Diyarbakır

I tried to play it before Dragon Age Velguard came out, and I couldn't get into it.

But I remember whenever I was deployed to Turkey, Diyarbakir, Turkey, that game came out, and people were trying to download it with whatever shitty internet we had.

But once it was up, this one guy, he was playing it nonstop while we were sitting there waiting for alert missions.

But I couldn't.

So if we're thinking about the 1860s, the 1870s, we're talking about mostly nomadic pastoralists.

Of course, cities on the ring of this region, Aleppo, Diyarbakir, Mosul, Mardin, these are cities that are profoundly connected to these... circuits of nomadic motion in terms of trade.

And so that, you know, it's important to remember that those connections are there.

We shouldn't think of this as simply an isolated place.

And from Cappadocia, we took a bus to the southeast, to the Kurdish part of Turkey.

And when we got off the bus into the city of Diyarbakir, we said, now we left all the European influences behind.

We are totally in Asia now.

Okay, so it was really definitive then.

I couldn't be a lawyer because it needs a lot of patience and you shouldn't be telling a story.

Although I did this job once symbolically for Kurdish kids who threw stones at police in Diyarbakir.

And I was so lucky, you know, there were real lawyers who worked for the case.

The kids were released.

As an aside, one of the more interesting stories developing in the Turkish Super League is that of Ahmet Sportif, who were promoted to Turkey's top flight for the first time ever at the end of last season and currently sit in second.

That is notable in itself, but what makes the club even more interesting is the fact that Ahmet Spor, as the team is commonly referred to, is a predominantly Kurdish club located in Diyarbakır, the largest Kurdish majority city in Turkey and one of the main focal points in the conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish separatist groups, which had been going on for decades but recently entered a phase of transition and peace following a disarmament agreement reached in August.

The team itself is made up of nomadic players, many of whom have represented various clubs in Turkey, like veteran striker Mbay Diyan of Kasimpasa and Galatasaray fame, and Umut Meras, who won silverware with Besiktas.

Ryan Ravellison will be a familiar name to MLS fans, but it is goalkeeper Alban Lafont who will be a more recognizable one to football fans, having once been regarded as France's best goalkeeping prospect.

My soul is Christian, he said anxiously as I moved off.

Are you not my sister? Young man, I said sternly, we may be brothers and sisters in spirit, and we may be travelling along the same road to heaven, but please understand that we travel to Diyarbakir on our own horses and not in our sister's arabes.

next morning we left the khan at sunrise and outside the town we found the whole of the armenian theatre party ready to accompany us a covered araba concealed the mother and daughters we caught glimpses of tawdry garments and tousled heads another araba was piled with stage scenery and cooking pots three or four men were riding mules and there were an equal number on foot the men were dressed in flimsy cotton coats showing bright green or red waistcoats underneath and tight trousers in loud check patterns they wore italian bandit-looking hats and their shirts seemed to end in a sort of frill round the neck suggesting the paper which ornaments the end of a leg of mutton the whole get-up seemed singularly inappropriate as they plunged ankle-deep through the mud patches of snow lay in the hollows of the road a furious gale was driving sleet at right angles into our face it was bitterly cold we rode for hours through a dreary country of broken grey stones with no sign of vegetation or life of any kind at last we arrived at a collection of tumble-down deserted huts built of the stones lying around and hardly distinguishable from the rest of the country until we were actually amongst them we were cold and wet and had hardly come half-way to our destination but as neither of us could stand long hours in the saddle without rest or food we called a halt here to recruit the zaptiers performing our escort begged us not to stop they could not understand the strange ways of these mad foreigners who not only travelled in such weather but sat down to picnic in it instead of pushing on to the shelter of the khan at the journey's end but we were inexorable and they reluctantly fastened the horses on the shelter side of the remaining walls against which they stood with their backs tightly pressed drawing their ragged coats closely round them the village had been but lately ransacked and destroyed by ibrahim pasha the redoubtable kurdish chief he was still abroad in the neighbourhood and any detention on the road increases the chance of our falling in with him or some of his stray bands the knowledge of this and the discomforts of the journey made the men fretful and anxious we picked out the least dilapidated looking house and clambered over fallen stones and half-raised walls until we found a roofless room which boasted of three undestroyed angles in one of these the cook tried to make a fire with the last remnants of charcoal we huddled in another to avoid if we could the blast which rushed across the broken doorways and whistled through the chinks of the rough stone walls the arabas accompanied by their bedraggled followers rumbled heavily past us the noise gradually died away as they disappeared in the distance desolation reigned on all sides the howling blast moaned weird echoes of destruction round the ruined walls we managed to boil water to make tea and then yielding to the men's protests we mounted and rode on hour after hour passed the driving wind hurled the hailstones like a battery of small shot right into our faces the rain collected in small pools in the folds of my mackintosh and i guided their descent outward and downwards with the point of my riding whip the drop which fell intermittently from the overflowing brim of my hat had been the signal for a downward bob to empty the contents but now the wet had soaked through and i let it run down my face unconcernedly we were a silent and melancholy band x rode in front with her chin buried in her coat collar her face was screwed up in her endeavour to face the elements the hump in her shoulders betokened resigned misery the soldiers heads were too enveloped to allow any study of their expressions but the outward aspect of their bodies was a sufficient indication of their inward feelings the very outline of their soaked and tattered garments bespoke discomfort and dejection the pale-faced little officer straight from the military school at constantinople urged his horse alongside mine Nazil, he said.

