{"id":2401,"date":"2013-11-13T22:06:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T22:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2013-11-26T23:10:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T23:10:59","slug":"soran-13-november-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/soran-13-november-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Soran, 13 November 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

The call to prayer wakes me at 5.00am, so I catch up with a few emails before trying to sleep again since the traffic hasn\u2019t yet started to move. When the day comes it\u2019s a brilliant one, lit by mild autumn sun.<\/p>\n

I watch a group of children play outside as I wait for breakfast, the boys in miniature leather jackets, the girls in floral frocks and pigtails. A group of elderly peshmerga gathers to talk just by the window. They receive a state pension, which explains why so many of them seem to be at leisure in the city. On the wide screen TV there are a sequential musicals playing: all sentimental propaganda for the new Kurdistan, featuring eager children and heroic peshmerga \u2013 both men and women. The show feature electric guitars and drums as well as fiddles and ouds. None of the women in the musicals are veiled.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m joined by a German environmentalist, G\u00fcnter, who\u2019s here to raise awareness of environmental degradation and perhaps develop plans for a national park. The amount of trash scattered about the city is depressing, mainly plastic waste and cardboard that could be re-cycled. Today he\u2019s addressing Mullahs. Yesterday it was mayors. He tells me he\u2019s here because a local mayor who was tortured by the Iraqi\u2019s has to have medical treatment in Austria and so the link was formed. He shrugs wryly. Even misfortune can lead to something good.<\/p>\n

\"mac_conversation\"<\/a>We spend the morning working with our researchers, planning our first interview for the afternoon. Then we\u2019re called away to the University finance office and waste several hours getting my expenses repaid. It\u2019s a mysterious bureaucracy. Each task has several officials to manage it in offices where the secretaries don\u2019t seem to do very much. By the time the money comes through we\u2019ve missed the opportunity to interview our subject, so we defer until tomorrow, which is a religious holiday. At least she\u2019ll have broken her fast by then.<\/p>\n

Back at the hotel we work in the caf\u00e9 to draw up the initial documentation for a new Writing Research Centre, which will house our project. After about an hour the power fails, so we admit defeat and get ready to join some colleagues in a local fish restaurant for dinner. Two huge carp from the tank outside have been filleted and split down the middle before grilled and served on steel platters. There\u2019s hardly room for anything else on the table. I think over the day as we talk. Things can move very slowly here, as Muli has warned me. So we need to be philosophical, maybe resign ourselves to the fact that we can\u2019t achieve everything we\u2019d hoped for before I leave on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Click here to see a gallery of pictures from Graham Mort\u2019s visit to Soran<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The call to prayer wakes me at 5.00am, so I catch up with a few emails before trying to sleep again since the traffic hasn\u2019t yet started to move. When the day comes it\u2019s a brilliant one, lit by mild autumn sun. I watch a group of children play outside as I wait for breakfast,… Continue reading Soran, 13 November 2013<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,31,13,69,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-lancaster-university","category-news","category-soran","category-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2428,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions\/2428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/transculturalwriting-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}