Middle East - Anthony Ham [9]
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It Seems Ridiculous, But I’m Really Enjoying Iraq Tony Wheeler
In this condensed extract from his book Tony Wheeler’s Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil, Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler crosses the border from Turkey into Iraq. The year is 2006…
The border is a chaotic, muddy mess and it’s raining solidly again. Husni seems to know exactly which door to head for, which window to bang on, which queue to barge to the front of and exactly whom to bribe. I spot him slipping a note into my passport before he hands it over to one official. Nevertheless it takes over an hour of zigzagging from one ramshackle building to another before we make the short drive across the bridge that conveys us into Iraq.
Arriving in Iraq is like a doorway to heaven. Suddenly I’m sitting in a clean, dry, mud-free waiting room being served glasses of tea while we wait for the passports to be processed – Husni’s too. The officials decide to put me through hoops, however, and I have to spend 20 minutes explaining why I want to visit Iraq and what I do for a living. Finally they relent, hand my passport over, and welcome me to Iraq. I’ve already been welcomed by half a dozen Peshmerga soldiers, photographed with two of them and had a chat, in French, with one.
Husni drops me in a car park, and I take a taxi to Zakho to look at the town’s ancient bridge before continuing on to Dohuk for the night. As we drive in to the centre there are a surprising number of hotels. I take an instant liking to Dohuk. It’s bright, energetic and crowded and has lots of fruit-juice stands. I wander around the town, try out an internet café – it had such a tangle of wires leading in to the building, I concluded it had to be the centre of the World Wide Web – search inconclusively for Dohuk’s bit of decaying castle wall, look in various shops in the bazaar, check out the money-changing quarter (there are no ATMs that work and credit cards don’t function either) and take quite a few photographs. Everybody is very enthusiastic about being photographed, a sure sign that there aren’t many tourists around.
Erbil is a delight as well. A sign announces the Kurdish Textile Museum. Recently opened and very well presented, the museum displays an eclectic collection of carpets, kilims, saddle bags, baby carriers and other local crafts along with well-presented displays and information about the Kurdish people and nomadic tribes. Lolan Mustefa, who established the museum, is a mine of information on Erbil and the surrounding region. I’m enormously impressed that he has put so much effort into creating an excellent tourist attraction when Iraq today has so very few tourists.
From the museum I continue to the citadel’s mosque, visit the hammam (or bathhouse) and enjoy the view over the city from the citadel walls on the other side. Back down below the citadel walls I explore the bazaars, inspect the kilim shops, joke with the shoeshine guys, check the selection of papers on sale at the newsstands, photograph the photographers waiting for customers outside the citadel, snack on a kebab and drop in to a fruit-juice stand for an orange juice. It seems ridiculous, but I’m really enjoying Iraq.
What’s Changed? César Soriano
I retraced Tony’s steps in 2008 while researching this guidebook. Thankfully, the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing isn’t as chaotic anymore – it took less than 45 minutes to get from Silopi (Turkey) to Zakho, including customs and immigration processes (for information on the crossing, Click here). Like Tony, I took an instant liking to Dohuk; it’s a wonderfully addictive town with a youthful feel and growing tourism industry. Iraq is still a cash country, but some places, including Erbil’s Kurdish Textile Museum, now accept credit cards. ATMs are also popping up, but at the time of writing they only worked for Iraq-held accounts. In late 2006, the citizens of Erbil’s citadel