a pointer finger on the palm. Yeah. Which I think is a little more like it's taking too long. Hurry up. Colleen: But essentially your open flat palm is like the check, the bill and you're like, I want it here. Hannah: Here, give it to me. Colleen: Put it on my hand. I don't know. But I have used that one in a restaurant and I was had this momentary thought of I wonder if they understood me. Hannah: Or like, is that super rude in America? I don't know. Like it doesn't it feel rude. But I don't have a context. I don't know. Colleen: I mean how is there a hand signal for asking for the check in America? Hannah: You just put like a finger up? Colleen: And then you have to like verbally talk to them. Hannah: Can I get the check? It's true. But I mean, maybe that's, maybe that is the way. The other thing that's a rudeness thing is I can't sit in a group of people without thinking about the direction of my feet. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Like is the sole of my feet pointing at someone else. And if it is, I almost always fight the urge to apologize to them. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And be like, I'm sorry about my foot. I've done it like in, in my church small group. I crossed my legs and pointed my foot at my small group leader, who I love and adore and respect. And I was like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry about my foot. And they were like, you didn't touch me. And I was like, no, but I'm pointing. Oh, right. You don't care! Sorry, everyone! Colleen: Yeah, yeah. I don't know that I've ever apologized to someone for it, but it's definitely something that I'm aware of. Pretty much. Yeah. Any time I'm in public. I also know that like if I'm going to somebody's house, I make sure that I'm wearing decent socks. Hannah: Right. Colleen: Because I expect to take my shoes off. Hannah: Gotta take off your shoes. Colleen: Right. Even though we don't in everybody's homes, I am always prepared to. Hannah: Good for you. Colleen: Thanks. No holy socks on days I visit people. Hannah: That's that's fair. I always try to pick my fun socks like my unicorn socks or my narwhal socks. And then get my feelings a little hurt if somebody doesn't compliment me on my socks, but I don't think that's an Iraq thing, I think that's just a youngest child need for attention that we're not going to get into! Hannah: Anything else, anything else that's like a weird habit? Colleen: I'm sure there are lots of other things, but in part because we work with a lot of other people who've lived in Iraq, I think some of those things are hidden, because a lot of the people around us probably also do those same things. I know there are times where, like my sister has given me a hard time about scowling when I walk in a mall or out in public. Hannah: The general expression on the face being a dower one. Colleen: And like, you know, there it was. Don't talk to me. I'm busy. Please don't flirt with me or think that I'm wanting to be stopped by every other person. Hannah: Also, this is just the way that everyone else is faces look. Colleen: Right. Right. That's just how do you look in public. Hannah: Blank, non-committal. Where in America, if you don't look happy, people think something is wrong with you. You smile at strangers, here. I still. Yeah, I have a hard time with that. Again. Might not be Iraq, might just be my personality. I don't know anymore. That's part of the problem. I just. I don't know. Colleen: I don't know what we would be without that. Yeah. In part because both of us went there kind of as our first adult job. Hannah: Right. Living on your own… Colleen: …post college. Hannah: Real life. Colleen: Real life. And so it formed a lot of features about us. Hannah: Right. How we adult. Colleen: But we both adult decently well. I don't find it a huge struggle. So… Hannah: We're making it. We had better be making it by now. Or we'd be in big trouble. Oh, man. Share with us some of the things that have shaped your life. Weird things, maybe you moved in with a new roommate or got married and your spouse/roommate was like, why do you do the dishes that way? We like to hear those things, too, because we've definitely had that as well. You just can't chalk it up to Iraq. Colleen: All right, happy fiftieth episode! Hannah: Happy fiftieth episode. Yay! Colleen: Next time. The Chaldean Church? Hannah: Next time, Chaldean Christians in Iraq. I think it's going to be a two parter at least maybe a three parter if we get into the Assyrians because they're different. A little teaser for you there. Colleen: Wahoo! Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening! Hannah: Man, we're bad Americans. It's OK. It's all right.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 49 Hannah and Colleen describe how they observed different skin colors and nationalities are treated and valued in Northern Iraq. How were our black teammates treated? Asian-looking ones? Is there a difference between how men and women of color are treated? We answer these questions and more! Learn more on our website at www.ServantGroup.org or contact us at hannah@servantgroup.org. Here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah! Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. Hannah: I hope so. Colleen: Hannah, have you ever Googled racism in Kurdistan? Hannah: I never Googled racism anywhere. Not in Kurdistan. Not in America. I've never Googled racism, Colleen. Colleen: I don't mean Googled racism in Kurdistan, like while you were physically there, I met Googled about racism in Kurdistan. Hannah: No, again, never Googled about racism at all. Colleen: OK. Hannah: Regardless of where or where I'm asking about. But racism is not in foreign countries, Colleen. It's purely an American problem. Everyone knows this. Colleen: Right. So in preparation for this episode… Hannah: Which is going to be lighthearted and fun, I can already tell. Colleen: Exactly. I did Google about racism in Kurdistan and most of the original topics, most of the titles of the links that you get are about people being racist towards Kurds. Hannah: Sure. Real problem. Colleen: But the the racism and the things that we experienced or the things that we saw in Kurdistan generally weren't racism towards Kurds. Hannah: Right. Because the Kurds were the majority there. