Adel Surprises Gilan, City of An Kawah, Kurdistan
This is my friend Adel Altai, Iraqi’s most famous living photographer, sneaking up on Gilan Hassan (10 years old in this photo) with a daisy. In Baghdad, Adel introduced me to Gilan’s father, Nassar Hassan, a Kurdish film and T.V. producer who lives in An Kawah, a mostly Kurdish city in northern Iraq. Adel and Nassar drove me from village to village in Kurdistan for five days, during which I spent $1.36 on a hamburger.
This was 2003, which was a good time to be an American traveling in Kurdistan. The Kurds were grateful for Sadaam Hussein’s ouster. To be a guest in those days was to be catered to, with deference, with gratitude, as though all Americans were royalty. I had to sneak away from Nassar and Adel, to feed myself at an outdoor market (where I had to beg a vendor to take my money). 
The Kurds loved us then. Some of them love us still, but less so after the Coalition Provisional Authority (largely directed by the U.S. government) allowed Turkish pilots to bomb Kurds in the region (in retaliation for Kurdish separatist attacks in Turkey).