March 2, 2006
Suleimaniya
Portland Blogger Michael J. Totten is traveling around Iraq these days reporting on conditions he finds there. Not surprisingly, he finds conditions quite different than are being reported in the main-stream media. His latest entry is from the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya:The Utah of the Middle EastThree photos:
SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ – When I first saw the city of Suleimaniya, in Northern Iraq, during daylight I was startled. Out my hotel room window was a straight street, the first such street I had seen in almost half a year. That probably doesn’t sound like a big deal. And it isn’t. But it threw me for a second. There aren’t many right angles and straight lines in the East. Those few that exist are as striking as snow in the tropics for people like me who are used to disorienting and chaotic urban environments.
Suleimaniya isn’t North America even if it reminded me of home for a brief moment. And the only thing out my window that really looked Western was the straight street. Nothing else did. But the longer I stayed in the city the more like home I decided it was.
Iraqi Kurds build parks in residential areas filled with single-family homes, something completely unheard of in Beirut and Cairo where everyone lives in apartment towers and there is almost no green space at all. I prefer dense urban environments to suburbs, and I always have. But there was something oddly refreshing about the layout of Suleimaniya. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was the Utah of the Middle East.
I met an Kurdish Iraqi couple in Suli who lived for a while in the United States. Ras Rasool is a teacher. Her husband Shwan Zring is an engineer and a member of the Iraqi National Congress. They both came back to Iraq to help rebuild after Saddam’s regime was demolished. Utah was the first place they landed when they arrived in the States. They stayed there for seven months. When I said “Suli looks to me like the Utah of the Middle East” they both burst out laughing. “That’s exactly what we think as well,” Shwan said.
Utah (at least the urban part) bores me. And I get a kick out of Beirut (the Paris of the Middle East). But Suli is relaxing. Suli is calm. Suli is weirdly prosperous, tidy, and suburban considering which country it’s in.
Somewhere around 800,000 people live in the city today. Three years ago only half as many lived there. Like any city that undergoes rapid urban migration, most of the newcomers live on the outskirts. Unlike in most Third World cities, the people who live on the outskirts don’t live in shanties or slums. Their part of the city is actually more prosperous than the old urban core.
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