Halabja, May 3 2021

On World Press Freedom Day (May 3) we visit Halabja, the southern town in Iraqi Kurdistan that was among the hardest hit in the anti-Kurd campaign waged by Saddam Hussein. Here in 1988 a large-scale gas attack claimed the lives of five thousand people and wiped out entire families. 

It was an impressive visit. The analytical part of my brain, which can get foggy with wisps of polemology and the sanitized language that the history-pages often reserve for the agents and events of war - and certainly its victims -, is jolted by place-encounters like this. To see a city that must contend, day in and day out, with the worst turmoils from its own past, makes you marvel about the stuff people’s backbones are made of. The horrors of 1988 were irrevocably memorialized in news images, such as the photo known as the ‘Silent Witness’: a father cradling his young baby. Their bodies were documented where they had laid in the street, two figures huddled together. 

Statues depicting that same scene have been erected throughout Halabja. One such statue is also at its Peace Museum, a commanding building situated on the edge of the city. A small rotunda park is lined with the bottom halves of the gas bombs that came down on the city over three decades ago, which have been repurposed as planters. Placed slightly askew of the main entrance stands another figure: a more than life-sized press photographer, wearing a vest and backpack and holding his camera at the ready. “It is our way of saying Thank you, of showing respect to the people who came to Halabja when they heard, and told the world our story”, said the museum director during a tour. 

He himself was nine years old in 1988 and he lost his father and a brother. To hear him say this, makes it sound like some lucky statistic. He called himself no other from “almost everyone in Halabja, and certainly my staff. Out of 30, we have all been affected. It is those who have no-one left, who are the sole survivors of their families, that stand out in this pain. They are different from us.” 

All the victims’ names are inscribed in a round central room in the museum. The architecture features a prominent sixteen-spoke wheel around a central flag stand, raised three meters high. Taken together these dimensions indicate the date of 16 March, the fateful day that no inhabitant of Halabja actually needs a reminder for. 

Other halls contain the thousands of pages of paperwork that were needed to have the Al-Anfal attack be enshrined as a court case and a genocide dossier. Experts of archival forensics even managed to unearth the Saddam-era army decrees that ordered the bombardments. 

There are photographs everywhere in the museum. Some of them are duo-portraits, containing the resilient resurgence of several young children then, who have managed to at least grow up. But there are more photos that show the panic of those days, the devastation to people, their animals and possessions alike - mangled, burned, left where they fell and crumpled. Several inhabitants tried to make it to a local creek, to wash their clothes and get rid of the mixed agents of sarin and mustard. The horrendous chemical cocktail could not be washed off quick enough. As the gas expanded, it filled the air in the valley - one would have had to get to higher ground quickly, to escape up in the mountains. Some who tried were killed in their laden trucks, which in turn were left rudderless and fell silent, or were damaged in the ongoing air attack. 

“People died as and while those who they loved, died”, said the museum director. As people died as people died. “You know, the museum is an important place, and equally useless. Those thirty people staff explaining the displays in these rooms, they are telling the events that were forced onto them. They know that which the visitors only see in the photos. You might be looking at their people.” 

Like the journalists who came when Halabja was considered news, the director agrees that the telling is necessary. The museum must instill into new generations a understanding of what occurred here, he says, as we stand looking at the bundle of flags raised in the shrine-like auditorium. “But you know, to whoever already remembers it from their own past, this is actually more like peering into an open grave. That’s not always a good thing.” 

The Hotel That Wasn’t - Halabja, May 3 2021

Halabja is the fourth biggest city of Kurdistan, with some 80.000 people. And yet, when the car drives into its bustling main roads, hotel (signs) seem to be missing from the streetview. Accomodation is not our biggest concern here, because we’re planning on crashing with some of Haval’s acquaintances and we shouldn’t be staying stationary in the city for too long, anyway. But it does strike us as odd: where do visitors stay, if they happen upon Halabja or are just passing through? 

The answer that would be given here, is told to us in the taxi: “Who needs a hotel? People should come to stay with the inhabitants. It would be bad hospitality if we let people stay in such a sterile place.”

It gets better - rumour has it that some hot shot, or maybe it was a misguided government official, tried to start a hotel in Halabja. It was built as a multiple-story building full of rooms...and left empty. Out of use. Abandoned. The Halabja Hotel Wasn’t - or at least, it was considered an insult to Kurdish norms and society’s expectations. “One doesn’t hide away strangers, visitors. They must be welcomed. They should be at home, with us.”

We decide to check it out. The small front garden is a little dry, the mirrored windows dusty. A small shack at the front of the premises would usually serve as a hide-out for the guard, and there is a small shack for a convenience store that might sell liquor to guests.

There turns out to be one manager, after all - Zaid, a Syian refugee who just started. Two rooms are occupied.

Berivans’ progress (and Sports in Halabja) - Halabja, May 3-4 2021

Halabja is situated in the very south of the region, and very close to the Iran border. On an evening in May, we see their cars snake their way through the concrete mass, yellow street lights and head lamps creeping up and down, slowly. The city’s main traffic ways have congested as commuters return home, families travelling to meet each other for a meal. We observe the scene from the foothills that cradle the city.

“This is a favorite spot of mine”, Rhozan Jalal tells us. He has driven us up, the windows rolled down to let the rich night air in. “Before I was married I would come up here to think about things - about life, our plans. It’s a stimulating sight to me: you know, the headlights remind me of the end of a lighted cigarette. It can bring me peace of mind to have a smoke, and seeing those coloured dots, it’s almost like I can visualize the caffeine coursing through me.”  Above us, stars shine. 

By now, Rhozan is married to Berivan, a futstal sensation and a top tier football player. A slight, fit woman, her slight figure relaxes as she listens to Rhozan speak. We joke he no longer has a need for his venture up the hillside for some soul-searching, that she’s already said yes. The way these two people look at each other, there is no other answer than that between them. 

The position of a women’s football icon, however, is less of an evident venture in Kurdistan. “Not easy”, as Berivan (26) states. And yet, she made the Iraqi national team for the indoor sport three years ago. Berivan is the type of calm player, that can turn her team’s mediocre moments into a splitting cross with one deft movement. On and off the field, she talks with her hands: an outstretched palm to keep everyone attuned, a flick of the wrist to express a slight irritation or adjust the direction of the conversation. When she feels that her partner is hitting the target, a thumb and index finger go up.

The marriage to Rhozan really is the only exception to Berivan’s lifetime dedication to sports. “It’s the thing that keeps my mind off of other things”, she says, referring to her husband’s spells of contemplation. In Halabja, with its near-overwhelming history of loss and tragedy, being able to bring distraction, something new to care and strive for is an important goal for the couple. 

In their house, where sleeping mats are prepared for us in the living room, a large cabinet dominates the dining room. It’s full of trophies, team pictures, medals: “I keep it, because it is all important. I’ve always wanted to be a professional athlete. Seeing all the small steps in-between remind me to keep going, to progress. That is all positive change”, she says.

By now, she couldn’t span the treasure trove set-up to hold te evidence of that personal progress with her arms. Her father has has to erect another trophy case at his house, they laugh. There’s even her very first jersey, a silvery shirt that’s become soft with age. She’s lost the shorts, she says regretfully - it’s the only team uniform she cannot wear for a series of headshots that Daniel takes.