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: So I don't want to necessarily say that racism against Kurds doesn't happen. Hannah: Sure. Colleen: But it's probably not what we're going to focus on today. Hannah: Again, because we are white women who lived in Kurdistan. We have a specific perspective. Colleen: Yes. Hannah: And that is all we can really speak to is our own perspective and the things that we saw… and apparently the things that we Googled. Colleen: Yeah, along those lines as well. Being white women in Kurdistan did put us in a category of racial privilege that was obvious to me living there. Hannah: Oh yeah, hundred percent. Colleen: And also, unfortunately, unable to be separated from the sexism. Hannah: Right. Colleen: The advantages and disadvantages of both, whether you're male or female and also your race, ethnicity, skin color, hair. Hannah: Hair color, eye color. Colleen: Oh, man. All of it Hannah: Circumference. Colleen: When we talk about racism, we're also going to end up talking some about gender roles and how racism plays by different rules for men or women. Hannah: Sure. In a in a society that's very divided between male roles and female roles, it's only… it should be expected that racism also plays by those rules. Colleen: So the first experience I ran into with Kurds. Experiencing a different racial background other than myself was I traveled over with a group that was doing a basketball camp and included in that group were several African-American men. They were definitely stereotyped as basketball players. Hannah: Sure. Colleen: Even the man who was not a basketball player but a pastor, the rumors around the bazaar were even that one of them was Michael Jordan, like that he had come to Kurdistan. People asked him for his signature. Hannah: And do you think this is slightly off? It's not off topic, but it's a little a bit of a rabbit trail. Do you think that racism on that level about black people, particularly from the US, has more to do with Middle Easterner's consumption of Western media? Colleen: I think that's a huge, huge factor, yes. Hannah: Because there's not really a history like when we think about racism between white and black people, particularly in the US, we think, you know, it's based in slavery in the South, especially having grown up in the south. That's like a part of the framework. Right. And that's not the case there. Particularly with African American or black Americans. Colleen: Right. I think you're right. I think it has a large amount to do with media and how that's, for a lot of people, the only experience they've had with people who look that way, right, is what they've seen on Western television, specifically sports, right? Hannah: Yeah, I know most of my students either assumed all black Americans were either basketball players, rappers or gangsters. There was no those were the three thing. Colleen: Those were the only things. But in this case, I think it also specifically applies to men. Hannah: Right. Yeah, I was going to say specifically men Colleen: Because for women, there's a whole different category, I guess. Hannah: A set of stereotypes. Colleen: A whole different set of stereotypes. Hannah: Right, because women can't be basketball players or rappers or gangsters, I guess. Colleen: Right. So what else can they be? Hannah: I feel like answering that question is going to get me in trouble, no matter what I say. Doctors and lawyers, Colleen. Doctors and lawyers. Colleen: Well, one of your teammates… Hannah: Yeah. Was a lawyer and an African-American woman. And she was not treated well, by any means. Colleen: That, too, is just a really difference across both gender and race. Hannah: Right. Colleen: And I think worked into all of this. And we'll talk maybe some about some other ethnicities as well, but is a distinct preference for light hair and light skin even within the Kurdish ethnicity. Hannah: Right. Colleen: And you can tell that based on the number of skin lightening soaps, hair bleaches, and the number of people who would compliment me on my fair hair and skin and ask me, you know, what color I used to dye my hair. Hannah: Right. I had many primarily female students who did not want to be out in the sun because they don't want to get dark. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Like at all. And not like I'm going to apply sunscreen. It was I'm going to stay inside or if I'm outside, I need to be in the shade not because it's hot, but because I don't want my skin to get any darker. Colleen: I think the other place I saw it show up was how many photo taking places. Even the passport guy would lighten everybody's photos, including mine. Hannah: Right. Which when you're already like we're not just like white women, we're pale Scandinavian white women, and we don't need to be lightened anymore. Colleen: No, but yes, we're very white, pale women. And some of my passport photos or ID photos, I glowed because they had lightened me to the point where I looked unnaturally pale. Hannah: We were just eyes and lips. Colleen: Yep. Hannah: Yeah. Colleen: So there's definitely a preference for that. Right. Hannah: Or even I got my hair cut and colored while I was there, and was insistent that I was going to go like a darker red. I have blonde, fairly light colored hair, naturally. But they were like, why would you want to do your hair darker? You want to be like caramel colored hair like Beyoncé. And I was like, no, I don't. I would like to have red hair, like red haired people. Colleen: So most of the other black women that I met in Kurdistan were actually not from the US. They were from Ethiopia and Nigeria. And I think those might have been the only two places I actually met people from. There were quite a few Ethiopian women there as nannies or housekeepers. And so did your roommate ever run into being assumed that that's what she was? Hannah: Not that she ever mentioned to me. I know she had a run in with the taxi driver who tried to pick her up because he thought that she was a "woman of the night" and she had words for him. She handled it so well. I was so impressed. There also is that idea that if they're not a housekeeper or a nanny, they're a prostitute, which is unfortunate like, that that's the interaction with African women that most Middle Easterners have had. It's in those capacities. I don't think that's coming from the media. I think that's coming from cultural practice. Colleen: Yeah, there is a sense that people, generally speaking