Some months later, the Iraqis rounded up all the peshmerga mothers in the prison, took them to an isolated region in the mountains, and dumped them out with nothing but the clothes on their backs. "Now, go find your sons and bring them back," they said.

"How did she survive?" I asked, flabbergasted at the extent of the Iraqis' hara.s.sment and at the thought of Arjin's fragile mother wandering in the mountains.

"The villagers helped her," Arjin said, almost nonchalantly, perhaps because she couldn't bear to remember. "And we hired someone to go look for her. He found her and brought her back."

I braked suddenly. Intent on listening to Arjin, I had scarcely registered the traffic that was thickening around us. For the past few miles, we had been driving beside a long line of parked oil trucks heading toward the Iraqi-Turkish border. The trucks were transporting diesel fuel and crude oil from Baathist-controlled Iraq through Kurdistan to Turkey. Such trade was illegal under international sanctions, but Turkey was averting its gaze. There was money to be made. Up to $600 million a year, in fact, with Saddam Hussein also profiting by as much as $120 million a year. The United States had objected to the trade but hadn't forced the issue. After all, the economic sanctions were being erratically implemented throughout the region-another blatant example of noncompliance being the Iraq-to-Syria pipeline, illegally transporting up to two hundred thousand barrels of crude oil a day in the early 2000s.

As one KDP minister later informed me, the illegal smuggling of diesel fuel between Iraq and Turkey had at times provided the KDP government with up to 97 percent of its annual operating budget of $150 million. That put the KDP in a much stronger economic position than the PUK, whose neighbor was Iran, not Turkey, and helped account for the many wealthy denizens of Dohuk, whose province bordered Turkey. However, about a year before I arrived in Kurdistan, Turkey had cut the number of diesel fuel trucks that it was allowing through its border to one hundred a day from one thousand a day. And in the fall of 2002, Turkey formally shut down the illegal trade altogether, claiming that an oversupply of diesel fuel was hurting the country's economy, already in deep recession. But privately, Turkish officials all but admitted that there was another reason for the shutdown. With war drums beating louder, Turkey no longer wanted to help enrich the Iraqi Kurds, who they feared would encourage the Kurds of Turkey to push for their own independence post-Saddam.

Skirting the congested border crossing, Arjin and I traveled on, into a landscape that grew wilder and emptier as we went. The trucks disappeared, and the asphalt road turned to dirt. In the distance, at the base of a sheer brown mountain, sprouted a lush grove of trees. "That's where the sister of Nur is buried," Arjin said as we sailed by.

Only later did I realize that by Nur she meant Noah, of Noah's Ark fame, and kicked myself for not stopping and finding out more. The story of the Great Flood is still very much alive all over Kurdistan today, with some Kurds believing that the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat in northeastern Turkey, and some believing that it landed on Mount Cudi in southern Turkey, just across the border from Zakho.

According to many historians, an unusually severe flood of Mesopotamia and its environs did occur, sometime around 3500 B.C. The region's ancient Sumerians obsessively recorded the event, writing of one man, Utnapishtim, who survived the flood, along with his family and the animals and plants that he took on his ark, as instructed by a G.o.d. When the prophet Abraham left Mesopotamia for Turkey, he took the Sumerian legend with him, and, in all probability, it later became the prototype for all Near Eastern deluge stories, including those recorded in the Torah, Bible, and Quran.

The most famous of the Sumerian tales is the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest surviving epic, which tells the story of King Uruk, who ruled around 2700 B.C. Shortly before the flood, Uruk's good friend Enkidu is killed, and the devastated king sets out to search for immortality, voicing the oldest lament of humankind: Fearing death I roam over the steppe;

The matter of my friend rests heavy upon me.

How can I be silent? How can I be still?

My friend whom I loved, has turned to clay.

Must I, too, like him, lay me down

Not to rise again for ever and ever?

THE NEXT DAY, Imad came by Arjin's to pick me up. One of Majed and Yousif's younger cousins, he lived and worked in Zakho but had agreed to take me to the family village of Chamsaida in the Barwari district, about two hours away. Arjin had hoped to come, too, but she had family obligations; I sensed that she often had family obligations.

