ERBIL, IRAQ – Until just a few months ago, Iraq was one of the last places in the world a normal person would want to fly into. Baghdad had the only international airport in the country, and you risked your life just taking a taxi to the kinda-sorta half-way “safe” Green Zone from the terminal. Today you can fly directly to Erbil (known as Hawler in Kurdish), the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north, where the war is already over.
So I took a charter flight on Flying Carpet Airlines and flew there directly from Beirut.
"I threw myself into their society, without a gun and without any bodyguards, and I trusted that they would catch me. And catch me they did. I trusted the Kurds with my life. No trust in the world is greater than that, especially in an extraordinarily dangerous blood-spattered country like Iraq."
Truly. Good article, Michael. Our little fundraising effort last year may not have done much, but I'm glad we helped these people in some small way.
Welcome back, Michael!
The handful of Iraqi Kurds I've met (here) all struck me as the kind of people who I'd trust to catch me, if for some reason I too needed to jump. May the coming months and years bring them peace and may their children and their towns increase.