with a darker skin color are going to be second class citizens, right? And the one place with the men that I know that came into play was with the Bangladeshi men who had been brought in at some level as a form of human trafficking, labor. Hannah: Right, under false pretenses. Colleen: Under false pretenses that were given jobs, sweeping streets and doing construction. And a lot of them work "dirty jobs". Hannah: A lot of them work at the airport as baggage handlers too. Colleen: Oh really? Hannah: I noticed that. Colleen: And that, yeah, they're definitely looked down upon as people you wouldn't want to interact with or.. Hannah: Treat like a human? Colleen: Treat like a human. Exactly. And of course, like with all of these categories, certainly not every Kurdish person is going to think this or believe this or treat people that way. Hannah: Right. We don't want to also stereotype Kurds. Colleen: Right. Right. It's just the things that we saw happen and the way we saw people treated. Again, from our experience. And we would have conversations with our students about things like this. And in many ways, some of them became advocates against this kind of behavior in their society. Director John!: And hey there, this is John Nelson, the director of Central Group International. I just wanted to encourage you to consider going to Iraq as a teacher. If you do, I can guarantee that at least one life will be changed. Hannah: I some more, kind of a wave of Cambodian or East Asian women specifically, coming in while I was there. I don't know if it was like there was a wave of Bangladeshis and then that got shut down. And so then these Cambodian East Asian women came in, I don't know. But again, they were given the the housekeeping kind of jobs, housekeeping nanny jobs. Colleen: I think in Suly it was more women from the Philippines than like Cambodia or other areas. But yeah. So Asian appearance also has definite stereotypes. And I would say, again, it's very gendered because the Southeast Asian women have that similar second class citizen, nanny, housekeeper, maybe prostitute kind of category that they're put in, whereas men, specifically Chinese men, are businessmen. They're the traders. They're the people who bring in and trade massive amounts of goods, all of the doorknobs and all of the pipes and all of the screws and the fittings and the… Hannah: water heater coils. Colleen: Yeah, all of those things that make up buildings and appliances and everything. All of that comes through trade with China. Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. We had some friends. I know two different couples that were Korean. And the men were highly respected, well-loved in their communities, considered very smart, and I think their wives, when they were with them, were also treated well. But if the wives went out on their own to do anything, not so much. We also had a teammate who is American, but of Japanese heritage. And she had an incident where she was in a restaurant with her team, you know, being treated equally. Some of that team had had kids and the waitstaff refused to serve her because they figured she was the nanny. And so if she asked for something or tried to order. They just completely ignored her. And she had to get her white American teammates to order for her. And I think I think they called the the wait staff out on that. And we're like, she's not a nanny. She is one of us. She's also a teacher. Like behave, do better than you're doing. Colleen: But you know, that assumption, if they had treated her like the rest of the team and then, you know, been yelled at because the people paying didn't like that she wasn't being treated as a second class citizen, like so sticky. Hannah: Yeah, it was not great. For anyone involved in that. And but she was well loved by her students. Colleen: Right. Hannah: And well respected within like and I think that's the thing is that in the the context of where she is known as a person, she was treated equally with everyone else. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: But it's when she steps outside of that where people don't know her and they just assume she was not treated so well. So again, it's not all Kurds treat all Asian men or women this way, but they're operating within the cultural context that they understand. Colleen: And the expectations. Hannah: Right. Colleen: Another category of internationals in Kurdistan are the South Americans. Hannah: Yes. Which they fall in a weird category. Colleen: They do. They do. The men, I think, get a similar stereotype actually, as the African-American men, as being football or soccer players. Hannah: Which almost all of them were were, or at least they do play a lot of football. Colleen: So there is a certain amount of truth to the stereotype, at least for the experience that we both had. Yeah, but that too comes through all of their consumption of sports and soccer just always that's like the best and most important sport to watch, of course. Hannah: So yeah. And I feel I think a lot of, at least a lot of the I mostly knew Brazilians and a couple of El Salvadorians, they all spoke really excellent Arabic. And so I think a lot of times they were kind of passed as, oh, they're Arab. Colleen: Huh? Hannah: Not necessarily Hispanic or South American. Colleen: I don't know that the ones around me spoke much Arabic, but their Kurdish was really good. And yeah, their appearance is similar enough to Kurds that I think they don't stand out a lot. And so they, they, they blend in a bit more and are less, I think treated less differently in some ways because of that. Whereas, I you and I had people follow us around in the grocery store because there's no hiding. Hannah: Right. There's no hiding. I did a road trip with a car full of Brazilian and Argentinian guys for a soccer program and that every single checkpoint we would show our passports and they they turned it into a game and we're like, who's better at football, Brazil or Argentina? Because they're like big football rivals. And so it was kind of fun. But then it was also the like, And what are you, a white girl, doing with these men? Colleen: Who are all undoubtedly soccer professionals? Hannah: Right. Who are you? The Wrangler? What is happening? And I was like, Americans are best and they all laugh. Which is fair. Colleen: The other type of racism that probably is the most talked about, because it's