Instead, Imad and I took along another companion-a plainclothes bodyguard. Dr. Shawkat had insisted that I stop at the Zakho mayor's office to request one, as the PKK was active in the Barwari area. He had also nixed my original plan to spend the night in Chamsaida-it wasn't safe, he said. Once again, I wasn't altogether sure how seriously to take his warnings, but once again, I decided to err on the side of caution. Arjin refused to express any opinion regarding the matter, but I saw her repress an amused grin as she watched the three of us drive off.

The bodyguard was a hefty young man who didn't seem at all eager to be spending the day in the country, and I wondered how much help he would be should anything happen. He seemed slow and lethargic, and I had my doubts as to whether he actually knew how to use the pistol fastened to his belt. Imad, slimmer and quicker, seemed the better protector- and also came armed with a pistol.

"Thank you for taking me to Chamsaida," I said to Imad as we set out.

"It is my duty to help you," he said, and I squirmed at the words. Other Kurds had also used them, and I didn't know how to interpret them. For all the generous hospitality I encountered in Kurdistan, treating guests well is one of the tenets of Islam, and I hoped my hosts weren't acting by that precept alone.

We headed east, on a road that ran parallel to the Turkish border and the mountains. With hazy peaks to one side, flat lands to the other, we pa.s.sed through miles of fertile farmland, peppered with women workers in reds, yellows, and blues-and few men. Then we entered a sea of hills, descended into a valley filled with fruit trees, and came to Batufa, a huge collective town built well before the Anfal. During the early 1970s, this northernmost part of Iraqi Kurdistan had been a stronghold of the KDP, with the road we were traveling along marking the dividing line between KDP-controlled territory and Iraqi-controlled territory. And after the Algiers Accord, the Baath Party had been ruthless, destroying all the area's villages and forcedly relocating thousands of people into Batufa, where many still lived. Batufa had become their home, and they could see little advantage in returning to reconstructed villages that might or might not have all the services to which they'd become accustomed. Besides, the villagers were older now, and they had no desire to tend to crops, orchards, or animals. And neither did their children, who, in any case, didn't know how. Saddam Hussein had won, at least for the moment.

Near Batufa was a small walled cemetery, where we stopped. Inside fluttered two faded green flags, marking the graves of Zembil Firosh and his would-be lover.

Zembil Firosh, whose name means "basketseller," is the hero of a famous Kurdish folktale. The son of a powerful ruler, Zembil Firosh leaves his comfortable home to seek a spiritual life. Transforming himself into a poor dervish, he wanders the countryside with his faithful wife, surviving by making and selling baskets. One day they arrive in the capital of a Kurdish emirate, where the prince's wife sees Zembil Firosh and falls in love. Summoning him to the castle, she declares her love and proposes consummation. Zembil Firosh declines, but she presses, offering him many riches. Still, he refuses, and she locks him in the castle tower, from which he escapes. Heartbroken, she dons a disguise and wanders through the town until she finds his home. Lying to his wife, she convinces her to lend her her clothes and leave the house. When Zembil Firosh returns that night, it is dark, and the prince's wife welcomes him into bed. But a silver ankle bracelet gives her away, and he runs off, closely followed by his would-be lover. When he sees that escape is impossible, he prays to G.o.d, asking Him to release him from this world of misery, and G.o.d complies. Reaching Zembil Firosh's lifeless body, the prince's wife is so heartbroken that she, too, dies. The townspeople bury them side by side.

What a strange and marvelous story, and how different it is from Western folktales, I thought. Kurdologists point out that the story has Sufi overtones, with both protagonists leaving their comfortable lives in order to search for the Beloved.

But how odd, I also thought, that it is the prince's wife, and not Zembil Firosh's own faithful spouse, who is buried beside him, as if pa.s.sion carried more heft than fidelity among the Kurds, when the opposite is so powerfully the case in everyday life. I puzzled over the conundrum for months before coming across an explanation. In a seminal 1954 article, folklorist William R. Bascom writes: "the basic paradox of folklore [is] that while it plays a vital role in transmitting and maintaining the inst.i.tutions of a culture . . . at the same time it provides socially approved outlets for the repressions which these same inst.i.tutions impose."

