Iraqi Diary: Photo Essay – Faces from the North

An old man relaxing near the central open-air market in Erbil

An old man sells chaplets on a pavement

The road to Mossul

Despite the chaos in Iraq, there are some places like this where modern office-buildings are going to be built soon

A boy sells ice-cream in his family “Ice – cream shop” in the Arabic neibhorhood

Kurdish house in the Arabic neighborhood

The new and still empty flats in the new western-looking district in Erbil. An appartament here costs more then 100 000 US which is really expensive for domestic people. That is why this district is still unhabitated. 

The citadel of Erbil. The domestics believe that this is the longest inhabited city in human history. There is data for the city 8 000 years ago. 

Deserted street in the center of the city. In the weekends people prefer to stay at home.

For security reasons heavy concrete blocks like there ones surrounding the administrative buildings and hotels in the city  

When the evening comes, the people go out for a brief walk in the center.

An young man bikecycling in front of a building of Kurdistan Regional Government 

A man paints the wall next to the entrance of his house

A street in a remote district from the center of Erbil. Because of the lack of energy in the city, people use home made ”Energy supplies generators”. That’s why there are so many cables in the narrow street.   

Laundry in Erbil.

“Go out!”, says with his eyes that man

Faces from the North

Kids playing in front of the closed gold-shop in Erbil

Faces from the North

Faces from the North

Despite the fact Iraq is the second rich oil country in the world, the gasoline here is too much expensive. That is why, contraband gazoline, imported from Iran, is offered directly on the pavements under the burning sun.      

Adnan Mufti – chairman of 105-members Kurdistan Regional Assembly in his cabinet

Molla Mustafa Barzani, a historycal leader of the Kurdish resistance in Iraq and Iran. Today guardsman observe the Barzani’s full-length portrait in front of Kurdistan Regional Assembly

Students in the canteen of the University of Hawler

One of the most beautiful mosques in Iraq

New western-looking mall in the center of Erbil. To go in, you have to be checked for weapons more then twice. Taking pictures inside is absolutelly forbidden

The road to the border with Iran

A mountain village in Northern Iraq

Climbing to the Zagros mountains the nature is getting more and more green

Autopicture

Zagros

The “Tree of Wishes” in the village of Dara Bazmar. This tree is not like all the others trees that you know and the Muslims in the region avoid talking about it. There is no even a single leaf on its long branches, which stick up just like a sinister looking wizard’s fingers. The tree’s trunk is so dry that hordes of ants tightly cover its bark.

Village of Dara Bazmar

This tree is a ghost that makes people believe it has mysterious power pray to it. While I was taking pictures of the strange plant, my guide pointed at something I have not noticed before – there were thousands of rotten nails, stuck into the bark under the dense ant cloak.

 

“People used to come here, stood next to the tree and prayed to make their dreams come true. Every nail is one dream,” the guide explained to me. Soaked into so many human wishes, ambitions, dreams and pains, stabbed with so many nails, the plant died and nowadays its dry trunk stands alone along the road, abandoned from all those, who were praying to it not long ago.

Shepherd in Dara Bazmar

Myself with a soldier from the Kurdish special forces “Peshmerga”(“Those who stands against death”) in front of check-point in Northern Iraq