Both Vamen and Mohammed came with me to the border in a Taxi. They shut the shop and off we went, naturally we first stopped to pick up provisions at Mohammed's house, was informed that he had 3 kids and another one on the way, he was very proud.
Didn't take too long to get to the border, we swapped passport related stories, and stopped to get some "sand"(more like dust) to take back home from Iraq.
At the border Vamen helped me find a cross border taxi and get through immigration control, it was more of a process than getting in, partially because my friends this time weren't as familiar with the border system.
It more or less consisted of getting my passport photocopied, and handing it over to the immigration officer and waiting and guessing which window to go to next.
At that point we said our final goodbyes and off I went into the taxi which would take me across the border to Silope.
I shared the cab with the driver, a Turkish born Californian working in Baghdad(he turned out to be quite helpful), and two guys(who turned out to be rather interesting). They all went into the Duty free and came back with stuff 20 mins later, I hung out wrote my journal and watched people.
Border crossings are rather interesting places. They are the places where countries, cultures, governments and commerce all comes together. They are a place of business, they are a place of plight. Near most of the borders(except Israel) had lots of poor areas nearby, not sure why, but it seemed connected to the border crossing.
Questions are asked, answered, taxes paid, real security measures. All in all they are quite exciting, and a wonderful place to people watch. Or at the very least figure out who's undercover security, and their patrol patterns(don't tell Israel I did this).
After Immigration and Duty free we were off, to get in line to cross the bridge to get to the first Turkish Checkpoint. This bridge was narrow, two lanes(sometimes three), semi trucks on one side, cars on the other, and whoever was able to convince the Duty Officer they needed to jump the line going down the middle.
I was the only white guy around so the Californian, Mahmood, told me that the cab driver wanted to tell the border officials that I was a journalist doing a story on border crossings, then I was a travel editor for the Toronto Star, we went through about 4 different stories/lies and because of it we jumped 3 of the 4 lines that we had to wait in.
The first thing I did in Iraq was take a pee, the last thing I did in Iraq I took a pee, off the bridge, it was a good call, even with all the line cutting it still took 3 hours to get across the border. It was a long process that involved a pat down, X-Raying the spare tire, and inspecting the vehicle, but we eventually made it past the security checkpoints. Then on to customs.
At that moment I learned what the other two men did for a living, they were cigarette smugglers. I love cigarette smugglers, they are fun to watch, interesting to chat with, and extremely nervous.
The moment the army told us we could move along the smokes started getting put everywhere, spare tire compartment, under the trunk flooring, in the side panelling, under seats, in seats, in jackets, and under the dashboard. You name it, they put cigarettes there.
Customs started with little hope of a quick transit, the car in front had all their luggage out, inspectors more or less gutting the car. Fortunately one of the guys from the car had multiple bags, all filled to the brim with cookies, hundreds of packages of cookies. We bought some for the wait, which was a while.
Then it was our turn, we gave our passports over the 4 other passports were stamped without question, mine on the other had got rejected without question. That was not good. I needed to get back into Turkey, it wasn't an option, they were going to let me in, besides I already had an entry stamp to the country, and had only been Iraq for 4 days.
So we went to the Customs Duty Officer, he also rejected it, and instructed us to go to the passport office, and again first guy rejected it, but directed us to wait for his supervisor, who would have been a rather pretty Turkish girl if not for the stern look on her face, she looked like she could eat your face in one bite, not the kind of person you want to cross.
10 minutes of waiting led to me getting told to take better care of my passport(kind of looks like it's gone through the laundry) but they would let me in.
Off we went to Silope where Mahmood and I hopped in another cab to Cizre where we would both be catching the same Bus to the west.
Iraq was over, it was a fun time, but alas all good things must come to an end, Later on I will make a post with reflections on Iraq, and more observations that didn't make it into the posts on Iraq already.
Turkey once again lay before me, Gaziantep was to be the next stop, and my staging point for my journey into Syria. , with the experience of Iraq behind me I looked forward to the adventures which were to come.
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