BEYOND BATUFA, THE landscape grew wilder, with hills turning into mountains, and fields into cliffs of granite, red, and tan. Each bend of the road, rising ever steeper, revealed new vistas. Snowcapped peaks overhead. A hawk circling in a valley below. The curve of a far-off river. Turkish tanks on a mountainside.

"What are they doing here?" I muttered angrily, mostly to myself.

"Don't ask me," Imad said. "I am not political. Ask the KDP or the U.S. government. As the English say, if you eat with the devil, you must have a long spoon."

Back in the valley again, we crossed the Khabur River and pa.s.sed a half-dozen signs announcing new villages built or being built by the United Nation's Habitat or other aid organizations. Similar signs were posted all over Iraqi Kurdistan, neatly painted plaques that included dates of construction, number of units, and other figures, in a sort of cool a.s.sessment of death and rebirth, sans personal stories and suffering.

Turning off, we b.u.mped down a dirt road, over potholes and patches as ridged as a washing board. We pa.s.sed more of the black, twisted scrub oaks I'd seen everywhere and a strapping young Kurd wearing a General DataComm T-shirt that read: "The future shines so bright, I gotta wear shades." A battered truck hung with pots and pans careened by-a sort of modern Zembil Firosh without Sufi overtones.

Coming to a flooded patch, we stopped. Beyond, a clutch of houses beckoned.

"Welcome to my village." Imad turned off the engine, and I grinned. I loved the way almost everyone I met in Iraq spoke of "my village." Whether he or she lived in a village now or not-or perhaps had never lived in a village-everyone had one, a place of his or her parents and grandparents, a place distinctly his or her own. And even decades after leaving their villages, many Kurds said that they still dreamed of their old communities. We were happiest in our villages, out in the open air, away from the cities, they said, in an idyllic re-creation of a past that for many was now irretrievably lost, as much through modernization as through Saddam Hussein.

Imad and I walked through Chamsaida, the bored guard trailing behind. Before the Anfal, the village had housed about seventy families, but now held only fourteen or fifteen. Imad pointed out a new schoolhouse and showed me several new houses. All had electricity and looked comfortable. But like many other villages I'd visited, the place felt too empty, too unlived in, too new. Like all reconstructed rural Kurdistan, it needed time.

"I lived here until I was six, and then my family moved to Zakho," Imad said as we walked on. "But in 1984, the central government put my father in prison, took away our house in Zakho, and told us to return here. My father's cousin-Majed's father-was an important peshmerga, that's why they bothered us." He shrugged. "This is the life," he said, using an expression that Kurds speaking English use often.

Imad showed me the ruins of his family's home, destroyed during the Anfal. Built on a hilltop with splendid views of the valley, dotted with apple orchards, the house had once included a lush garden with flowers imported from Holland and Iran. Imad remembered climbing up a tree that was now a stump, and running down the hill at age six to tell his grandmother that he had a new baby brother.

It had been a different world, and one to which I, too, longed to return.

Climbing the path that led to the orchards, the guard huffing and puffing behind, we pa.s.sed a steady stream of people returning to the village for lunch. The first was a man in a turban with a donkey, coming back from pruning apple trees. The second was a woman in a green-and-gold dishdasha herding a half-dozen lambs who were too young to join the adult flock. The third was a man in extra-baggy pants with a scythe, who had to work alone because all his children were in school.

As each person stopped to talk, I suddenly felt as if I'd fallen into a fable. I was ensconced in a beautiful valley, on a beautiful day, with a stone bridge, a rushing stream, shady walnut trees, and people in fantastic dress. Each person who stopped could tell me something wise and wonderful, drawn from the depths of lives lived close to the earth and to suffering, I thought, if only I could find the right questions to ask.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Cult of the Angels I FIRST MET KAMERIN KHAIRY BEG IN THE RESTAURANT OF the Lomana Hotel, next door to the Writers' Union. Majed and Yousif had invited me to lunch, asking me first where I wanted to go. But when I'd suggested finding a popular restaurant serving typical Kurdish food, they'd looked blank-for that kind of meal, they could just stay home. Going out to eat for them meant going somewhere where alcohol was served, and that meant a hotel.

