TEN MILES FROM THE IRAQI BORDER — J. and I are sit­ting in the mid­dle of moun­tain val­ley, pro­tected from sur­veil­lance by scrub and rocky out­crop­pings. Over­head the roar and rum­ble of bombers echoes against the moun­tain walls. Every now and then, we can hear the dull thuds of exploded ordi­nance — over Mosul? — as the sounds of the blasts roll through the val­leys and off the sheer faces sur­round­ing us. It is over­cast, which is lucky. Tonight, we will ford one of the Tigris’ trib­u­taries and then walk two to three hours on foot — with a guide — into Iraq.

Our guide is of inde­ter­mi­nate age, with teeth as exposed and raw as the crags of the moun­tains around us. In an hour, he will take us into the vil­lage below us and then across the river into Iraq. He is a good Mus­lim, with the heels of his shoes folded down so he can slip them on and off eas­ily when he enters and leaves the mosque. He is look­ing at me as I write this, not quite know­ing what to make of me. Every now and then, he makes a phone call on his Siemens cell phone. How he gets cov­er­age out here in the mid­dle of nowhere, I have no idea, and J. jokes that he’s on the smuggler’s phone plan, with super extended range.

The guide, whose name I don’t know and never will know, is part of a Kur­dish net­work that has made a cot­tage indus­try of smug­gling peo­ple across the bor­der. After meet­ing up with N. and U. in Diyarbakir, who said they could hook us up, we spent three days in nego­ti­a­tions to get us across. It has cost J. and me $3,000 each, which N. is hold­ing for us. If any­thing goes wrong, and we don’t check in, N. has said he will call in the cav­alry in the form of the jan­damra, which would be an ironic res­cue, con­sid­er­ing the three grand went a long way toward avoid­ing those jan­darma.

The cost is high, but we’re in a hurry. Syria has closed its bor­ders — except for night vision gog­gles and Arab fight­ers enter­ing Iraq with the fevered wish to blow them­selves up, tak­ing a few Amer­i­cans with them. Iran has been closed for some time. Get­ting a visa is impos­si­ble, I’ve been told. So we have decided to take the high-cost, medium-risk route across Turkey’s heav­ily for­ti­fied bor­der with Iraq. We are mad.

If we are caught, it will be bad, but not dis­as­trous. Turkey will throw us out of the coun­try after hold­ing us in a shitty jail cell for a night or two. And I’ll be banned from work­ing in Turkey for­ever. How­ever, com­pared to the stunt pulled by Philip Robert­son, a Salon​.com writer, who pad­dled across the Tigris under the cover of night after hid­ing out from Syria’s secret police, this scheme is the model of sanity.

We have arrived at this point through a cir­cuitous three days. We left Diyarbakir Mon­day in the com­pany of N. and U., our dri­ver. We set out after we got our Diyarbakir dis­trict press pass, and headed for Mardin. Our plan was to head to Cizre, near the Iraqi bor­der, stay a cou­ple of nights, meet up with our coy­otes — the smug­glers — and zip across the bor­der. It’s been a bumpy ride.

At the first jan­darma check­point, the guards ask us where we are going, what we are doing, who are we? Mardin!, we reply, smil­ing and goof­ing. The jan­darma major does neither.

“Why are you going to Mardin?” he asked.

“To see the church,” I cheer­fully lied.

He finally lets us through and we hit Mardin, where we stop for lunch. And the church. It turns out that we’re being fol­lowed by the gitem, mem­bers of the net­work of spies and vil­lage guards the jan­darma set up around south­east­ern Turkey dur­ing its 1984 – 1998 war with the PKK. The gitem get money and weapons from the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment and they keep the vil­lagers in line. You don’t want to know how.