It was a laconic method, essentially Turkish, of saying how, i.e. how

There was not a single blade of vegetation to be seen anywhere.

The country was a stretch of mud hills and stony desert, and the mud banks of the river were only relieved by the host of water birds that darted in and out or waded in the shallows.

The high black escarpment, crowned by the massive black walls of Diyarbakir and fringed by a swampy tract of willow gardens, rose up sharply above the mud flats.

as we were carried along the winding course of the sluggish river a higher mud-bank shut it altogether from our view and i felt we had severed that link with the world which one feels so strongly on arriving in any town of a distant uncivilized land where a European mail occasionally arrives and a telegraph wire eliminates the isolation of its natural position.

I have a travelling theatre.

We want to get to Diyarbakir and have been waiting here for weeks for an opportunity to join a caravan.

The road is so unsafe that no one dares pass this way now, and if we do not go with you, we may be here for months yet.

you will

start at seven to-morrow morning and we shall do thirteen hours to we shall start whenever it suits

us i replied and stop when we have a mind we never travel more than eight hours and shall not do the regular stages to the alberca we shall be three days on the way you must go in two days he persisted we cannot afford to be so long on the road i began to get angry go away strange young man i said and don't bother me any more i will have everything ready he said you may make your own arrangements for yourself i rejoined if you wish to follow us on the road it is a public way but

understand that we have nothing to do with you we start when we like stop when we wish ride our own animals and call our souls our own my soul is christian he said anxiously as i moved off Are you not my sister? Young man, I said sternly, we may be brothers and sisters in spirit, and we may be travelling along the same road to heaven, but please understand that we travel to Diyarbakir on our own horses and not in our sister's robbers.

next morning we left the khan at sunrise and outside the town we found the whole of the armenian theatre party ready to accompany us a covered araba concealed the mother and daughters we caught glimpses of tawdry garments and tousled heads another araba was piled with stage scenery and cooking pots three or four men were riding mules and there were an equal number on foot the men were dressed in flimsy cotton coats showing bright green or red waistcoats underneath and tight trousers in loud check patterns they wore italian bandit-looking hats and their shirts seemed to end in a sort of frill round the neck suggesting the paper which ornaments the end of a leg of mutton the whole get-up seemed singularly inappropriate as they plunged ankle-deep through the mud patches of snow lay in the hollows of the road a furious gale was driving sleet at right angles into our face it was bitterly cold we rode for hours through a dreary country of broken grey stones with no sign of vegetation or life of any kind at last we arrived at a collection of tumble-down deserted huts built of the stones lying around and hardly distinguishable from the rest of the country until we were actually amongst them we were cold and wet and had hardly come half-way to our destination but as neither of us could stand long hours in the saddle without rest or food we called a halt here to recruit The Zaptiers, performing our escort, begged us not to stop.

And surprisingly, The newcomers in the Turkish Super League, Ahmet Spor, has been rocking.

And they beat Konya Spor at home in Diyarbakır 1-0.

So, pretty much, those were the very important matches this past weekend, week 8.

And after those matches, Galatasaray still...

And people didn't ask you, they asked you, where are you from? And when they said, where are you from? They didn't want you to say, oh, I'm from Sweden or I'm from Iraq.

No, they wanted to know, are you from Diyarbakir? Are you from Zako? Are you from Suleymaniyeh, from Erbil? And I was so proud of my Kurdish Jewish brothers and sister, you know, so proud.

And then a few weeks ago, actually two weeks ago, we had the Kurdish Jewish conference in London.

Everyone who was there, there were Kurds from all over Kurdistan and Kurdish diaspora in Europe and Jewish Kurds from Israel.