the most common to happen in Kurdistan is the Kurd / Arab racism, which I don't really want to get into a lot, because it's really complicated and sticky and there's a lot of history to it and a lot of longstanding grudges, but I didn't feel like we could talk about racism in Kurdistan without at least mentioning that that is also a thing. Hannah: Right. Colleen: And often displays itself not in as much as somebody's appearance, but in, like, people's names. Yes. And that was the feature of it that I found really fascinating, is that someone could maybe look Kurd or Arab or a mix or neither. But the way they're going to be treated is based on whether or not they have a Kurdish or an Arab sounding name. Hannah: Right. Colleen: Which is just fascinating to me. Hannah: It is, especially because typically in Islamic cultures, you're going to get a lot of Muhammads and Alis and those I mean, those types of names. But Kurds don't really name… I mean, you might run across the Muhammad Kurdish Muhammad every once in a while, but not Ali and not Ahmed or Ahmed. Colleen: I mean, I ran into a few of those as well. But also, yeah, they're just not nearly as common as among our Arab friends. Hannah: There's a lot more, Dlshad, a lot more very strongly Kurdish. Havan. Very strongly Kurdish names. Colleen: Another kind of local racism that we ran across is anti-Turk sentimentality. Hannah: Kurds don't like Turks. Not at all. Colleen: To the point where I remember we ran across, we had one student who on a regular basis would talk about how much he hated the Turks and how, you know, he just wanted to kill all the Turks. And we're obviously trying to calm some of that down. But then one day he came to school and was like, I was talking to my parents about how much I hated the Turks. And I found out my grandfather was Turkish. Hannah: Burn! Colleen: He's like, I don't know what to do with that. Hannah: Like an identity crisis. Colleen: Maybe think twice about who you're going to hate. Hannah: Yes. Yes. And I mean, to be fair, Turks also don't like Kurds. Colleen: Oh, yeah, it's mutual. Hannah: It's a two way street for sure. I mean, I also had students who really hated Saudis. Colleen: Oh, I don't think I ever ran into that one. Hannah: More because they had this idea that Saudis were, well, super oppressive and also snobby. Colleen: Hmm. OK. Hannah: And so it wasn't it was more of a punching up than a punching down situation. I think Kurds and Turks are just punching at each other. Yeah. Ultimately, I did think it was cool, though. We had a lot of Syrian people come in towards the end of my time. And Kurds love Syrians. Colleen: Yeah. They somehow don't fit into the same category as Turks or even the Syrians are Arab. Hannah: Right. Colleen: They're not the southern Iraqi Arabs. And so they don't hold the same place . Hannah: And I think it comes from when there was a lot of persecution of the Kurds, a lot of them fled to Syria and the Syrians took them in and said, yeah, you can come stay here and we'll take care of you. And so when the reverse was happening and everything was falling apart in Syria, Kurds were like, come on, it's time to repay our debt to you, essentially. And again, well, not all Syrians were treated well by all Kurds. The majority attitude was, yeah, bring the Syrians in. But then when the Yazidi came in, and that's more religious than racial, necessarily. But there was a big mindset of Yazidi are dirty and terrible. And we don't want them here. It's like but they're like they're Kurdish. Colleen: So complex. Hannah: It's so complicated. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: I don't think we can solve it Colleen. Colleen: I don't think so either. Hannah: I mean, we haven't been able to solve racism in our own country, so I don't think there's much hope for us solving it elsewhere. Colleen: But if you are going to take a trip to Kurdistan, these are the kinds of things that maybe you should be aware of. Hannah: Right. Colleen: That you may have to push back against if you are of one of these ethnicities you may have to deal with on some level, even as a white person. Standing up for your teammates if need be, or, you know, dealing with the stares and the following in the privilege that comes from skin color. Hannah: Yeah, and it's not I think it's one of those things that most Kurds and I think this is changing a little bit now, but most Kurds wouldn't have put the racism label on it. They would have just been like, Yeah, that's just the way that it is. Colleen: Right. Yeah. Hannah: There is starting to become more of an awareness of it. I think the Kurd / Arab and antagonism is probably not going away anytime soon. But like you said, you had some students that were advocating for minority internationals that were brought in. I know the Korean community in Dohuk has done a lot to change stereotypes about East Asians. Colleen: Yeah. And I think some of it. Yeah, maybe partly solved by some exposure because each of these groups that we're talking about, like there are very few people of different races in Kurdistan. It's very homogenously Middle Eastern, although that is not really homogenous. It's very diverse in and of itself. But as far as like medium skin tone. Hannah: Dark hair, dark eyes. Colleen: Yeah, yeah. Hannah: All those things. And yeah, I think it is starting to change with NGO workers coming in and a lot more, a lot more openness to, to other countries and other cultures as well. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's the thing that doesn't get talked about, like nobody likes to talk about the ugly parts of culture, even even in our own culture. Colleen: Doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them, though. Hannah: Yeah, I think it's I think it's good to shed light on the dark, the dark places just as much as the bright places. There it is, racism. And I don't think we're going to get in too much trouble for it??? Colleen: You know, we might. Hannah: It's true. Colleen: Call us out if we're idiots. Hannah: Yeah. If we got something wrong or we missed something, please let us know. We want to learn. And this is not an area we're experts in, by any means. Colleen: Nope. Hannah: Our cumulative years are not thousands, maybe tens. We have tens of years of experience, so let us know, especially if you have been to the Middle East and experienced that in Middle Eastern culture, positively or negatively. We'd love to hear those stories. Colleen: Yeah. