I am a Middle Eastern cigarette smuggler

At the Iraq-Turkey border - Saturday, Oct. 25

I left Iraq this morning, crossing into Turkey via the busy Ibrahim Khalil crossing that is landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan's main lifeline to the outside world (see lineup of trucks at left).

I left Zakho, a dusty border town, and ascended into the jagged mountains of southeastern Anatolia in a Turkish taxi, a white Ford Focus driven by a gruff man named Kemal. It would cost me $150, he said, for the four-plus hour drive between the predominantly from Zakho to Diyarbakir in Turkey.

With his bald skull, and shiny black shirt tucked into shiny grey slacks, Kemal looked like an extra on some Turkish version of the Sopranos. Not Paulie or Silvio, mind you, but one of those anonymous thugs they sent out to rough up the guys who inadvertently picked up the trash on one of Tony's routes.

That's just me stereotyping of course. Or at least it was until Kemal pulled me aside at the border crossing and showed me a black garbage bag stuffed with several cartons of Gauloises cigarettes.

"For you," he told me with a please-understand-this-or-we're-both-in-trouble look in his eyes. "Not for driver."

I got the message. If anyone asked, I smoke six packs a day (despite my asthma) and came to Iraq for the cut-rate ciggies. Got it.

Thankfully, the question never came up, and Kemal, the Gauloises and I glided through to the land of Ataturk. A Kurdish guard on the Iraqi side, however, did have some queries about my passport.

"Kanada?" he said, eyebrows raised.

"Canada."

"America?"

"No, Canada."

"Like Montana?" (For some reason, it's the U.S. state best known in these parts.)

"No, different country."

"Like Kurdistan and Iraq?" (This gave me pause. Perhaps we are indeed only semi-autonomous in the Stephen Harper era. But my patriotism was by now in full roar.)

"No, like Jordan and Iraq."

The guard furrowed his brow. Canada being an entirely separate entity didn't quite sound right to him, but he obviously he didn't want to insult me either. He offered a compromise.

"Maybe like Kuwait?" he said, referring to the tiny Gulf state that Saddam Hussein always claimed was a renegade Iraqi province.

I took the offered olive branch. After all, the world had driven Saddam out of Kuwait when he invaded back in 1991. Not a bad precedent to establish for that inevitable day the Americans come seeking revenge for the War of 1812 and Celine Dion.

"Like Kuwait," I agreed.

Travel advisory

Zakho, Iraq - Saturday, Oct. 25

Travel advisory/Public service announcement: If you ever have the odd fortune to need to spend a night in the town of Zakho, Iraq, do avoid my residence of last night, the Sipan Hotel.

The toilets don't work, every drain is clogged with human hair and the walls are covered with bug carcasses. The only thing missing was the chalk outlines of dead bodies on the floor. But that's probably just sloppy Iraqi police work.

Iraq blackout

Zakho, Iraq - Friday, Oct. 24

In a fitting end to my latest spin through Iraq, the power has been out for the past half hour here in Zakho. Sitting in the dark is part of life in the new Iraq. (Thank Ataturk that I'm now close enough to the Turkish border to get Blackberry service...)

While the security situation in the country deservedly gets most of the attention, the lack of basic services here is an under-reported crisis. Power outages are a regular occurrence in Baghdad, as well as here in the relatively stable north of the country.

The electricity in Zakho comes on only after 5 p.m. each day. It's supposed to stay on until 9 a.m., but there have already been two cuts in the first six hours of that stretch.

It's not just the electricity. Tap water remains undrinkable across Iraq and, judging by the state of my stomach, the recent cholera outbreak in the country may be more widespread than has been reported so far.

Back in 2003, shortly after a wild-bearded Saddam Hussein was discovered in his spider-hole north of Baghdad, I went to a power plant in the capital to ask why electricty was in such short supply. The manager was short on answers, and embarassed to admit that despite the UN sanctions back then, the situation was better in Saddam's time. He blamed insurgent attacks on the infrastructure.

I wonder what he'd say now. Because no matter how many U.S. soldiers leave or stay in Iraq, this oil-rich country won't be able to move on in the dark.

Quote of the week

"George Bush is our friend now. He is adopting Communist solutions to the financial crisis."

- Rahman Gharib, journalist with the Communist Party of Kurdistan.

In this car, we drink Coke, listen to Nancy and despair for the future

By car from Irbil to Zakho, Iraq – Friday, Oct. 24

Perhaps the greatest debate gripping the Middle East has nothing to do with either the future of Iraq or the Israel-Palestine peace process. What really gets the locals agitated is a discussion of the comparative merits of the two pop vixens of the Arab world. Think Britney versus Christina, without the K-Fed subplot and the public breakdowns.


Nancy Ajram (the one on the left in the pic) is a 25-year-old pouty-lipped Lebanese singer who has won acclaim as the Madonna of the Arab world after a string of hit singles dating back seven years as well as racy (for this region) music videos. Her climb to fame accelerated a few years back when she became the Middle Eastern face of Coca-Cola. She sings and shimmies in almost every Coke ad broadcast on television in this region, and her face appears on every can.

