VAN, Turkey - The adventures of life have led me to Kurdistan (a region of Eastern Turkey) and I have fallen in love with the Kurdish people and culture. I and five of my friends from the American University in Cairo traveled to Turkey for Eid (the feast after Ramadan). We landed in Ankara, rented a minivan and drove along the Black Sea and Turkish border with Armenia and Georgia, toward Diyarbakir, a city in Kurdistan, a region in Turkey.
Along the way, we visited the ancient Armenian capital in Ani, the ruins of Hattusas (a city settled by the Hatti in 2,500 BC) and the monastery of Sumela, which is carved out of the side of a towering cliff face. These sites were visually wonderful but in no way prepared us for the generosity and amazement we would find in Kurdistan.
From 1924 to the late 1990s, the Kurds in Turkey were banned from speaking their own language, having Kurdish schools and publications, and listening to or playing Kurdish music. They were not even called Kurds and instead dubbed Mountain Turks by the Turkish government. Thousands of Kurdish men, women and children were brutally killed over the last 80 years in the conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). After reading about the horrendous amounts of suffering the Kurdish people had endured, I had no idea what to expect. Little did I know of the lessons we would soon learn from the Kurdish people about the resilience of the human spirit.
On the way to Van, we took back roads through the mountains and stopped in a tiny Kurdish village in hope of finding a place to eat. The houses in the village had thatched straw roofs. The people depended on the cows and sheep they herded through the mountains for food. There was one water source from which animals and people drank. In some way everyone was related. As rural as the setting was, modernization had begun to show - satellite dishes perched on the straw roofs.
When we got out of the car, we were greeted by a young Kurdish girl named Sunag who spoke a few English words. We communicated to her in the little bit of Turkish we knew that we wanted tea. Before we knew it, all six of us were invited in to her home.
Can you imagine the hospitality of this family? We sat on mats on the dirt floor of Sunag's home and were offered tea along with eight different kinds of desert. The entire village piled into the living room to see us. Gorgeous little boys and girls huddled around us thrilled to have their pictures taken. The Kurdish women, aged with endless grace, kissed my friend Suzzanna and me and giggled like schoolgirls at the rarity of Americans in their village. The women wore colorful head scarves and were intrigued by my blond hair.
We ate sweet after sweet and soaked in the blissful harmony of the atmosphere. There are times in life when you know love exists because you feel it all around you. Sitting in this Kurdish home, in a rural village that has not changed for hundreds of years, we were engulfed by love. Though we could not communicate in words, we spoke volumes with our actions. After eating we played soccer with the kids and kissed everyone about a hundred times before we left. The impression the people of this village left on us was immeasurable and would only be enriched as our travels in Kurdistan continued.
After driving several hours through a snowstorm, we arrived in Van. The city of Van is nestled between snow-capped mountains and is home to Lake Van (the largest lake in Turkey). Though it was quite late, the six of us were not ready for bed and went out to see what nightlife was like in Kurdistan. We found a pub with a fantastic Kurdish band playing traditional music, and watched attractive young Kurds happily frolic to their traditional dances for hours.
Somewhere in the course of the dancing and music, it struck me why the Kurdish people made such a deep impact on me. Less than 10 years ago the region of Turkey we were traveling in was trapped in violence. Most of the Kurds we met had been tortured or had a family member killed. Though the worst of these times has passed and the Kurds now have freedom of expression, Kurdistan still has many scars, as unemployment is extremely high and education poor.
Despite this, the Kurdish people continue to live a life rich in culture and were still open to embrace us. Though I will leave Kurdistan physically, a part of me will remain. I want to know the Kurdish people, their culture and stories which are an example to us all of the resilience of the human spirit.
Rebecca Byerly, a junior in SIS, is studying for the year at the American University in Cairo. Jewel of the Nile runs intermittently on Mondays.
