{"id":3522,"date":"2013-06-30T08:06:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T07:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3522"},"modified":"2013-06-30T08:06:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T07:06:45","slug":"the-armed-the-scared-and-the-very-drunk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=3522","title":{"rendered":"The armed, the scared and the very drunk."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The traffic sign outside my hotel makes it clear that I was a long way from home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Regular readers of this blog will know that I travel a lot in my day job \u2013 and sometimes it takes me to places I might not otherwise visit. These places can be unexpected in ways both good and bad.<\/p>\n

I’ve just returned from Erbil, in the Kurdish region of Iraq \u2013 and for the first time in my many years of travel \u2013 I had a moment there where I was genuinely afraid for my safety. It was a disturbing way to end a visit to a country that up until that moment I had found both interesting and friendly.<\/p>\n

This was my second visit to Erbil. I really enjoyed my first visit (read about that one here<\/a>) \u2013 but this visit was about to end on an uncomfortable note.<\/p>\n

When it was time to leave for the airport \u2013 my driver didn’t arrive. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, so I asked the hotel to arrange a car and driver. They did and off I set.<\/p>\n

About 100 meters from the first of several airport checkpoints, I happened to glance into the front seat \u2013 my driver was holding a hand gun in his lap. A big one. BIG! One of those guns you see Bruce Willis carrying \u2013 the sort he loads by slamming a magazine clip into the handgrip. After which he shoots down a helicopter or two. Just in front of the car was a checkpoint with airport security police carrying AK47s (or something along those lines).<\/p>\n

It came home forcefully to me at that moment how very different this country was to anywhere I have been before\u2026<\/p>\n

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This high concrete barrier is protecting my hotel. The man under the awning is doing the same thing. He's armed with a very very big gun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The police waved us off the road to a security building \u2013 where my driver took out his gun. Let me tell you, it is not nice to sit in a taxi with an angry man waving a gun around less than a meter from your face. The security men took the driver and his gun away and left me sitting there.<\/p>\n

With the guns no longer visible, I decided I wasn’t going to be shot\u2026 but I was concerned that I might get dragged into the investigation\u2026 maybe have my luggage searched.. possibly be detained. I was worried that at the very least I would miss my flight\u2026 and at that moment, more than anything else in the world, I wanted to get out of the country.<\/p>\n

The driver returned about five minutes later \u2013 looking very, very angry. He drove me to the airport terminal building \u2013 breaking speed restrictions and almost colliding with another vehicle on the way. I jumped out quickly, grabbed my bag and thrust a handful of money at him. Then I walked away into the terminal itself as smartly as I could.<\/p>\n

I felt much safer inside.<\/p>\n

I boarded my plane and we took off. I thought my troubles were over\u2026<\/p>\n

But a middle aged gentleman in the seat across the aisle from me very quickly downed too much white wine and started singing in a stentorian voice \u2013 in a language that may have been Russian or Kurdish.<\/p>\n

The flight attendants cut off the flow of wine \u2013 but that didn’t stop his singing. Perhaps it was his national anthem \u2013 he seemed very proud of it and also seemed to feel it deserved repetition \u2013 for three hours!<\/p>\n

I was never so pleased to hear the words “we have begun our descent\u2026” in all my life.<\/p>\n

Now I am safely home in London and someone asked the question \u2013 would I go back. The answer is \u2013 yes. I will take extra precautions, but I am not going to let one moment sour my memories of a whole culture.<\/p>\n

Beside \u2013 I am a writer \u2013 how long do you think it is going to be before that taxi driver, or that drunk passenger make an appearance in one of my novels?<\/p>\n

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I was trying to take pictures of the lines and reflections in the empty auirport lounge. The guard thought I was taking pictures of the guard towers in the distance. He told me to stop. I did.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Regular readers of this blog will know that I travel a lot in my day job \u2013 and sometimes it takes me to places I might not otherwise visit. These places…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-travels","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-UO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}