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Face book or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org. Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening. Hannah: You would start to disappear, you start to look like the… woman, that's like a… Yeah, it's a weird doctor who reference. What's her name? She's just the face and the skin stretched. Colleen: Oh, Cassandra. Hannah: Cassandra yeah. We were like Cassandra from Doctor Who. I'ma edit that out. Colleen: Probably a good idea.…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 48 Hannah and Colleen take a trip around the world and into a Middle Eastern movie theater. Sometimes watching a movie in Iraq is like a short visit to the United States, but other times it's more like visiting a different country… or a different planet where the spoken language is Arabic but the written language is Russian. It's exciting. Learn more at www.ServantGroup.org ! Contact us with comments or questions at hannah@servantgroup.org. Here are some links to different films we mentioned in the epidsode! “Turtles Can Fly” – “Despite its fanciful title, Turtles Can Fly leads viewers into a slough of despond, one in which not just hope is strangled but virtually any possibility for simple human kindness.” – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post “Salaam Dunk” – “Beautifully told both visually and through the girls’ own words, insightful and inspirational, Salaam Dunk is a #1 Must See Festival Film and the #1 Must See Inspirational Film of the Fest.” – Debbie Lynn Elias, Behind the Lens “Crossing the Dust” – We got some of the details wrong in the podcast with this film. “A road movie set in Iraq in 2003 during the fall of Saddam. Two Kurds are looking for the parents of a five-year-old boy who has been found in the street in tears. His name is Saddam too. At the same time the boy’s parents are looking for him everywhere, worried because of the boy’s name which is now taboo. All the attempts of the two Kurds to get rid of the child fail…” “Jani Gal” – A stereotypical Kurdish movie full of travel and sadness. Here’s even more! We’ve seen some of these, but some of the ones we’ve seen aren’t on this list. Maybe they didn’t hit Western news enough to register? Let us know if you find one you love! And here's a rough transcript! Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah. Colleen: And I'm Colleen. Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq. Colleen: It's going to be fun. Hannah: I hope so. Hannah: Theaters, movie theaters, have been closed for a while. Colleen: Yeah, I think maybe we're feeling a little nostalgic for something we almost never did. Hannah: That's true. Now, I'm not a big go-to-the-movies person. The last movie we saw, we went together. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And we saw 1917. Colleen: It was incredible. It was distressing. Hannah: Yes. Colleen: But also really well done. Hannah: Definitely a movie you have to be in the theater to really get the full experience on. And I think I think that's why we love movie theaters so much is for the experience. Colleen: I mean, that's definitely how I viewed movie going in Iraq, certainly. Hannah: It was always an experience, that's for sure. Colleen: For sure. Hannah: I have one piece of interesting trivia I learned, which explained a lot of things to me was that the first full-length Western movie ever shown in Iraqi Kurdistan was Titanic. Colleen: Oh! Hannah: Right? Colleen: That explains so much! Hannah: And so when I moved there and had never seen Titanic, people were appalled, like, how could I have not seen such a classic movie? Colleen: And like, "My Heart Will Go On" is a song that you can hear in any grocery store, mall, store anywhere. In Kurdistan you very likely will run into "My Heart Will Go On." Hannah: Yes, and when I first moved to Iraq, there weren't really movie theaters to go to. Colleen: Right. Hannah: Like, you could go to a meeting hall and they would show a movie sometimes. But it was like you're sat in a folding chair, maybe in theater seats if it was a nicer venue. Colleen: But yeah, it was not a venue that was exclusively made for showing movies. They just happened to use the projector to show a movie sometimes. Hannah: Right. Which is not the way that it is now. Colleen: No, there are a few movie theaters now and not as many as we often have in United States cities, still. Hannah: Sure. I guess that's probably true. Colleen: But there are some. Hannah: Yeah, I remember when Dohuk got its first movie theater and how excited everybody was. Colleen: Oh yeah. Hannah: I went to see many a movie in that theater… we will get to those. Colleen: Yeah. I also remember the first movie theater that got opened in Suly and it was great. Hannah: I think that theater in Suly was the first movie theater I went to in Iraq. Colleen: Really? Hannah: Yeah. We were down visiting you with Katrina and her family and her oldest daughter and I went to see the first Hunger Games movie. Colleen: Oh, really? Hannah: In in the theater in Suly. It was bizarre. Colleen: Yeah, it's a I mean, it was definitely set up, modeled after the stereotypical American movie theater experience to the point where they brought in, like the pop machines that have the mix carbonation and the syrup thing, which most everywhere else doesn't do in Iraq. Hannah: You get a bottle or a can. Colleen: Right. And the the popcorn and the same kinds of American snacks like you walk in there and you feel like you stepped out of Iraq and into the United States. Hannah: Yes. Except everything is subtitled in Arabic. Colleen: Right. The first movie, I don't know if it was the first movie I saw there had been probably the second movie I saw there, actually. They were premiering "Prince of Persia" and there was a Kurdish guy who was an extra somewhere in it. Hannah: Oh. Colleen: And so he was there and they had all the cameras there. And you had to come by like ticket invite only one of our students was connected. Hannah: Like a red carpet… Colleen: Yeah. Red carpet. And it was definitely set up that way. I don't think we quite knew what we were getting ourselves into. Hannah: Isn't that the way that it always goes! Colleen: When our student invited us to this premiere of this movie. And we were excited about it. It was great. And