Adam Dickson was a member of a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan. 

Photo: CPTer Mohamed at the village of Zargail. Photo provided. 

We’re halfway into our delegation, and I write my Friday night journal entry surrounded by incredible scenery, at the end of a long day traveling to the Qandil Mountains at the borders along northern Iraq and Iran. Our group is staying at the family home of Latif, a Christian Peacemaker Teams intern, in the village of Gullan. We’re now relaxed after our hosts prepared a wonderful dinner, enjoying each other’s company and our added company of lush greenery, mountain ranges, and the shining multitude of stars now hanging above. The porch is brimming with the contented chattering of different conversations in Kurdish and English: deep conversations, laughter and the melodic chirping of crickets.

“Beauty” feels a somewhat deficient term to describe the peace of this place and the landscapes we behold, yet that is the word which keeps recurring both in my own thoughts and in the discussions that unfold with my fellow travelers.

Even still, such incredible beauty as this finds ugliness as an unwanted and terrible companion. The Turkish government frequently launches bombing campaigns in this region, and in the past Iran has carried out similar operations. Turkey’s official explanation for these campaigns is that they are an attempt to neutralize the perceived threat of Kurdish militia.

By and large, however, the victims are the villagers themselves, as these attacks happen on the border regions indiscriminately. On the way to Qandil stands the memorial to a family killed in one of these attacks. The Kurds call the victims “martyrs,” as they believe they lost their lives through a determination to remain in their land and to preserve their cultural identity. Because these bombing campaigns have taken the lives of civilians and additionally displaced whole village communities, many Kurds perceive such attacks as yet another chapter in the heartbreaking history of attempted genocide and ethnic cleansing of their people.

As we make our way into the mountainous areas, we stop at the village of Zargali, which has now been completely abandoned. Some residents of the neighboring villages accompany us as we examine the ruins, including partially built houses from which families were forced to flee. Although there are no exact figures, our companions tell us that roughly 100 people once lived in this now desolate area.

 The most recent attack, on Aug. 1st this year, leveled one mosque and six homes, and claimed the lives of eight people. Although some villagers are slowly beginning to return to tend their crops, this is likely to be a long process of reconstruction and resettlement.

Upon joining us, one of our companions said simply, “This is life here.” They tell us that when the bombings occur, they happen during the night while villagers sleep. It is difficult to predict if bombing will happen on any particular night. The sheer unpredictability of these attacks compounds the villagers’ anxieties and casts them under an omnipresent threat of death.

Before leaving Zargali we pause to have lunch, for which we set up a picnic outside one of the houses. A couple of our Kurdish accompanists tell us uneasily that bombings are more likely to happen after 3 p.m., though we eventually decide that we are as safe here as we are in any other part of the region.

“We all signed a statement accepting the risks of being here,” I joke, provoking some much-needed laughter.

Part of our meal, as is commonly the case in most meals in the Middle East, involves breaking bread to share amongst ourselves. Although we are a mixed group of Christians, Muslims, and non-religious, I can’t help but be reminded of the centrality of breaking bread within my own Christian tradition.

Whether at the altar for Communion or at table with friends, there is for me something undeniably transcendent about sharing a meal, and indeed, throughout the Gospels we read that Jesus is mysteriously revealed whenever people sit down and break bread together.

As we eat in this desolate place God’s love is present, disclosed in our common humanity and our shared hopes. Our picnic might be incidental, but it is nonetheless a small act of resistance to the violence around us.

Later on, we are welcomed into the home of a large family who lost five of their own in the course of two recent bombings. We listen to one of the young men, Ali (not his real name) recount the story of losing his grandmother, uncle and two cousins. One of the children in the family was also killed.

The one thing making it real for me is the depth of sadness in Ali’s eyes, which in some ways tells the story far more than the factual details. When I ask why he thinks Turkey launched these attacks, his response is merely this: “We are Kurds.”

From the beginning of this journey, the significance for me of being here has involved encountering the people affected by violence, to actually meet the human faces of conflict rather than read about impersonal statistics from the comforting illusion of distance. Though our receiving of these stories is always connected to a sombre mood of helplessness, that feeling is itself an important sharing in, and solidarity with, the experiences of these human lives.

Those of us who visit them feel but a small part of that grief and helplessness for only a short time, whereas these families and communities live with the entirety of that feeling throughout the course of their everyday lives.

Earlier in the day, as we walked through Zargali, one of the local men from a surrounding village approached me with the common greeting of friendship, “As-salaamu-alaikum,” (Peace be upon you). As we spoke, I introduced myself and explained that I’m from Manchester, United Kingdom, at which his eyes lit up.

“I lived in Manchester for ten years!” he exclaims, and he tells me that although he has recently returned home, he lived and worked in Rusholme, mere minutes away from where I used to live myself only a few years ago. Yusuf (not his real name) worked at a restaurant in the famous Curry Mile, then spent another period employed at a local car wash I still regularly pass when I take the bus into the city center.  It astonishes me that in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq I would meet someone who was quite literally a neighbor!

The tired adage rings deafeningly true: it is indeed a small world. Behind the adage, an even deeper truth reveals itself: war and violence for many of us seem like they are a world away, and disconnected from our lives. Though many of us feel far removed from the complexities of conflict and its tragic effects, may we continue to recognize the human faces for whom they are a reality. They may be nearer to us than we might first believe.

They may well be our neighbors.