This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: July 9, 2008 - It's now 1 a.m. Thursday in Suleimanya and I just got back from a visit to a hookah bar with a group of guys from the Kurdish string orchestra. We sat on the roof of a new Internet café. We had pizza, roasted shish-kabob meats and apple-flavored tobacco in the hookahs.
Things have changed in the last year. There’s been enormous progress in terms of new buildings, new restaurant, more vibrant nightlife, new roads and large new houses, some of which, the guys tell me, cost close to a $1 million. Last night, after a stop for ice cream, the fellows showed me these fancy new neighborhoods.
Later, we stopped for tea at a sidewalk kiosk where they were boiling water in huge copper pots on hot coals. Teenagers and twentysomethings were stopping for a cup of tea on the street, hanging out at street cafes, walking around in the cool, humidity-free night air.
My companions (who never let me pay for anything, saying I’m their guest here) said that before, in the Saddam Hussein days, there were 8 p.m. curfews. If you were outside, or didn’t have an ID, you’d be taken to prison. They drove me past the Kurdish Historical Museum. Its building used to be where Saddam's Baath Party would imprison people and torture or kill them.
Yesterday, a clarinetist from Erbil, named Mariwan, came to Suleimanya to see us and to have some lessons. I befriended him last year because he would ask me to listen to his trio play and he spoke one or two words of English. Last year, he told me I was the first teacher ever to tell him he was playing something well.
We've stayed in touch over the last year, but he, like most of the people I knew last year, didn't really believe I would return to Kurdistan when I told them last year that I would. So he came to Suly early, even though I would have seen him next week in Erbil, taking a bus through Kirkuk to get here.
It's an overwhelming feeling seeing tears in someone's eyes just because you came back. Since last summer, he has learned a lot of English. He was given a good clarinet by a member of the National Symphony Orchestra in Baghdad, and now plays so much better. I heard him do Mozart's Clarinet Concerto today, which he will play with the Kurdish Chamber Orchestra when it comes to the states in September.
He doesn't know what cities they will visit; I'll find out next week and let you know. Big thanks to St. Louis Symphony Orchestra clarinetists Diana Haskell and Tina Ward, who sent reeds, music and other clarinet gadgets for which Mariwan is so appreciative. And so am I.
He says his friends think he is crazy for playing Mozart and Brahms and not listening to popular music, but that is what he really loves. It sounds familiar to him. It is nice to know this kind of music is universal as an emotional language, not just for European descendants.
Today was another special first for me, to visit someone's home. Bzhwen, a violinist I taught last year with whom I have been in touch a lot all year, invited me to his home for lunch and to meet his mother, brother and other family members. (His sister looks just like Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop, who was appointed to the Creative Conductor Chair with the St. Louis Symphony in 1994.) His father died a few years ago.
They put out enough food for 20 people, and it was the best food I've had here yet: roasted meats; stuffed vegetables; stews with vegetables; Biryani rice with currants and almonds; breads; herbs and green onions with chopped salads; Shifteh, a fried ground meat with spices; and fruit with a variety of baklavas for dessert -- plus tea of course. It was difficult to go back to work after all of that.
The power goes out every few hours for a few minutes, especially fun when we're rehearsing on stage.
Everyone wants copies of all the music I have here; there are lots of questions, there is the taking of photos, the playing of duets and chamber music every day.
I'm exhausted every night but exhilarated by the energy of the students, and touched by their kindness, and moved by the hunger to learn, the desire to play Bach and Bartok and anything else we can put in front of them.
In some ways, their isolation has preserved their humanity and the beauty of their culture, although I won't convince them that things aren't better everywhere else.
It makes me excited again, to be a musician and a teacher.