Duhok Dam, Duhok, Iraq. November 2019
Duhok is a walkable city. Five years in Abha, Saudi Arabia made me appreciate any city that could be easily walked. The ring road around the downtown of Abha might as well have been the Great Wall of China. I never once walked around the downtown except if driven there for a specific purpose. Walks in Abha were almost always out of town in the desert {See: Desert Walks}. In Duhok, even the highway near my apartment had a sidewalk and I deeply appreciated it. I explored far more of Duhok in two years than I had Abha in five. Some of my walks in Duhok were solo, but quite a few were with friends and, among those who joined me, WMF was always the best companion.
In the Middle East I coined the the phrase "the three B's" - barista, barber. bartender. These people had the power to render my day good or bad. Who does not like their favorite coffee made automatically upon walking in a coffee shop? Who does not like a barber who cuts hair to exact requirements every time without asking? Who does not like a bartender cum confessor who listens and lubricates the mind with drink, ever mindful of the tipping point into true drunkenness? If the three B's were in order, my day had a chance of being positive.
WMF, my bartender, worked hard and worked late. Imagine the sacrifice getting up early the one day of the week, Friday, where work was a half day only. He insisted on doing it though, perhaps fearing that he would become a complete creature of the night that no longer knew the midday sun. Most often we met at a coffee shop. By this time I knew a handful of places that were open on Friday mornings {See: Friday morning coffee}. We sat and chatted and then took a long walk through the empty Friday streets of Duhok. Sometimes we would stop for lunch and sometimes just for another coffee, but the important thing was the walking and the talking.
Many of the walks ended down by the Duhok Dam, a "fallen on hard times" amusement area below the towering dam that blocked the rock cleft in the mountains just above the city. Duhok Dam, or "Gali" (Kurdish: river), is the entertainment focal point of the city, so it was natural that we would walk there often. In spite of it being overbuilt and over-loved, it can still be a lovely place filled with ridiculous leftovers of past beautification projects like massive mosaic-tiled cement benches along a busy road. Who would ever want to sit so uncomfortably close to cars careening by? The biggest joke for WMF and me was Duhok Dam itself. When he would gripe about being "stuck in Iraq forever", I would say, "At least you have Duhok Dam" and we would both laugh hard. It wasn't such a terrible place, but it was the ONLY such place in Duhok. I reflected back on Camus' La Peste and thought of the citizens of Oran quarantined in a small city who watched the same film over and over again at their only movie theatre.
If we are lucky, we will meet people who shake our world view. That is one of the best parts of travel and living abroad for me. WMF did that for me in abundance. On our walks he talked about his life, his family, and their moves all over the Middle East in search of a better future. Before 25 he had experienced more life than most people have before 75. I was constantly in awe of his resilience and his kernel of hope that things somehow would get better. At times, he made me shed a tear. He would admonish me and say "I am not going to tell you stuff if you keep doing that". Stories of hardship are moving in a novel, in a movie, or on the TV news, but how if they are heard from a good friend as direct experience? It is hard not to react viscerally. To his credit, WMF just hated to see me sad, so he often refrained from recounting too much bad stuff at one time. Only after many long walks did I know his whole story.
Remembering that mosaic bench makes me think of WMF and how "wonderful" Duhok Dam was supposed to be. I cling to the hope that, unlike the citizens of Oran, he might one day escape Duhok and find a better life. Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill - "When You Believe". Prince of Egypt, an animated story as colorful as the bench.