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To a Forbidden Land
by April Thompson
Excerpts:
I received myriad warnings about journeying to the Kurdish homeland. “Women WILL NOT feel comfortable traveling alone in southeastern Turkey, and even when traveling in groups, will receive much unwanted attention,” cautions a Let’s Go guidebook. Another book recommends against all travel to the region: “Because of the continuing Kurdish insurgency, we cannot recommend travel to Eastern Turkey. If kidnapped by the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party), you will be forced to subsist on a diet of raw snake and hedgehog.” One woman I met in Jordan told me the men follow foreign women into the bathrooms. Above all, the sources agree, never travel at night; that’s when the terrorists rule the roads . . .
. . . I hop on a bus from Antalya, a free-wheeling city on the Mediterranean, to Adiyaman, my entree into forbidden Kurdistan. I tell myself that if I discover there are wolves awaiting me, I’ll just grab the next bus back . . .
. . . . . . Many women are in purdah, the dark Muslim dress that bares only eyes. They are like moving cloth pillars as they negotiate the crowded corridors. Their gloves scrutinize bolts of fabric. Some carry baby girls whose tiny foreheads are already covered with pearly-beaded kerchiefs. Yet for every three in black, there is one bold young woman who dares to wear hip-huggers and plastic platform shoes.In the cay (tea) garden, rough-faced men in kuffiyehs (turbans) crouch on low wooden chairs shaped like Koran holders. My young friend pulls one out for me. After a few sideways glances, two men approach our table. Their wild white hair is bright against their bronzed faces. We sip down tea stronger than tobacco over games of dominoes and backgammon. They have Mehmet translate questions about my family, seeing that I seem to lack one. “You come here singular?” they ask incredulously . . .
