THE KURDISH QUESTION
By Lydia Wilson/Armavir

TIME
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July 30 2007

It’s 4 a.m. and the groom is tucking into what looks like raw trout,
stopping every now and then for a shot of vodka. He’s 25 and a
fledgling entrepreneur, flush with Russian money. The bride is 16
and a village girl. Earlier in the day, she arrived at the wedding
to a traditional Kurdish welcome – which in this part of Armenia
consists of being showered with red apples and sweets, hurled down
from a rooftop by her new husband’s drunken cohorts. But she has long
since left the party, and retired to the conjugal bed.

As we wait for our homeward taxi to arrive, we wonder, pityingly,
why her husband hasn’t joined her. Custom demands that the marriage be
consummated on the wedding night (and a red apple be presented to her
family on the morrow if the bride is found to be a virgin). "She’s
probably exhausted and just lying there waiting for him," whispers
my scandalized companion Nahro. But here’s the groom, heedlessly
drinking vodka with his friends, and with us – for we, too, are
pouring more shots.

In Armenia, there are rural, mountain-dwelling, poverty-stricken Kurds
and there are urbanized, lowland-living, comparatively wealthier
Kurds. We are sitting among the latter in the village of Argavand,
located in the province of Armavir on the Turkish border – and when
it comes to which group makes the better first impression, there’s no
contest. The lowland Kurds of Armavir mostly migrated to this region
during World War II and live as a tiny minority among the Armenians,
with whom relations are often strained. Racism and harassment are a
fact of daily life. Violence is common. Their religion, Yezidism,
has strong similarities to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, yet is branded heretical by all three. All of
this means that the lowland Kurds can be a bit circumspect in the way
they carry themselves, and sometimes reticent about their ethnicity.

There’s none of that in the mountains. In fact, there’s not much
of anything in the mountains except snow and the cheery, forthright
welcome of a people who have hardly anything else to offer. The Alagyaz
district – a cluster of 11 Kurdish Yezidi villages – is just 50 km
from the Armenian capital Yerevan, but in terms of development it
might as well be a universe away, for the people there live a spartan
if not subsistence-level life. They moved to these mountains nearly
200 years ago – fleeing persecution in Turkey – and very little has
changed since. There is no running water; people and livestock live
under the same ramshackle roof; the schools are unheated and woefully
underequipped; and the only health care for miles around is provided
by a single nurse and clinic – funded not by the state but by private
donations, and responsible for everything from delivering babies to
pulling teeth. The state, in fact, is glaringly absent in many facets
of life. Perhaps this is the price the district pays for its open
sympathy for the militant separatist guerillas, the Partiya Karkeren
Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party – a sympathy that the Kurds
in Armavir would almost certainly not express if they shared it.

These political realities mirror the apparent social differences
between the lowland Kurds and their highland relations. Encounters
with the lowlanders are self-conscious and awkward, leaving me feeling
as if I’m on display; meetings with the highlanders are marked by
spontaneous warmth and the ready inclusion of the traveler in their
midst. The contrast strikes me hard as we sit in Argavand, waiting
for a taxi that seems like it will never arrive, and wondering for how
much longer the young groom will sit up drinking when he ought to be
in bed with his new wife. I recall an evening in the mountains, when
we were invited to the local schoolmaster’s for dinner, and I got out
my violin to learn some of the simple, beautiful Kurdish tunes. Before
long others joined in, and after a few more vodkas dancing started. It
all seems so remote from the morose gathering we now find ourselves in.

But the taxi does finally pull up outside. As we putter home, Nahro,
who understands the Kurmanci form of Kurdish, talks with the driver
about the groom’s reluctance to go to his bride on their wedding
night. The driver says something in reply and Nahro blanches. "What?

What is it?" I ask. Nahro translates: as well as consummation on the
wedding night, local custom equally stipulates that the groom not
leave the party until the last guest departs. So if anyone had been
forcing the bride to stare at the ceiling, waiting for her husband
during tonight’s lonely, agonizing hours, it was us. Suddenly, I’m
mortified by my own presumption. In fact, I want the night to swallow
me up – but dawn is already breaking.