We pa.s.sed through the Lomana's dark, silent lobby and into its restaurant, lit only by the diffuse natural light of a rainy spring day. A clutch of bored-looking waiters ushered us past a round table at which six men, dressed entirely in white, were seated.

I barely noticed them because directly behind them, at the only other occupied table in the place, sat an extraordinary-looking man. He had a frizzy white beard with a wide dark streak down its middle, a red-and-white-checked head cloth flowing regally around his shoulders, and dazzling white robes whose fine quality was apparent even from afar. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he looked up only briefly as we came in, and then returned to his meal. His face was deeply tanned.

Majed, Yousif, and I sat down at a nearby table, and ordered beers and lunch. I kept stealing glances at the bearded man. Sitting impa.s.sively chewing in the darkened restaurant, his face sealed with privacy, he looked utterly unapproachable.

Our beers came, followed by platters of chicken kebab, broiled tomatoes, rice, and greens. Majed and Yousif told me about several buildings visible from the restaurant. Yousif's father had been imprisoned in the bas.e.m.e.nt of one for over a year, during which time no one in the family had known where he was.

Then Majed nodded a h.e.l.lo at the bearded man, who nodded back.

I started. "Who is he?" I asked.

"Kamerin Khairy Beg," Majed said. "He's the son of the prince of the Yezidis."

I was in luck! I had heard much about the Yezidis, often erroneously referred to as "devil worshipers," and felt hungry to learn more about them.

"Can you ask him if I could come visit him sometime?" I asked.

"Ask him yourself," Majed said, grinning. "He speaks some English."

I made my request, and Kamerin Khairy Beg nodded.

"Yes, of course, with great pleasure, I would be honored to welcome you in my home," he said slowly. His unapproachable veneer had completely vanished. Before me sat a gentle and somewhat shy-seeming man with kind, brown eyes.

As it happened, Kamerin Khairy Beg lived in Baadri, the historic home of the Yezidi princes, located in a remote area about two hours from Dohuk. I'd been hoping to travel there for Sarisal, the Yezidi New Year, coming up in mid-April-would it be possible for me to visit then?

Absolutely, Kamerin Khairy Beg replied, the festival would be an excellent time for me to come. I would be his guest, of course-he would send a car for me-and could stay with him and his family as long as I liked.

MOST NON - MUSLIM KURDS belong to one of three religions, which have no direct connection with one another, but which some scholars refer to collectively as the "cult of the angels." Drawing on precepts from both pre-Islamic faiths and Islam, the cult consists of the Yezidis, who live mostly in northern Iraq; the Ahl-e Haqq, or Kakais, who live primarily near the Iran-Iraq border; and the Alevis, who live mostly in Turkey. Scholars disagree as to the number of believers in the religions, but estimates range from one-tenth to a probably exaggerated one-quarter of all Kurds, with the largest group being the Alevis and the smallest being the Yezidis. The Alevi Kurds may number about 1.5 million, the Ahl-e Haqq about 700,000, and the Yezidis about 300,000.

All three religions believe in one G.o.d, and in seven divine angels who protect the universe from seven dark forces. Good and evil were both present at creation, the cult holds, and are equally important in the continuation of the material world. A belief in the transmigration of souls through reincarnation is also central to the religious group, which is a universalist one, meaning that it regards all other religions as legitimate.

Both the Ahl-e Haqq and the Alevis worship Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and the main prophet of Shiite Islam, and Ismail of the Safavid dynasty, who first spread Shiism across Iran in the sixteenth century. The groups are therefore sometimes cla.s.sified as being on the extreme edge of Shiism, although for the Ahl-e Haqq, their founder Soltan Sahak is far more important than are Ali and Ismail.

