Next to last.....

Next to last blog message from Sulaimani.  June 15, 2012

It has been a little over a month since I posted a message on May 4, 2012.  Not much that was noteworthy occurred, hence no postings. 

This is the day after the last day of the spring term, and all of my grades are turned in.  I felt a great sense of relief when I clicked on the send button to submit my grades to the registrar.  Since my last posting, I have continued to be busy in preparing for my classes in US history and in the history of fine arts.  In general I have found the students more responsive to the contemporary periods than to the earlier periods in each of these courses.  In US history, the post-WWII era is of interest here because the Cold War, the US-Israeli relationship, and the world and US demand for oil have all had a direct effect on them.  This is also the period in the US when we see the culmination of several movements of freedom, especially for Blacks and women.  The role of the fiercely independent US woman runs counter to the tradition of the woman as the one who carries major responsibility for sacrificing self in order to be protector of the family and family honor that is so much a part of life here.  We had several interesting conversations about the respective roles of women here and in the West and of the changes taking place here. 

I have been impressed, as always, with the life stories that students bring to their classes.  In one class I had three young women from a town near to Sulaimani.  As I became acquainted with them, I came to understand that all of them have grown up fatherless, their fathers having been killed in conflict between Kurds and Saddam Hussein.  I was in conversation with one male student and asked him about his father’s name which is a part of the student’s name.  (A quick lesson on names in the Kurdish area:  people typically carry three names, their own given name, their father’s name and their grandfather’s name.  So my name, in this region, would be Carl David Victor.  Carolyn’s name would be Carolyn Glenn Cecil.  [Women always carry a name that unique to women, plus a second and third name that are unique to men.  Women do not change their names on marriage.] Only rarely is there a tribal or place name.  And there is no such thing as a family name, or surname, like Smith, Jones, Caldwell or Falls.  Most names are also nouns or adjectives, such as Jwan = beauty, Jwana = beautiful, Hanar = pomegranate, Dana = intelligence, etc.)  This student’s second name, his father’s name, had quite a noble quality and I asked if his father had lived up to his name.  The student’s response, “I don’t know.  He died when I was 1 year old.  He along with my grandfather and two of my grandfather’s brothers were killed by Saddam.”  Of course, I felt like a fool for probing where I should have known better.  I apologized but he assured me that no apology was necessary as they have come to live with their situation.  

His story and the stories of the three women noted above remind me of the intense respect that these fatherless students have for their mothers as they understand what it must have been like to raise children without the presence of fathers.  The idea of some sort of teenage rebellion against a mother or father is just unheard of in this culture.  Their respect for parents also serves as a painful reminder of a fact of US life, presented in the US history book and discussed in class, about the number of children growing up these days without fathers, not because of war, but because of the casual way that children are conceived and left by their fathers to grow up in a largely matriarchal culture.   Many of my students, both male and female, would prefer to hold on to local traditions about the roles of men and women rather than adopt US models and risk allowing the same destruction of family that they perceive as happening in the West.  It’s hard to present the more subtle aspects of a complex story when dealing with main points. 

In fine arts, in addition to the study of Baroque, Rococo, Classical, Romantic and Modern schools of art,  I asked students to listen to excerpts illustrating the evolution of music in the West from monophonic music of Gregorian chant to the development of polyphony.  We discussed contrapuntal music by listening to and watching Glenn Gould play Bach’s Art of the Fugue, and listened to music of the Classical, Romantic, and Impressionist eras, and to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Steven Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, a piece of late 20^th c. minimalist music.  One student admitted to me that he really did not like Western music because “it all sounds alike.”  What honesty!  Several students have commented to me as we ended the courses that they have learned a lot and enjoyed the classes.  That’s about the best that a teacher can ever expect to hear. 

Two other noteworthy events:    

1.  AUIS is holding its first ever commencement for undergraduate students on Saturday, June 16.  The undergraduates receiving degrees are the first and second cohorts of students who signed on to AUIS in 2007 as English language students, and then began baccalaureate degree work in 2008.  They are brave people, indeed.  All of them are bright; all did well enough on the exit exam from high school to qualify for high placement for free education in local universities, and yet all chose to believe the offer that a brand new university in very modest surroundings could provide more.  Once they gave up the local university option, there was no turning back.  Carolyn and I had a number of the students from the first and second cohorts in our classes in 2009-10, so this is as special a moment for us as it is for them. 

I have put to use my knowledge of planning commencement ceremonies in assisting in the planning of this one.  Anyone familiar with an AU commencement will find similarities between it and what will happen here tomorrow. I borrowed ideas in the creation of the program booklet and in the writing of the script that will be used by the AUIS president and other campus speakers during the ceremony.  I borrowed with the full knowledge of both institutions.  What I was reminded of as we decided on how to do commencement here, is that it’s great to have a tradition of dignified commencements, the various pieces of which are managed by people who have done their parts for a long time.  Here, in contrast, we are just beginning, and making up the rules as we go along.  I am just hoping that it goes smoothly, but I know that at a certain point, I will have to take my place in the line of march and give up on any further effort to make the parts fit together. 

2.  Carolyn has re- joined me here in Sulaimani.  Her arrival just prior to commencement was planned, so she too could participate in this ceremony.  She arrived here in the wee hours of Tuesday, June 12 after spending somewhere in the range of 30 hours in planes and in the departure lounges of airports in Indianapolis, Chicago and Istanbul.  The Chicago to Istanbul leg of the flight was the longest at around 11 hours; the Istanbul airport wait was the longest at just over 7 hours.  There is no easy way to get here.

When she arrived on campus later on Tuesday she met former students and talked with a number of staff people that she had worked with in 2009-10.  The university is still using the Quickbooks accounting system that she helped to bring online here during her year of residence.  As rewarding as this knowledge is, it is more rewarding to know that the people she worked in business office have on their own expanded their knowledge of the use of the software to a larger number of functions. 

On Wednesday evening, we invited all of her former students to come to our apartment for a time to meet and talk with her.  A majority of them came, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy talking with her and with each other.  Virtually all business majors who will graduate on Saturday were in her accounting classes.  To say that I am proud of what she accomplished here is an understatement.  See attached photos. 

We leave here on June 21, go to Istanbul for four days of site-seeing, and then fly on to our home on June 25.  It will be good to be home. 

I will post a last message from Sulaimani next week after commencement so you can get a sense of what this event looks like. 

As always, thanks for reading.