there's nothing like that moment near the beginning of the film where it's zooming in on this map of the Middle East and it's like, "In a land far, far away…" And you're like, wait, we're like in the middle of that map Hannah: It's getting closer to us! Colleen: Yeah, it's like this is not far, far away. And my roommate, at the time, and I remember leaving that movie and that whole experience and being like the movie was about Persia and the Middle East. But we feel like we've just been to America. Hannah: Right. Colleen: It's so strange. Hannah: Very, very odd. I never went to that kind of premiere. I did go to a Kurdish film premiere because teammates neighbor was like the producer for it. So he invited the token American audience to come and watch it. And it was very formal, like we got dressed up in our best clothes, which was. I think I dressed all in black because all my nicest clothes were black and it was everything, of course was in Kurdish. I feel like they had subtitles in English because I understood more of what was going on than I think I ought to have with my knowledge of Kurdish at the time. I don't really remember the plot of the movie. Aside from that it was very sad. Colleen: I mean, it might not have had much more of a plot than being very sad. Hannah: It was pretty linear, like there was war and there was love. And then someone died and someone had to escape. Colleen: It sounds like, again, every Kurdish movie ever, ever seen. Hannah: Yeah. I mean, it was a pretty well done movie. I feel like it had something to do with donkeys, but I might just be making that up. Colleen: There is a famous Kurdish movie about donkeys. Hannah: OK, this was not that one. Colleen: OK. Hannah: This was something else, Anyway, it was it was well done. I mean, not like polished Hollywood quality, but it would have worked for a Western audience, I think. Except that it was all in Kurdish. Colleen: Well, yeah, I remember seeing, I think two different movies in Kurdish in Iraq. One was also a premiere one of our students mother was an actress in it. And I don't know if it had English or Arabic subtitles. I think it did have English subtitles that didn't make sense. And I remember asking my student afterwards what the movie was about and she didn't know either. But there was a lot of wandering about. There was obviously some smuggling. There was war and running and dying and hiding from soldiers. Hannah: Which I mean, would be the story that Kurdish people tell that much of their experience. Colleen: But it certainly was not linear and it did not even follow the same group of characters through this whole thing. I wish I could remember the title of the other movie that we went to that was in Kurdish. It was linear. And it was it was fascinating. It was this whole story about these two, I think Iraqi Arab soldiers who pick up this Kurdish kid who's lost and they spend the whole movie trying to basically following his parents through villages and places to try to connect this kid with his parents. And it was great. And it could have had just the most beautiful, lovely, happy ending. Hannah: Of course it did not. Colleen: But in the way of Kurdish films… Hannah: Death and sadness? Colleen: Death and Sadness. Hannah: Yeah, that seems about right. I haven't seen a lot of other Kurdish films, but that's kind of the feeling that I get. Colleen: Have you ever seen "Turtles Can Fly"? Hannah: No, that sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, I'm not gonna lie. Colleen: It does! That was the very first Kurdish movie I ever had experience with. When I first started looking into living in Iraq. I looked at the library to see what stuff they might have had about Kurdistan or Kurdish. And there's this movie that pops up as "Turtles Can Fly" and like about this group of kids. And I'm like, oh, OK. Like and it's in Kurdish and I'll watch it in Kurdish. It'll give me exposure to the language and, you know, it'll be interesting and I'll learn stuff about life there. It is probably the most depressing movie I've ever seen. Hannah: Yay…. Colleen: And it's it's brutal. It's it's it's so sad. It's… I don't even have words. Hannah: Like the dog dies sad or like everything is awful sad? Or a little bit of both? Colleen: Everything is awful. Hannah: Why would they have a dog? They wouldn't. Colleen: I mean. The the main plot, the character, the main characters are children, most of whom have lost some limb or body part. Because their job is to deactivate landmines. Hannah: Yeah, that doesn't sound cheerful. Colleen: Not even the worst and most difficult part of the movie. Hannah: Cool. I don't want to talk about this movie anymore anyway. Colleen: I come to Nashville for my orientation training the very first summer before I've gone to Iraq. And what do they do? But they're like, hey, we found this Kurdish movie and none of us have seen it. And so we're going to watch this movie together as a way to like bond and like, you know, talk about Kurdish things. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no, really? OK, I don't think any of them knew that I had seen it. Like, I don't think I told them. I didn't want to ruin the plans of this new adventure, Hannah: This new group of friends. Colleen: This new group of people. I did. I watched it one more time, actually, a few years after that with another group of people who really wanted to see it because they'd heard about it. Hannah: So you saw this immensely depressing Kurdish movie three times? Colleen: Three times. Hannah: Voluntarily. Colleen: Voluntarily. I don't recommend it, though, unless you really need a good chance to cry? Hannah: And just be sad for several days. Colleen: Uh huh. Yeah, I'm actually kind of sad now thinking about it. Hannah: I think we've had enough of that for the time being. Hannah: We interrupt this podcast for a very important message. We need more teachers in Iraq. So if you're listening to this, you must be somewhat interested. Please go to our website and get in contact with me and I can tell you how we can make that happen. Thanks! Colleen: There are much more entertaining film and movie opportunities. Hannah: Sure, I mean, there's also that movie that came out about basketball. Colleen: Oh, yeah, Salaam Dunk. That's super fun. Hannah: If we're going to recommend a Kurdish-esq movie. It would be that one, right? Colleen: Well I'm in it! Hannah: I have never actually