Slaw! My name is Christopher Johnson. I teach English as a Foreign Language in Kalar, a small city in east-central Iraq. I have been teaching English here since July of 2019 and hope to stay here for some time. My dream is to start an English-language school that will set the standard for student-centered, international education in the region. While I teach English to our students at a private language center, the English Access Institute, my partners and I are also working hard to get this school up and running.
My part of Iraq is known as “Kurdistan”, an autonomous region in Iraq where Kurdish people live. Kurdistan isn’t a formal country, but the part of Iraq where I live is culturally, linguistically and historically distinct from the rest of Iraq. Kurdistan is bigger than Iraq: Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state to call their own. Most Kurds live in Eastern Turkey, Western Iran, North-Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, however there are communities throughout the Middle East and sizable expat communities live in Europe and North America. Kurds have been at the center of Middle Eastern politics for at least a hundred years, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
Living, working and teaching here is my way of trying to make the world just a little bit better. The Kurds are wonderful hosts and they live in a beautiful land. Everyone should know about these people and their history. That’s why I’m writing this blog.
Mamosta Qsa Akat means “teacher is talking” in Sorani Kurdish. Every week, I want to update the universe about what we’re doing over here and how the Kurds are doing. I’m trying to write my “impressions” of our time here: the raw, unfiltered and unedited scenes that we experience on a daily basis. This blog is also a challenge to myself – to see if I can write every day, to live consciously, to make some small impression in the universe around me. I hope that you find my writing to be somewhat enlightening.
Zor spass – thank you – for taking a moment to learn a little more about me. You’ll be hearing from me soon.
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I had to leave Kurdistan in the summer of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My experience in Kalar and Kurdistan was cut short by this global event, but the lives of many of my friends and neighbors were affected much more greatly. I will go back.
Salaam!
Greetings, intrepid reader. My name is Chris. That’s me. And my partner’s name is Mitsu. It’s pronounced MEET-sue, like, “Today I will meet Sue!” and it’s actually a very pretty name so I would appreciate it if people learned how to say it correctly. That’s her. She’s clearly the prettier of the two of us.…
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Week 7
Like every other patron of this tiny little chicken shop, I’m glad we tried to take a bite.
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Week 9
Not murder fantasy, not suicidal thoughts, but “pets” is the subject that made my class erupt.
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Week 11
At the foot of the Citadel is a dense ring of bazaars, the kind that can lure in romantic travelers with ease and take all of their money.
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Week 12
The symbol had no significance, but the action was in some way a preservation of a cultural practice whose origin and even value have lost significance.
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Week 16
“Now, life is a little less stressful and smells a little more like orange blossoms and sweet red wine.”
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Week 18
Aram and I sat in the car for a few moments and let the dream we walked through become a fire in our bellies.
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Week 20
I fell in love, and I have to go back, because this world is so much more than I could have imagined. I need to go back.
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Week 24: Jordan, Pt. 1
“For a few steps we were out of time, detached from the cause-and-effects of the world we live in. We’ll never forget it.”
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Week 25: Jordan, Pt. 2
“The city is littered with historic ruins, nestled between endeavors of the modern era. We intend to find them all.”
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Week 29
It’s a hopeful sign, then, that the two high school boys nodded in agreement the entire time the women were talking, and said that women face too many difficulties in Iran and Iraq. That things need to change, that it’s not fair. I doubt these two would open mouth stare at a woman at a…
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Week 30
I feel alienated, accused of a crime I haven’t and wouldn’t commit. To what degree should the host amend their behavior to accommodate the guest?
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Week 31
Mitsu is wearing that dress – the soft red one with flecks of bleach on the front, the one she wore as we unpacked her new home in Rwanda, the one that’s wrinkled like laugh lines and seems to flow through her wavy dark hair up to the crown of her head.
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Week 32
The glare on the white board is powerful and its catching these long beams of hanging dust particles that make the room feel monastic and introspective in that special academic way, and I hope my students are starting to paint their world in a new language.
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Week 33
After lunch we pack fig tree cuttings into plastic beds to be planted later. It’s hot now, and we can feel the hint of summer. Soon it will be too hot to do this, and our lunches must stay in the shade. But not today.
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Week 34
Friday 28 February: Day 232 A few months ago, Kalar started requiring people to pay for parking near the bazaar. They have young men on every street corner collecting parking tickets and fining people if they stay there too long, placing little yellow slips on the windshields of cars that have been parked for too…
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certification 