The church is a very nice church and we ooh and ahh at the appro­pri­ate moments. N. trans­lates for us. At any other time, I would be really impressed — and I am — but I’m also anx­ious to get this game going. After a cou­ple of hours of killing time in Mardin, we leave, pass­ing a mas­sive pro­pa­ganda mes­sage carved into the side of a moun­tain to the south of town. “Happy is the heart of a man who is a Turk!” it pro­claims. Right in the heart of Kur­dish coun­try.
After Mardin, there’s another jan­darma check­point. U. has told us not to be friendly, and just be cool and dis­mis­sive. I don’t think this is a good idea, but I fol­low his lead. We’re asked to step out of the car.

Out­side this check­point, which is a crum­bling cin­derblock build­ing that looks like it could be col­lapsed by a man with a truck, a plan and some con­cen­tra­tion, there’s one of the mas­sive cam­ou­flaged painted armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers that the cops and jan­darma use. J., being the ex-marine and a Cal­i­for­nia extro­vert, is imme­di­ately clam­ber­ing over the vehi­cle while the four or five troops laugh hys­ter­i­cally. The major, an asi­atic man with high cheek­bones, asks me to sit down.

“Where are you going?” he asked. He’s already quizzed N. and U. and he’s ask­ing me in Eng­lish to see if our sto­ries match.

“To Cizre,” I said. “I’m a jour­nal­ist and want to inter­view the peo­ple there. I hear they’re afraid of Saddam.”

He nods and then picks up one of our party’s cell phones on the desk in front of him. Behind him, the win­dows of the build­ing are shat­tered. Iron bars are the only thing between the out­side and the inside. It’s cold, but that’s not why I’m shaking.

He makes a phone call to the Sir­nak jan­darma post, the regional HQ, appar­ently. They’re check­ing our press cre­den­tials. He smiles at me. “In five, ten min­utes, Christo­pher, you go to Cizre.”

“Great!” I said, and stood up.

“You will sit down, please,” he said. I did.

The major wanted to ask me a few more questions.

“Your name is Christo­pher, no?”

I nod­ded. “Evet,” I said. Yes.

He paused to think for a moment. Then he looked at me again.

“Who is that actor, in ‘Back to the Future’? With Michael J. Fox?”

“Christo­pher Lloyd?”

“Yes!” he said.

I was sur­prised, but I shouldn’t have been. The last time I was here, the author­ity fig­ures of the region exhib­ited an intense curios­ity com­bined with the air of men­ace. Here, being in charge means being feared.

After I explained the plot as best I could of the three movies — you have no idea how dif­fi­cult that is, even with a trans­la­tor — he asked me to explain the rules of Amer­i­can foot­ball. So I did, again, as best I could, turn­ing yards into meters and downs into turns. He was thor­oughly con­fused and by the time I got to the con­cept of a lat­eral pass, he’d had enough. He called the Sir­nak sta­tion again.

After a moment he turned back to me. “Bye bye,” he said and smiled.

Finally, we con­tin­ued to Cizre, arriv­ing after dark at the Hotel Onsar. Walk­ing in, it might as well have been the Al Rashid in Bagh­dad. Jour­nal­ists as far as the eye could see. N. and U. got a room and J. and I got one. For the next two days, we would nego­ti­ate safe pas­sage with the coy­otes to take us to the bor­der. Finally, on Wednes­day morn­ing, we were off.

On the top of a moun­tain over­look­ing Cizre, we said our good­byes to N. and U., and piled into another taxi with two Kur­dish men who didn’t speak Eng­lish. After a short taxi ride, we were put into the back of a truck with high side pan­els that kept peo­ple from see­ing in. Our dri­vers motioned us to stay still and quiet, and we would slip through more jan­darma check­points. After 45 min­utes of trav­el­ing, we stopped again, and got into the orig­i­nal taxi. We’d dropped our gitem tail.

After another two hours through spec­tac­u­lar coun­try­side, framed by majes­tic, snow-capped moun­tains on all sides, our dri­vers dropped us in the field and left us with the guide. We’re leav­ing in 15 min­utes. When next I write, I should be back in Iraq.