seen it. Colleen: Seriously? Hannah: Yeah, I think it came out like one of the summers that I was home and I was just kind of like, I'll see it eventually. I never did. Colleen: It's super fun. They create essentially a narrative out of a documentary style like take on youth basketball between the mostly focused around this college team at the American University and some of the different teams they play against. And so our school and the team that we had, our high school team played their college team. I mean, they all have about the same amount of experience. It's fine. And yeah, so our kids and and I, all pop up in at a couple of times. Hannah: Colleen, basketball coach. Colleen: Oh, yeah. No, I'm not I'm not featured in any way. I'm only in the background, Hannah: A background character? Colleen: Where I can like I know where I was because I was there. Hannah: Right. You, you can find you. Colleen: I can find me. No one else. Hannah: All right. So that's that's the homework assignment is watch "Salaam Dunk" and see if we can find Colleen. Colleen: See if you can find me. Since this is a podcast and no one's actually seeing my face anyway, I feel like that could be an additional challenge. Hannah: I'll find you, Colleen. Not at all creepy. Colleen: But living in Iraq, watching movies in the cinema was not the only way you watch movies. Hannah: It's true. The majority of movies that I watched. What's the statute of limitations on buying pirated movies in a different country? Colleen: I'm not sure that there is one. Hannah: I'm probably good, right? So most of the movies that I watched were DVDs that you bought from the corner shady DVD seller. Colleen: Although I'm not sure he or anyone else thinks of them as shady because it's so open there. Hannah: Like it's not illegal in Kurdistan? So many of my students told me this. Like, oh, no, no, we don't have these laws. It's not illegal. They may or may not have the laws. I don't know. But certainly nobody is getting in trouble for copying DVDs over and over and over and over again. Colleen: So you buy a DVD inside like a slim plastic sleeve with maybe a paper insert. Hannah: Right. Like thinner than a Ziploc bag. Colleen: Yeah. Like something you buy a greeting card in. Hannah: Yes. Colleen: And the quality of said film could be anything from perfectly normal in the way it watches. It could be filmed from the back of a theater. Hannah: So you see, everybody's heads! Colleen: And it goes in and out of focus. It could switch languages partway through. We watched Madagascar, I think, and partway through it switched to Russian for about ten minutes and then it went back to English. Hannah: I tried to watch Despicable Me 2. And it starts out in Russian, like even in the American version, it starts out in Russia. And so I was like, wait a minute, did I just get this in Russian? Man! OK, we'll give it five minutes and then, like, it switches over out of Russian, but it switched into Arabic. And I was like, that's not Steve Carell's voice. It was very disappointing. Colleen: One of them… UP. We watched and all of the words were in English, but all of the writing on the screen was in some other language, maybe Turkish or Russian. It was the Cyrillic alphabet. And so, like, any time, like, they open a book and it's like labeled or something has text on a surface. The text is not English word. I was like, huh? Hannah: All right. Yeah. The figure that we would buy a DVDs from would let us play through the first five minutes of it to make sure that it was in English and of a fairly decent quality. So that was kind of nice. That also and I was not a video game still am not a video game player, but they also did bootlegged video games and computer software. Colleen: Yeah, I never got any of that though. Hannah: No me neither. That felt super sketch. But yeah, I think I watched several Marvel movies that way. Colleen: I remember one time we were actually up in Dohuk and we went and the guys went out and got some movies and one of the movies they picked up, was just a really terrible movie, I was like, didn't you look up reviews for this? Like, why are we watching this? This is a trash movie, not the quality of the DVD or whatever. Just the movie was terrible. And so we went to go try to look it up and see what it was like, rated and stuff. And it actually hadn't come out in the US yet. Hannah: Haha! Colleen: I was like, this is super sketchy! Hannah: That's how, you know, he's a good DVD guy because he gets them before they come out in theaters. My other favorite was you could get like the compilation DVDs that we're like old Mel Gibson movies or we got Kate Winslet once. Colleen: Or like all the the chick flicks, you know, and it's like twenty five movies on a DVD. Hannah: Or children's movies or whatever. And those were always kind of fun because again, a lot of times the menus were not in English. So we would just like pick a movie and hope. And I watched some real depressing Kate Winslet movie that I was like, I don't know the name of this movie, but I hope I never, ever, ever watch it again! And I feel like the name would have told me this is not a movie you want to watch. Or I could have gotten online and like looked at looked it up, but it was in Arabic. Colleen: I feel like some of those, even if the menu was in English, you didn't always know that it would actually match. Hannah: Right. Colleen: The movie that you were clicking to or sometimes it wasn't at the beginning and say like you had to click forward and back through sections to try to find when the beginning happened. Hannah: And you can you could get TV shows and and those were pretty much the same way. Colleen: It was like the Russian roulette of movies. Hannah: Right. Right. And I know eventually several people I knew got the VPNs and and would get Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever and do streaming. But that was much later. Colleen: Yeah. When I first lived in Iraq, streaming really wasn't a thing. Hannah: Not even in the US. Colleen: Not even in the US. And internet speeds were so slow that you could barely keep up a Skype conversation, let alone stream something. And you couldn't like if you didn't always have good electricity to be able to run your internet or computer or whatever. I remember there were a few different things that we did by my last year. There definitely were downloading some things to