Zakho: Pira Delal

Pira Delal, Zakho, Iraq. November 2018

Bridges and History

A few months after arriving in Duhok, my boss, Khedir Ramazan, drove my Pakistani colleague, UB, and me to Zakho, on the border with Turkey. I had already taken a few weekend drives around with Khedir [see: Duhok teahouse overlook] and suggested he invite UB to make him feel more included. UB was having a difficult transition to Duhok after living in Saudi Arabia, so I thought that inviting him might take his mind off his frustrations. Additionally, I had covered every polite topic with my boss on earlier trips. I needed a break, too.

Zakho is the only Iraqi border town with Turkey. Hence, all Turkish goods are squeezed into Zakho and onward like they are passing through a great funnel. The queue of trucks on the Turkish side stretches for DAYS! Duhok is dominated by Turkish goods - even the Chinese imports come via Turkey. A nonstop flow of containers plies the highway from Zakho to Duhok to Mosul to Baghdad. Money is to be made and most of my wealthy students' families make their fortunes from this border crossing, both over and under the table. Zakho also sits under the towering Zagros mountains and the nearby Hezil Suyu River makes for the border. It is a much more dramatic situation than Duhok with snowcapped mountains on the Turkish side for most of the year. Zakho's main tourist attraction is the ancient bridge, Pira Delal.

The bridge is beautiful. It was built under the reign of the Abbasids (when the Islamic capital was in Baghdad) on earlier Roman foundations and crosses the Little Khabur River that flows through Zakho City. No one really knows exactly how old the present bridge is, but somewhere around 500 years. A legend is told about the building of the bridge and it has become an iconic Kurdish cultural artifact. Even the builder is unknown, but certainly the territory has been historically Kurdish for centuries. There were a lot of people visiting on that sunny weekend day. Most hilarious is the HUGE billboard next to the bridge which shows an almost life-sized photo of -- the bridge! Standing on the bridge gives a view of a huge photo of the bridge itself. Khedir laughed, but you could tell he was embarrassed by the ridiculousness of it all. Khedir, UB, and I discussed at length what on earth anyone was thinking by putting that billboard there, as opposed to the highway leading to Zakho? Maybe if people visited on a rainy day, they wondered how it looked in the sunshine?

The river flowing under the bridge is small and rocky, but directly under, between two large rocks, lies a deep hole into which young men dive from the peak of the bridge in good weather. Some of my students claimed to have done it. I wondered how many people might have missed the mark? Tea houses line the banks of the river with tables out on the rocky ledges. For Kurdistan, Iraq - it is tastefully done and restrained. Kurds do have a tendency to "overlove" their famous places. We walked across the bridge, took photos, had some tea in one of the teahouses to enjoy the view, and went for lunch. My students were all delighted the next day when I told them I had visited the bridge.

The bridge LEGEND far exceeds the visit. Mukashi, mukashi (Japanese: "Once upon a time") there was a bridgebuilder who made a fabulous bridge across the Tigris for the Prince of Bohtan (a legendary Kurdish state). So wonderful was this bridge that the prince paid him and then cut off one of his hands so he could not make another bridge. Undeterred, our hero bridgebuilder answered the call by the mayor of Zakho to build another bridge (still in the kingdom of the guy who cut off his hand!!). Unfortunately, the center arch kept falling down and he became depressed. As people are wont to do, he chatted with a local soothsayer who told him that he should return to the bridge and then bury directly under it the first living thing that crosses. In a stroke of very bad luck, his daughter, Delal, and her dog were out near the bridge. The man at first was certain the dog would run onto the bridge, but alas it was Delal. He was wracked with grief and explained the situation to her. Being a good daughter (!!) Delal said, "Just bury me, Dad, and finish the bridge". Well, he did and the bridge stood firm. His son-in-law later arrived and heard the tale and started to dig under the bridge for his wife. Delal called out to him and said that he was hurting her and he must stop. In death, Delal was reaching across the bridge holding it together in perpetuity. The End. In the vernacular: that is some dark shit. What on earth is this legend teaching people??

Bohtan actually was a place, now in modern day Turkey (Sirnak Province) not far from Zakho. A Kurdish principality under the Ottomans, it was for a brief period safe and prosperous. So much so that the Emir of Mosul complained to the Sultan in Istanbul that his subjects were all moving to Bohtan due to its ridiculous level of safety and prosperity. He demanded the Prince of Bohtan force these people to return to Mosul. The Ottomans used a system of "millets" to govern. A millet was a region with a local (usually religious) leader who was tasked with collecting taxes for Istanbul and keeping the peace; however, the Ottomans really had no interest in local affairs and left all local laws and customs in place. As long as a ruler never got too full of himself and challenged the Sultan in Istanbul directly, a millet was free to do as it pleased. Kurds are often their own worst enemies. The Prince of Bohtan's local success went to his head and he challenged the Sultan in Istanbul. Let's just say, it did not end well and the state of Bohtan came to an end.

One other historical side note is that Jezirah ( modern: Cizre), Bohtan was one of the main centers of Yazidism along with Sinjar (in Syria) and Shekhan (in Iraq near Duhok). The Yazidi Kurds of Jezirah retained their identity up until the modern age. These days there are very few left in Cizre and after ISIS very few left in Sinjar as well. If Kurds have been unlucky in history, Kurdish Yazidis have been devastated by it. Yazidis have a long history of persecution since none of the other religions in the region considered them "true believers".

I never returned to Delal Bridge, but the legend stuck with me. Folktales are usually moralistic or give some kind of warning. The story of Pira Dela was lost on me. I wondered what modern Kurdish women made of it?