Mahmoud was from Cizre and thus had lots of relatives nearby, once we arrived at the Cizre Autogar we immediately were whisked away to a restaurant owned by his cousins. Discussing politics local and global, religion, power outages, car bombings outside his office in Baghdad and how awesome the tea is in the Middle East.
I tried to pay for my portion of the meal, he refused,
After the meal he showed me around town, it was dark so I didn't actually see much, but he did take me to Noah's tomb. Yes, the guy with the ark, which incidentally landed on a mountain within sight of the town but as it was dark and raining we couldn't see it.
I found this connection with not only religious books, but connection to the beginnings of permanent settlement and the beginning of civilization. Cizre is the origin of Mesopotamia, it has basically been around forever, and given that they can lay claim to be the spot where Noah landed, and that nobody cares enough to contest it, I think it's a pretty credible claim to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth.
Anyhow after seeing Noah's tomb, his mosque and a few other tidbits around the town I went back to the Autogar to wait, and Mahmoud went to visit more family.
I read, wrote in my journal and copied some addresses down for postcards and finding hotels, basically housekeeping. Got offered tea a half dozen times, and eventually went to find a place to pee. When I came back I went to buy a chocolate bar, and as I was exiting the store I got stopped by a few people my age. They wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing, and so on.
Just like so many other Kurds these guys were really friendly, genuinely curious about Canada and me. They were also really keen on telling me as much about Kurdish Turkey as possible, telling me about their schools and governments, about the mosques in the area. All this conversation made use of my phrasebook and English-Turkish dictionary, they would say some things, if I didn't know what a word or two was we'd look it up, and vice versa.
At this point came the offers of Tea and a cigarette, which I obliged them and we sat down for a bit, and one of the guys runs off for a bit, when he came back he had what appeared to be a rather large hand-rolled cigarette, they offered me some, I asked what it was. They said, "good stuff", again I asked what it was, they said "good stuff" and made some sounds and made actions for someone being high, I asked if it was Hash and they immediately perked up, saying lots of things at me that I didn't understand to describe Hash, they offered and much like cigarettes and tea, when offered pretty much anything of this nature, you must accept, so I took a few puffs and let them share the most of it.
We eventually got to a point the conversation where they didn't know a word, they implied it was a negative aspect of Kurdish Turkey, and eventually found a surrogate phrase: In Turkey, Kurds have no Civil Rights.
That sort of hit me, these guys, all Kurds as a matter of fact, so friendly, welcome, sharing and on and on, and yet, the world still hates them. Wherever they go in a land they've lived in for thousands of years they are hated, I can't imagine what it must be like to live there your whole life. Not just in poverty, but in a state where your own government disagrees over your existence.
Alas the bus eventually came and Mahmoud and I entered the bus to Gaziantep. He and I chatted a while about lots more stuff, and I think I may have made an impression on him on handguns and the sole reason they exist is to hunt people.
Our trip was frequently stopped by military checkpoints, which usually consisted of a military guy getting on the bus collecting all IDs (except mine, evidently the PKK doesn't travel on a Canadian Passport) taking them off the bus coming back and then send us on our way. A few times however they came back on and ordered certain people off the bus, they usually got back on the bus pretty quick, although one stop lasted half and hour. Other times they came on the bus and told us our baggage was being looked through. One time they had a bunch of questions for me about my travels, but far less intense than any Customs screening so I wasn't worried.
All in all there were more military checkpoints on this 9 hour trip than 4 days in Iraq.
At about 2am the bus stopped for a break at a rest stop, but me being someone who doesn't like paying to use a toilet that requires payment, especially just to pee, I went off to find somewhere around a corner to pee for free. This plan backfired when jumping down a wall and around the corner I got chased by dogs, it was frightening, but I made it back up the wall before the dogs got to me.
Not learning my lesson I immediately went off in the opposite direction for the same purpose, this time however turning down an allyway and almost stepping on a sleeping dog, who although was chained up, did not appreciate being woken up, he was angry with me. Just puts truth to the phrase let a sleeping dog lie.
Back on the bus for another 2 hours until 4am when the bus stopped in Gaziantep. Where I hopped in a cab that took me and 2 others to the downtown. So 4am in Turkey is not the best time to be trying to find your hotel, and as it turns out I never did find the hotel I was looking for. Eventually after wandering around for almost and hour I did in fact find a hotel that was open, it was a bit fancier than I was initially looking for and a bit pricier, but nothing beats a hotel that is open, warm running water and a sit down toilet.
Never underestimate the worth of warm running water and a sit down toilet, never.
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