Travelling amongst the Yazidis

After we stop travelling and settle down for a little while, we carry around all the memories and stories, and we have to restrain ourselves from starting every sentence with 'Y'know, when I was in...'. But aside from the past, we also start to worry about what's happening in those countries right now.

At the time of writing, there are thousands of refugees scraping survival off the side of a mountain in Sinjar province in Northern Iraq. These are the people of the Yazidi religion. These are innocents fleeing and dying in the face of persecutors utilising a so-called banner of God. These are human beings, harried, raped and crucified by soulless and vicious bastards. I wonder if these are people that I have met.

In March 2010 I travelled through the Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR) of Iraq; I wrote about it in these pages at the time.  Even in 2010 it was nigh on impossible to go into the ‘Arab’ parts of Iraq, so I never got anywhere near the sites of these atrocities. At the time of writing, the U.S. and France is sending military aid to the Kurds and the UK is open to the possibility. Geopolitics is not my game and we all know what often happens when we arm groups to counter current threats, but the relative stability of Iraqi Kurdistan is something worth fighting for.

There is a shrine in the KAR called Lalish. It is the spot where it is believed that the most venerated figure in the Yazidi religion, Melek Taus, descended to Earth. It is a series of shrines and tombs nestled in a cool, green valley and it is a focus of faith, pilgrimage, and community. Families from the surrounding villages, the KAR, all over Northern Iraq, and from the small global diaspora, go there to pray and play and picnic. I really enjoyed my short time there; it was interesting and peaceful and fun and, more than anything, it was just lovely. The men smoked, laughed and complained. The teenagers posed and strode about, flashed mobiles and spoke loudly. Kids ran about the paths and bushes, cackling in their games as their mothers bellowed at them and cleaned them while chatting and laughing on the blankets. Outside the entrance to the shrines, peacocks (being holy to the Yazidi, as Melek Taus resembled their form) strutted around their pens ignoring all the clapping and cooing children. The entrance to the shrine is marked by a wooden black snake running up one side of the door and it is forbidden to step on the threshold of the entrance. The shrine is functionally a series of caves and pools that has been worked on and stabilised for at least a thousand years. The smooth and worn stones are always slick and it is easy to lose your footing. The smell is thick, damp and musty. It is not as grand as St. Peter's Square or the Western Wall or the Great Mosque of Mecca, but it is intimate and natural and if meaning can be found in those places, it can certainly be found here.

Me and some travel buddies had caught a lift to the nearest town to the shrine where we had been taken in for the night by some friendly lads. They gave us fruit and Danish beer and we had a fun night talking and laughing. They drove us to the shrine, waited for us, took us to meet the Baba Sheikh (the Yazidi religious leader), and then drove us to a town on the Turkish border. We thanked them and said goodbye and said we'd keep in touch. We didn't. At least I didn't. Are they dead? Are they still there, those young lads and their families? The children scampering around the hills: where are they? I don't know if the wailing faces of petrified infants that I see on the news were babes in arms in Lalish on that pretty March day.

On the same trip in 2010, I came across the Turkish border heading straight for Aleppo. The first thing that struck me about the dictatorship was all the posters extolling the virtues of Assad. I expect that many have been ripped down and many have been replaced by shiny political reinforcements in the neverending battle to control hearts and minds. I bought rosewater hookah tobacco for a friend in the Aleppo souk. It was one of the first and greatest treasures to be razed away from the occupying rebels by the government forces. All those spices, fruits, kitchen parts, oils, perfumes, watches, knives and lines of tinsel and masks lying under the Unesco protected rubble. I spent a few dusk hours listening to a classical youth orchestra in the Aleppo citadel. The holdfast stood in the heart of the city, strong against crusaders, colonists and peasants. A few shells made short work of the great stone door. All those arrow slits looking out over the ancient city were used by government snipers as they picked off careless rebels and civilians.

Away from the cities, some of the happiest memories of my life are exploring and scrambling around two Syrian crusader castles. Krak des Chevaliers is the more famous and the better maintained. High atop a range of hills, the walls are a sun-bleached statement of defiance that were impregnable for years and only broken by siege and surrender. Smoke rose over the Krak in 2012 and our best understanding is that a wall and a tower have been ripped down. I loved Qal'at Salah al-Din even more, spending hours tiptoeing along ramparts, rummaging in the undergrowth and climbing up broken towers, totally unsupervised and undisturbed by unconcerned and sun-shy guards. It was some of the most fun I've had in my adult life. Who knows. Perhaps the damage it has sustained from shells and mortars and prolonged gun battles adds to the atmosphere.

In four months in the Middle East, the best kebab I've ever had was in Damascus. I spent one evening bar hopping in the very cool Damascene Christian Quarter with some folk from the hostel. We got chatting to two Kurds in a small park and we mentioned that it was one of our birthdays. They disappeared and turned up half an hour later with two slabs of Efes beer and a birthday cake. The Christian quarter endured unscathed under the professed multi-faith protection of the government, but has since fallen victim to suicide bombs. Another Christian community as old as any in Europe is conducting an exodus. Time, more recent travels, and literal distance inevitably separates us from reports of atrocities in places that deeply affected us. Lalish is worth saving and worth visiting. The castles, mosques, monasteries and bars of Syria are worth saving and worth visiting. Every person I spoke to there is worth remembering and worrying about. I can't truly grieve for every place in turmoil that I've ever been to. But there are places that have changed me that have been grievously hurt. And I will return when I can. Because the experience is worth the grief.