Nancy's nemesis is Haifa Wehbe, also from Lebanon, who became a sensation by out-sexing her rival on satellite music channels, triggering a series scandals in the Arab that have been exacerbated by the fact Haifa is Shia Muslim (unlike Nancy, who is Maronite Christian). In one notorious clip, Haifa appeared in a wet red bathing suit that clung revealingly to her curvaceous form. The 32-year-old's saucy image provoked the Islamist-dominated parliament of Bahrain to pass a motion earlier this year calling for her concert in the country to be cancelled.

Her rivalry with Nancy is such that Haifa has been made the aluminum face of Pepsi, meaning the two stars stare lustily at each other inside convenience store refrigerators around the region.

"Nancy can sing, Haifa's just a body," Sherzad, my cheerful translator offered when I asked which side of the great divide he fell on. There's some truth to that – Nancy shot to fame after singing in and winning a televised talent show. Haifa's big break was being named runner up in the Miss Lebanon contest and then being selected by People Magazine as one of the world's 50 most beautiful people.

To be fair, Sherzad isn't really Haifa's type. She's made it clear she's not into nice guys like him, having made headlines in recent years by performing with rapper 50 Cent and endorsing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah following the 2006 war with Israel.

Nancy, meanwhile, stands on the other side of the great Lebanese divide (one that reflects the split across the entire Middle East) having written a song mourning the 2005 murder of the country's popular former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, and endorsing Lebanon's pro-Western "Cedar Revolution." Much more Sherzad's type, frankly.

So we listened to Nancy Ajram as we plunged westward through Iraqi Kurdistan, heading for the Turkish border. But my impending departure was making Sherzad morose, despite the upbeat pop coming from the car stereo.

“You're lucky. You get to leave tomorrow. We have to stay here,” he moaned. “Maybe God will punish me when I die for not having done anything with my life.”

I told him that I hoped to come back in five years time and to see him happy, perhaps in an independent Kurdistan.

“That needs to happen,” he said. “Either we separate from Baghdad, or there will be civil war with the Kurds fighting the Sunnis and Shiites.”

I had no retort. We drove in silence for the next while, listening as Nancy cheerfully sing of love and hope.

Pricetags

By car from Irbil to Zakho, Iraq – Friday, Oct. 24

The question came naturally as our car approached a fork in the road during the drive today from Irbil to Zakho. If we took the left turn, we would be in Mosul, arguably the most violent city in Iraq. Happily, we veered to the right.

"How much do you guys think I'm worth?" I asked as our blue Chevy Neon crossed the Great Zab River, a tributary of the Tigris. Kidnappings are common in Mosul, and a Western journalist would presumably be a lucrative target.

My companions, Miran, the car's driver, and Sherzad, a translator I'd hired to accompany me on my trip through Northern Iraq, laughed uproariously. "I say $200,000," offered Sherzad. Though he doesn't have a mean bone in his body, the speed of his response suggested he'd previously turned the question over in his head.

I was insulted. A paltry $200,000 seemed like nothing compared to the rumoured sums other kidnappees had fetched. Especially with the way the dollar has fallen lately. You can barely buy a foreclosed house in Detroit these days with 200 grand.

"Don't worry Mark, I think you're worth a lot more," Miran said with a laugh that was probably meant to be reassuring.

Iraq's only tourist

Irbil, Iraq - Thursday, Oct. 23

I spent today wandering around the semi-restored remains of the Irbil citadel, a UNESCO world heritage site that overlooks the modern city from atop a hill in the centre of town.

Obviously once majestic – parts of it are believed to date back to the 6th Century B.C., making Irbil one of the oldest human settlements in the world – the vast citadel is unsurprisingly in desperate need of work. While the Kurdish Textiles Museum at its heart is worth a visit, there's little to see in large swathes of the ancient fortress beside graffiti-covered stones. The building that should be the citadel's centerpiece, the former Ottoman pasha's palace, looks like a hurricane blew through it, leaving behind only trash and a few walls for local teenagers to scrawl their names on.

Which raises the question, does the citadel need to be restored in order for tourists to consider coming to Irbil (let's pretend Iraq's security situation isn't an issue here – it's relatively calm in the Kurdish north), or is it a sad fact that no on will rebuild it until they see the first trickle of tourists and the colour of their money?

As I wandered the deserted remains, I bumped into a lonely guard. He confessed that other than the occasional group of Kurdish schoolchildren, there wasn't much for him to do most days.

"Sometimes the Americans come here on their day off. But sometimes there's nobody, or just one person," he said, giving me a sympathetic look.

For dinner, I travelled to the nearby Christian town of Ainkawa where a German restaurant – Der Deutscher Haus – does booming business serving premium Bavarian beers and authentic goulash and schnitzels.

Who says there's nothing for tourists in Iraq?