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In Search of Shoes
March 9, 2008 by Jeremy
You’ve heard that bit about the Iranian border, terrorist crossings, tea smugglers, porous trails in between security checkpoints, etc? Apparently it’s all true.
We went to Hawraman in search of shoes yesterday. Hawraman is a typical border town, having been arbitrarily divided and thereby having been forced to grow up on two sides of the border. We didn’t go into Iranian Hawraman; but Iraqi Hawraman was phenomenal.
We did indeed see tea smugglers, with their mules packed down, weaving the windy roads into the Iranian mountains. Supposedly the donkeys know the trail by heart and can still deliver the tea (or whatever else they smuggle) if the Iranian officials get too close and the human guide has to abandon the cargo.
Hawraman is built into the mountains in a terraced manner. We climbed 540 “stairs” to one guy’s house just to buy 7 pairs of shoes. We trekked another kilometer to a roof top patio where we inspected some 200 shoes and walked away with 28. But the net result was money saved and more control over the product compared to buying in the larger city markets; not to mention greater economic impact.
We were there at the behest of a former regional commander of the Kurdish peshmerga, whose guests for the day included a few scraggly Americans (that would be us), business men decked out in Western suits and ties, a parliamentarian for the Regional Government, the former 20-year mayor of Halabja, and a number of armed guards. And though it was entirely unnecessary, he sent one of his guards with us to traipse through the city “just in case.”
As with all the former peshmerga with whom I’ve sat, I found it funny that a man would swear on the Qur’an while downing whisky shots and gambling over poker. Nice guy… but what does swearing on the Qur’an really amount to in that context?
Part of his agenda for the day was to connect us with the poorest klashmakers in the community. In this way, this protector of the people was acting as a conduit for foreign investment directly into the lives of the city’s poorest - without skimming anything off the top for himself.
The same could not be said for the parliamentarian. He tried to horn in on our bulk purchase and buy a pair of shoes at our significantly discounted mass-meets-mercy prices. To my astonishment, the klashmakers stood their ground and told him he could afford a full-priced pair!
We left Hawraman about 5:30 p.m., feeling completely at home, but having been previously warned that “it is not a safe place at night.” I’m guessing it’s not because of the tea smugglers.
We arrived back in our city a couple hours later, completely worn out from the “up-hill-both-ways” drive. For the first time in my life, I can actually conceive of my father’s “when I was a child” stories.
We’ve made some preliminary arrangements for the klashmakers to visit our office next week to make a delivery according to our specifications. We’ll be eager to see how that goes, and excited to continue on partnership with them in the event that all goes well.
Thanks for reading… over and out.
The BSSL Peeps
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Jeremy Courtney lives and loves in Iraq as a co-founder and Executive Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He's also the father of two spectacular children, and married to the lovely Jessica Courtney. When not absorbed in PLC work he can be found writing songs and singing about hope and future. |
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