In the 'devil's triangle'

By Nick Thorpe
In southern Turkey

After dark, the flash and thunder of electric storms mimicked the bombing of Iraqi towns, further downstream on the Tigris. And the Hittite Storm God we saw in a museum in Ankara, vented his fury.

In dim daylight, horses and carts wove their way down the pot-holed streets, between trucks of humanitarian supplies, and hearse-like armoured cars.

The 'good-for-nothing mountains' that border Iraq and Turkey

Even the grinning shoe-shine boys, their eyes like polished leather, who normally gather outside the town's hotels, took shelter beneath the veranda of a bar where men smashed wooden discs on giant backgammon boards, smoking furiously, and never said a word.

Occasionally, a teenager on a moped, its seat covered with wolf-skins, ventured out into the downpour, or slim girls, veiled from the ankles to their eyes in black cotton, arm-in-arm beneath outsized umbrellas, their high heeled boots like stilts above the mud.

One morning, when the rain eased, we ventured down the road to visit Noah's grave. Even in the rain, men were washing down the marbled courtyard surrounding the tomb - a tall, rectangular building, inlaid with beautiful tiles.

A deal done

The tomb itself is that of a giant, nine metres long, and is made of wood inlaid with verses from the Koran. If you put your hand on it, a heat seems to rise.

All around, the room is carpeted. When we arrived, a man was praying in a deep voice. When we left, veiled women took our place, to pray here on their way to the nearby mosque.

This is a Muslim place, but Noah is recognised as a prophet by all the world's religions, said the inscription outside.

Before I knew what I was doing, we were shaking hands - my unsuspecting boys will have beautiful, dark-haired Kurdish wives

Across the street, we were invited to drink tea in a small shop. No tourist paraphernalia about Noah here, not even a postcard, only shelves of cheap porcelain and metal objects made in China.

I bought a clockwork helicopter musical box for my baby son, which plays as the rotors turn, and talked with the Kurdish owner. He has four daughters. I have four sons.

Before I knew what I was doing, we were shaking hands. The shop erupted with laughter. The deal was done. My unsuspecting boys will have beautiful, dark-haired Kurdish wives. Like Noah.

Checkpoint

After a week here, our sense of claustrophobia from the rising waters was compounded by the fact that we could not move. The Turkish-Iraqi border ahead of us is a closed military zone. Some 15,000 men and 300 tanks of the Turkish second army are billeted beyond the last checkpoint, waiting for the order to cross into Iraq.

We tried another road towards the border, this time from Silopi. This time we were escorted right into a small military camp, and invited to tea with the commander.

Below the road, the Tigris thundered southwards, with its cargo of muddy, red-brown water to wash the wounds of the people of Baghdad

The border here is dwarfed by the 'good-for-nothing' mountains, on the Iraqi side, as the Turks call them - out of fear of the snow and the Kurdish guerrillas who are said to infest them.

The commander showed us the mountains on the bottom three inches of a secret military map. But only the bottom three inches. The rest was covered by carefully closed blinds. "One day, we would like to call them the 'good for something' mountains," the commander said.

He has been stuck here for two years at the meeting point of the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi borders - the 'devil's triangle', the soldiers call it. In that time, he has planted 450 trees to keep his men busy and to make the bleak landscape more hospitable. Only a few more years, we reply, and you could have a forest.

On the way back, a boy at the roadside flagged us down by lifting something yellow repeatedly to his nose. We bought from him his entire supply of sweet-scented dwarf daffodils. By now, it was raining mud - the residue of the sandstorms raging further south in the Syrian and Iraqi deserts.

We tried to drive north a little, towards Sirnak - which means city of Nuh, that is, Noah. At the Kasrik pass, the always polite, but firm Turkish soldiers turned us back. But not before we had feasted on tea and Turkish delight with them, washed down with the sweet waters of the spring beside which they had thoughtfully positioned their armoured vehicle.

Below the road, the Tigris thundered southwards, with its cargo of muddy, red-brown water to wash the wounds of the people of Baghdad.