Memories from the faraway mountains

In the early 1980s I got to know an elderly Kurdish woman. She told me about her life in a small village in northern Kurdistan. Her family were farmers and lived under basic conditions. This reminded me very much of what my grandmother told me about her life in a village in Västerbotten in Sweden. Could this be true? Are we so alike despite the great distance? The first time that I went to the Kurdish parts of Turkey was in 1989 and it was certainly similar to what I had heard about Sweden in the old days. What struck me most, however, was people’s closeness to nature and also to each other. Here in Sweden you put a blanket on the ground before you sit down. In the small mountain village we lay down directly on the earth when we needed a rest, with the scent of oregano and thyme in our noses. The small village lacked electricity and water. If you wanted to shower, you had to go up in the mountains to collect wood for a fire. Then you sat in a tub and poured the warm water over you. The villagers lived off their animals – cows, sheep and chickens. In the fields they grew wheat and barley. The diet largely consisted of bread, yoghurt, eggs and a kind of dried cheese. When there was a wedding, funeral or other special occasion they slaughtered a lamb. I came to travel several times to other villages in the Kurdish speaking parts of Turkey and I’ll never forget the reception I received on my second visit to the small village. When I arrived early in the morning after a 12-hour bus journey, I suddenly found myself standing there with kisses from the whole village on my cheeks. The pictures were taken between 1989 and 2007 in different villages in northern Kurdistan.