Only the Yezidis are exclusively Kurdish. Over one-half of Alevis are Turk, while some Ahl-e Haqq are Turcoman. The Alevi religion contains Turkic shaman elements, as well as Shiite and Zoroastrian ideas, while the Ahl-e Haqq draw on Shiism, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism, a gnostic sect that began in the A.D. 200s. The Yezidi religion is a mix of pagan, Zoroastrian, and Manichaean beliefs, overlaid with Christian, Jewish, and Sufi Muslim elements.

The Yezidis' reputation for devil worship is based on their veneration of Melek Tawus, the Peac.o.c.k Angel, who is the chief of the seven angels. As in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the religion holds that after G.o.d created man, one angel refused to bow down before the mortal, as G.o.d ordered, and was thereupon cast out of heaven. In the three major monotheisms, this angel-Satan-remains forever d.a.m.ned, but in Yezidism, G.o.d forgives the angel, named Melek Tawus, and reinstates him.

Melek Tawus's emblem is the peac.o.c.k, and the religion's most revered object is a life-sized bronze figure known as the Great Peac.o.c.k. One ceremonial practice, begun in the nineteenth century, involves taking one of six bra.s.s replicas of the Great Peac.o.c.k to every single Yezidi community, no matter how small, for the collection of alms. Over the last fifty years, however, due to wars and repression, some replicas have been "retired."

A persecuted group within a persecuted group, the followers of the three religions have suffered repeated violence at the hands of Muslim neighbors. During the Ottoman regime, at least twenty pogroms were waged by Turks against Yezidis, resulting in ma.s.s migrations to the Russian Caucasus. In the early 1500s, tens of thousands of Alevis were slaughtered by Sultan the Grim for suspected pro-Persian sympathies. Throughout Persian history, the Ahl-e Haqq have been shunned, vilified, and, as late as the 1920s, crucified and lynched by Muslims. All three groups have been repeatedly and falsely accused of s.e.xual promiscuity.

In Iraq, the Yezidis are often referred to as the "original Kurds." The reference is an odd one, seemingly based more in politics than in fact. The phrase is often used by Kurds with a dislike for Islam, by Kurds who want to see Yezidism more closely a.s.sociated with Zoroastrianism, an "Aryan" religion, and by Kurds eager to place the Yezidis squarely in the Kurdish political camp. In fact, most Yezidis, who are Kurds, do actively support the Kurdish cause. But the Baath regime declared them to be Arab, and the Kurdish leadership, cognizant of the group's strategic position on the Iraqi-Kurdistan border, fought back by publicly honoring the Yezidis as "original Kurds," and using the pre-Islamic elements of their religion to promote a secular Kurdish nationalism.

SHORTLY AFTER MEETING Kamerin Khairy Beg, I visited the Yezidi Cultural Center, not far from Majed's house. A broad walkway led to its front door, where I was ceremoniously received by about ten men who swept me down a dark and drafty hallway, into an equally dark and drafty room. Most of the men wore red-and-white turbans, and many sported the walruslike mustaches for which the Yezidi are famed.

Sitting upon dilapidated sofas and chairs, we nodded h.e.l.los. Cans of soda were popped, and we nodded some more. Then we waited. Though they were obviously expecting me-Dr. Shawkat had called-no one spoke English.

One hour later, Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil arrived. Dr. Khairy came in first-a small, gaunt man in a formal black suit with cheekbones that seemed sharp enough to cut through the lucent pallor of his skin. Mr. Fadhil followed. Though somewhat taller and bigger than Dr. Khairy, he was equally thin, with a broad and creased brow, worn brown suit, and rumpled white shirt. Between the two of them-one a medical doctor, the other an English teacher-they spoke pa.s.sable English. They were also close friends.

"What can we do for you?" Dr. Khairy said.

I explained that I wanted to learn more about Yezidi culture and history.

"Yes, well, we don't know much about our culture or history ourselves," he said. "We're trying to learn that now. This is the first time in many years that we can have our own religion. We couldn't do it before. The Iraqi regime didn't accept it."

