Arrival in Sulemaniya 07-04-08

Greetings friends and readers! This is the first of what I hope will be daily entries on my experiences teaching at the American Voices summer academy in Sule and Arbil, Iraq. This is for all my friends who have been asking for details on my experiences here and for anyone else who might be interested in impressions of Iraq from the perspective of a musician and teacher in Kurdistan. I have never kept a blog before, nor even read one, so I apologize for the violation of any blog conventions. Responses, questions and suggestions will always be welcome.

For those of you who don’t know the details, these are the circumstances of my employment here in Iraq for the summer. My old friend Marc Thayer, with whom I worked in the New World Symphony, sent out a general call for teachers to come work for the American Voices program here. Those of you who know my adventure urge won’t be surprised that I jumped at the idea of coming to work in such an unusual and important place. Although the call was generally for string and woodwind players I let Marc know that I would be interested in coming and that I felt my international experiences gave me something of a qualification for the work. Marc is nothing if not a doer—within hours of his conversation I was on the phone with John Ferguson, who runs the program from Bangkok, Thailand, and my summer plans were suddenly quite changed. My regular summer employer, the Colorado Music Festival, graciously allowed me a summer off, and I was good to go!

This trip started under perhaps a set of inauspicious circumstances. From my last goodbye to my mother under a crashing thunderstorm in Boston, to the absentminded (and typical) forgetting of my cellphone on the Fung Wah bus (they roll their eyes but they get your stuff back to you), to an irritating and undiagnosed medical ailment and stitches hanging out of my back… if I was a believer in signs I might have held off. But I’m not, and after an overnight at the Hotel Suze in NYC (thanks Suze for unflagging friendship, hospitality and life support in general!), I was ready for the journey to Iraq.

Believe it or not, there are regular commercial flights to Erbil, the nominal capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, on Austrian Air. I arrived at the airport neurotically early, as is my wont, but found myself standing next to a cellist in line at the check-in counter. This was James Nacy, another teacher at the academy. We struck up a conversation immediately and I was glad to have a colleague with me on the trip.

Austrian Air seems to specialize in flying to hotspots around the world. There were other people connecting to Erbil, but the majority of people on the flight, including my seatmate, were bound for Prstina, Kosovo. I felt less daring for flying to Erbil. Although there was also the woman boarding next to me who was bound for a bachelorette party in Innsbruck (ladies, if you have a bachelorette party in Innsbruck, I want in!). Oddly enough, she had studied at the JFK academy in Berlin and we realized that I had probably sung for her there when my youth chorus was on tour there in ‘94, my senior year of high school!

The flight to Vienna passed quickly. My years of trans-Pacific travel mean that a flight of less than 10 hours feels short. The Vienna airport was less than charming. In fact, it was downright disappointing. I’m ashamed to say that my first drink in Vienna was a blended juice frappucino from the airport Starbucks. 10 dollars! Strong Euro and weak dollar is rough. I also dropped by a dreadfully kitschy shop called (brace yourselves, purists) Mostly Mozart. And the sheet music that provided a background to the sign wasn’t even Mozart—it was a ragtime! However, I got to reactive my German and was pleased that it came in handy a couple times. I even had a couple brief translating moments. In Vienna, we met up with Marc Thayer and the drama teacher for the academy, Carol McAnn, who were arriving from St Louis and Houston respectively. Marc of course was an old friend. Carol McAnn is just exactly what you’d expect from a children’s drama teacher-- a bundle of enthusiasm and, well—drama. She decked herself out in red, white and blue sequins for the holiday.

Then there was the flight to Erbil. Most people on it were clearly ethnic Kurds, although many of them seemed to hold passports to various Scandinavian countries. One Danish Kurd standing next to James and me in line, became emotional when he saw that we were Americans. “Americans are all heroes” he insisted and he even began to cry a little. An interesting encounter for this Iraq-war skeptic. It turns out that he had left Iraq in 1992 as an illegal refugee and this was his first trip back since then. No wonder emotions were so strong. My seatmate on the flight became the first victim of my extremely limited Kurdish language skills. When he moved aside for me to sit down, I gave him a hearty “zor supas”—“thank you very much”! It got a big smile and we struck up a conversation. His English was limited but he was a Swedish citizen so we used both English and Swedish to chat. He was from Suleimaniya and reassured me that it was a much better city than Erbil. The Kurds are nothing if not nationally AND regionally proud. From my window seat I was able to see the city of Erbil as we circled for a landing. I’m looking forward to visiting it. The whole city is laid out in concentric circles around the “Citadel”—supposedly the longest continuously inhabited building in the world (some 6,000 years!).

The Erbil airport was tidy, small, and very quiet. The terminal was brand spanking new and very clean. Customs was slow but no particular problems. We were met by Michael, the dance instructor and assistant director for the program and with the aid of a small army of porters (we had sixteen crates of music, props, and costumes) we were loaded into a set of minivans for our caravan to Sulemaniya. I was told to board any of the five minivans, but when I clambered into the first one I discovered a lot of junk underfoot—it turned out to be AK 47’s! I was quickly told that was actually our security detail’s van and I ought to ride in a different one. Guns, and people carrying guns, are very common here. Having spent some time in Israel where the situation is similar, I didn’t find it as disconcerting as I might have.

The three hour drive to Sulemaniya was beautiful. A very scenic mountain drive over several passes. The scenery reminded me strongly of western Colorado or the Guadalupe mountains in west texas—dry, shrubby and eroded mountains. We made a brief stop in the town of Dukan in one of the valleys before arrival in Sulemaniya. There we settled into the Shahram hotel. I have a tiny and windowless room with a pistol on the wall. Bathrooms are Western style except that there is no separate shower stall—just a spigot mounted on the wall and drains in the floor. We had a mini-celebration of my birthday with delicious baklava and rosewater custard.

Tomorrow we visit the teaching site in preparation for the beginning of classes the next day.