play. And like you had to if you wanted to watch a YouTube video, you would… Hannah: Pre-download it? Colleen: Set it so that you, you know, you had it hit pause to try to download as much of it as possible, like so that you could actually play it all the way through without pause, pausing it spots. Hannah: Yeah. Fun times. Colleen: Oh, yeah. Hannah: I knew people, too, who would streams live sporting events, which I didn't really understand. I'm not a sports person, admittedly, but like people who wanted to watch the Super Bowl or we went and watched the Final Four games one year. Colleen: OK. Uh huh. Hannah: And I remember being like, it's like 3:00 in the morning. I do not care enough about this. I think we ended up staying at that friend's house because my roommate at the time wanted to watch them. And I was like, we'll just go and spend the night with them and you guys can get up whenever you want to. I'm going to keep sleeping because I do not care about basketball. I think I watched some Winter Olympics though that way once. Yeah, but most people just watch whatever came on TV or they got DVDs from the DVD guy. Because it was cheap! Like 50 cents! Colleen: I mean I watched the Super Bowl… OK, one of the only Super Bowl parties I've ever actually been to was in Iraq. And it was, they were playing it and then the Internet went out or something happened. And so, like then they were watching it like this diagram on the phone with, like, the little pieces moving, like those circles and X's. And so, like then like after a play happened, it would like update and I would tell you what had happened. It was really miserable. They were super stressed about the fact that they were not being able to watch the Superbowl when it was happening. Hannah: Kurds love movies, though. Colleen: Yeah, they really like horror! Hannah: I don't know if that's like the younger generation. But yeah, I was always surprised at the young age at which my students would be like, oh yeah, I watch this like really terrifying horror movie. And I was like, WHY???. Colleen: Miss, why do I have bad dreams? What movies have you been watching lately? Murder Kill 15. That might be why. Really? Yes. Maybe you should stop watching those for a month and see what happens! Hannah: And? Colleen: And it worked. Hannah: What!! Colleen: They thought I was a miracle worker. Hannah: You are. Yeah. Once we finally got a theater in Dohuk. My students, of course, wanted to go watch movies and would invite me to go with them and I'd be like, I'll go watch a movie with you. But we're not watching any horror movies and we're not watching anything rated R. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: And they were like, oh, those are our favorite. And I was like, I know. Why do you think I said that? Like, you want to go watch "The Hunger Games." I'll watch that with you. You want to go watch Disney movies? I'll watch those. I don't think I watched any Marvel movies in the theater. Maybe "Captain America"? Actually… Colleen: That would be an odd one to watch in Iraq! Hannah: Yeah, I watched Captain America, Winter Soldier in Iraq. Colleen: Yeah, there you go. Hannah: And I remember coming out and being like, that's the most American thing I've done in, like, a year. It was very strange, but it was fun to go to the theaters. And I feel like our students in the summer used it the way that people used to do it here, where it was like the theater is air conditioned. Colleen: Air conditioning!!! Hannah: And it's entertaining. And like, you know, you can go sit in a cool, dark environment for a couple hours, in the warm of the day and forget about the rest of the world. Colleen: Yeah, it was it was good for that. Yeah, it's good for the extra good air conditioning. Hannah: All our movie theaters were in malls. I know the one in Suly was not in a mall. Colleen: There was one in one of the malls there. I never went to that one, partly because I had connections and friends at the other one. So. Yeah. Hannah: Yeah, which I guess really isn't that weird, except that in America, movie theaters came first and malls came later. And so I don't associate a movie theater with a mall. Colleen: Right. Hannah: It does happen, but I don't know. I was think of them as standalone. So having them in the mall was a new experience for me. And they were I mean, it's not that expensive. Colleen: I mean, I feel like the prices were comparable to the US, maybe a little cheaper. Hannah: Yeah. I mean, I don't think I ever spent more than max fifteen dollars. They also have 3D IMAX style theaters. They're not good. Colleen: I never went to any of those. Hannah: They have the like. Yeah, 3D showings of things and I well, I don't really love 3D movies, either. But I had friends that would go and be like, it's not that great. Yeah, it's it's a different it's an experience for sure. And it's definitely primarily teenagers or young adults going to movie theaters. Colleen: Yeah. With I mean, to movie theaters. Yeah. The premiere kind of ones. It's a whole range. So what are you excited to see eventually in a movie theater. Do you have any movies on your bucket list. Hannah: Haven't really thought about a bucket list upcoming movie. Colleen: I don't even know what's coming out. Hannah: I haven't seen Tenet yet. I kind of want to see that. Yeah. Wonder Woman 1984, which I don't think is going to be like, I think by the time theaters open back up, neither of those will be there. But I'm not really paying attention to anything else. But I think it would be good. I think maybe we need to watch more foreign films, Colleen. Colleen: Really? Hannah: Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to encourage our listeners to go find a Kurdish movie. Perhaps not "Turtles Can Fly." Perhaps not that one. And maybe like really psych yourself up for I'm going to be sad at the end of this. Colleen: If it's a Kurdish film. I mean, it's almost for sure. Except for "Salaam Dunk." Hannah: Yes. Oh, there you go. That's our recommendation. Go watch "Salaam Dunk." Look for Colleen. Let us know where you find her. Send us a screenshot or something. Colleen: Yeah. Hannah: Yeah. And of course, as always, let us know what else you want to hear about in life in Iraq. We love hearing from you guys. Colleen: We do! Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Both: Thanks for listening.…
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