"We don't know what it means to be Yezidi," Mr. Fadhil added.

"But don't you have a museum?" I asked, feeling disappointed. "Or hold concerts or lectures?" To me, a cultural center connoted some sort of cultural activity, though from what I'd seen so far, the place did seem to be nothing more than a dilapidated social club.

"We're trying to make one now," Dr. Khairy said. "Do you want to see?"

The two men led me down the hall to a small room. Inside were a few dusty exhibits showcasing traditional dress, household items, and farm implements.

"The center was only founded in 1992, after the uprising," Dr. Khairy said apologetically. "We have no money."

Of course, I thought, embarra.s.sed at my own obtuseness.

"Many of our villages were destroyed, especially in Shaikhan and Sinjar," Dr. Khairy said, mentioning the two areas, still under Baathist control, where most Yezidis live.

"But they didn't destroy Lalish," Mr. Fadhil said, with a nod of satisfaction.

My ears p.r.i.c.ked up at the mention of the holy shrine of the Yezidis, located in a valley enclosed by mountains, about an hour and a half from Dohuk. Lalish contains the tomb of the mystic Shaikh Adi ibn Musafir, the great prophet of the Yezidi religion. The son of a Muslim holy man, Adi was born in a Lebanese village around A.D. 1075, and studied in Baghdad with Sufi masters, before retreating to the remote Lalish valley. Discovering a region of great beauty, he remained there the rest of his life. A man emaciated with fasting, renowned for his piety and miraculous powers, he was said to recite the entire Quran twice every night. Pilgrims came from far and wide to see him.

Yezidi legend has it a bit differently, saying that Shaikh Adi was miraculously born to an elderly couple, and left home at age fifteen to seek his fortune. Five years later, riding across a plain bathed in moonlight, he pa.s.sed a tomb, where an apparition arose before him. Terrified, Adi knocked over a jug of water nearby. The apparition turned into a boy with a peac.o.c.k's tail who told him to fear not, he was Melek Tawus, come to reveal to him the religion of the true world. The Peac.o.c.k Angel took Adi's soul to heaven for seven years, where G.o.d taught him the truth of everything while he slept. When his soul was returned to his body, Adi awoke to find the water still running out of the overturned jug.

"I would like to go to Lalish," I said to the two men. "Can you help me?"

"Yes, yes, of course, we can take you," Dr. Khairy said, with some enthusiasm.

"It's our job to introduce our religion to foreigners," Mr. Fadhil added, with considerably less enthusiasm.

LEAVING DOHUK A FEW days later, we pa.s.sed a simple checkpoint of the type that guarded all towns in northern Iraq, and turned onto a road zigzagging up a rocky mountain. Though it was only midmorning, families were already out, setting up tents and building bonfires for picnics. A pickup truck packed with goats pa.s.sed, followed by flocks of jogging sheep, their plump, wooly bodies swaying to and fro above short, stubby legs. The voice of Ibrahim Tatlis, a popular Kurdish singer from Turkey, drifted out.

We stopped to pick wildflowers-mostly the scarlet, purple, or yellow sheqayiq (ranunculus) that were everywhere, but also red gulale (poppies) and tall stately hero (hollyhocks). Both the Kurdish men and women love flowers, and will stop to pick them when given the chance.

The final approach to Lalish was narrow and hilly, bracketed with trees and boulders, and more picnicking families. Three men dancing merrily together, one chubby face beaming, caught my eye. Then I spotted the tops of two fluted cones-the signature architecture of the Yezidi tombs-and we arrived at an enclave of cream-colored buildings, cars parked in a large lot out front. Sitting atop a nearby wall were dozens of men and boys in traditional dress, talking, nudging, and nibbling on seeds and nuts.

Before getting out of the car, Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil removed their shoes. All Yezidis must go without shoes in the holy city, they said. As a visitor, I could wear mine until we entered the temple. I shivered on their behalf. The spring day was cold and wet.

Several round old women in voluminous dress greeted Dr. Khairy. He kissed their gnarled hands, and they kissed the top of his head in an age-old gesture that seemed straight out of a medieval world.