Suli

I'm in a lovely hotel with wifi and proper aircon, and today's been awesome so all is good. First thing this morning, a day and even possibly a night at the Makhmur camp in Erbil (Thursday/Friday) was set up by a "negotiator" (how Jack Bauer is that? I wasn't even allowed to know his name). After a 4 hour journey to get here (Sulaymania, Kurdistan's second city), I met and interviewed two members of the incredible Hardi family: sons of the strongly nationalistic poet Ahmad Hardi, Asos is the founder and general director of Awena newspaper (winning the Jibran Freedom of Press award in Beirut in 2009), and Rebin is a political activist who was recently kidnapped after his prominent role in the Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations in Suli. He's pretty famous (the Elvis Presley of Suli, according to Hoshang), as I can tell by the amount of people approaching him in cafes. (He's quit smoking, which means that everyone who recognises him and plenty who don't get asked for a cigarette.) They are both very jolly despite their hard-bitten realism about the present situation in Kurdistan, of which more later.

Tomorrow I'm meeting another member of the Hardi family - the director of a women's rights NGO; the leader of the opposition (I'm quite scared by that one), two female students and two male so Suli in general is half way to fixing my interview stats and Friday will make the whole thing a success - if the negotiator does his thing. And right now the room is cold enough to snuggle into a duvet which feels like the ultimate luxury.