Palangran, Kordestan region.

19.

I have a bit of an obsession with the Kurdistan region of the world, having visited Turkish, Iraqi and now the Iranian Kurdistan areas. I can’t really go to Syria at the moment…


I took a taxi from Sanandaj to the iconic Kurdish village Palangan. It was snowy and freezing over the mountain passes into the Howraman valley, the oil tankers coming from Iraq didn’t seem to want to slow down, though. Palangan itself is nicely nestled in a smaller valley that is unexposed. The weather there was fresh; with the winds blowing down from the hills but when the breeze died down for a second you could feel the sun. I was reminded of spring afternoons at home, when it’s just about bearable to sit outside with a glass of wine.

I’d kill for a glass of wine right now. But I digress.

Despite the mass of tourists I imagine go to Palangan in the summer, it remains very much a working village. Mules and cows were pelting up and down the narrow streets in frenzy. People were sat out on their rooftops in the sun. Men in traditional attire were going about their business and colourfully clad women pottered about the cobbles.

From the bridge you could see the layers of the village going up the mountainside, on each layer you could spy different people, of all ages doing different things. This man was on the first layer, sitting on his porch. His clothes hark back to an older time. He was partially blind, or so I gathered, and I sat beside him after a hearty handshake and we failed to understand each other for five minutes. But he kept shaking my hand, which was welcoming, that much I knew.

When I meet people like him I always try to imagine what they’ve witnessed over the years. I guess that he was almost 90 years old. He’d have seen Shahs come and go, the Islamic revolution and the Iran Iraq wars would almost be current affairs.