The Citadel's Keeper
Aug 13, 2010
In the early evening when the wind is low, the calls to prayer multiply into a thousand echoes as they drift through the empty ruins of Erbil's citadel. It is around this time the guards herd visitors out through two massive archways and settle in for the long night, smoking cigarettes in the moonlight. If they listen closely, the cries of a baby is the only thing that can be heard from within the city walls.
The ghost town they are guarding has never been this quiet. For 8,000 years, traders and conquerors, crusaders and pleasure seekers have passed through the same gates without pause, making the citadel one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. But now, beneath the crescent moon of Ramadan, only one family remains.
At night, Rebwar Muhammed Qader has free reign of the city. He is its keeper, its protector. He tends to the ghosts and memories of the families who have long since left. Just by being there, he and his young family, keep the citadel alive.
"Living lonely, it's not a good thing for everyone, but we're used to living here," he says. "I was born here and I spent all my life in the citadel. I can't describe my happiness for it."
To Qader, these 586 house plots are the remnants of a poor but idyllic childhood.
His parents were part of the thousands who fled their villages in the 1970s and '80s. Saddam Hussein's Arabization and Anfal campaigns targeted Kurdish settlements across the north and eventually destroyed 90 percent of them. After a chemical attack on their home, his parents sought refuge inside the city gates.
Nearly 6,000 others took to making a life inside the city's ruins. They lived with few modern utilities and waste from a poor sewage system leaked into the their homes and the mound the citadel sits upon.
That 30-meter mound contains the scraps of one of mankind's earliest cities. "In the citadel, we can see the sole direct link to the beginning of urban culture," David Michelmore, a principal conservation specialist for the Consultancy for Conservation and Development says. "It's a living link back to earlier stages of civilization."
The city can be traced to the 21st century B.C., when it was known as "Urbilum." When northern Iraq was still part of Mesopotamia, the citadel was home to a temple to Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love and war.
"The citadel was a main religious center," Michelmore explains, "full of commerce, festivals and rites. "It was a place where people came first to do religious things and then to have a good time during the Assyrian period."
Erbil's strategic position at the crossroads of communication, trade, agricultural and religious routes made it a key holding for the Sumerian, Babylonian, Sassanian and Ottomans as well. With passing centuries the citadel rose higher above the surrounding lands as city dwellers literally built upon bygone empires, making it even safer from attacking armies.
"Even the Mongols didn't succeed in capturing the citadel, which is quite unusual for the Mongols," David laughs.
These tides of habitation continued uninterrupted until the early 1950s and '60s, when the citadel's longtime families began to move to the city below in search of more modern amenities and spacious quarters.
Ornately painted receiving rooms, tree-lined harems and balconies overlooking Erbil's old Jewish quarter stood empty. Only the poorest of the citadel's residents remained, transforming the former beacon of the north into a ghetto.
Then, like weary travelers for generations before them, the Kurds came.
In the shattered Ottoman mansions and pleasure halls, they built one or two-room huts out of reused bricks, tin cans and car chassis.
"They built the kind of houses that they were used to in the villages, they used what came to hand," says Mitchell. Embedded in the simple houses were priceless pieces of architectural salvage. Archways were plastered over and ancient rooms reconfigured to fit families of 12 or more.
Former residents saw the refugees as a plight. Government officials were concerned that their haphazard constructions and leaking sewage would destroy the citadel all together.
But to Rebwar Muhammed Qader, "the life was very fantastic. The neighbors were very nice people. They helped each other if they were in need." The tightly knit community prayed together in the ancient mosque and ate together in each other's homes. Every evening he would meet other neighborhood boys and talk about the girls who lived in houses nearby. As he grew older, Qader's family began to care for the citadel's water tower. He took a wife and had their wedding reception in the walled city.
Then in November 2006, Kurdish authorities evacuated the walled city. There was too much damage being caused by the refugees and the city was becoming structurally unsound, officials said. They resolved to renovate the citadel, but they couldn't do so while it was packed with people. Each family was given $4,000 and a piece of land in a mostly barren area 25 miles east of Erbil. The neighborhood was named "New Citadel," without any irony.
As friends and neighbors packed up their belongings, the government approached Qader. They wanted his family to stay behind. The water tower still needed someone to care for it. But more importantly, the evacuation would end the citadel's eons of continual habitation. It needed a family to keep the link to the past alive.
"We didn't have another house to live in," Qader says. "It's not our choice but I like it and I want to service my country in this way."
So he watched the city empty. Families left behind furniture, dolls, single shoes. The bustle of the city's main street quieted. He tended to the water tanks and continued to say goodbye. Then, it was still.
Four years passed. Qader and his wife had two children. In the yard of the house the government gave them, the family raised chickens and a goose.
"I feel big responsibility because I was born here and it's my favorite place in the world. And now, I'm the last one here," he says.
The revitalization project, as it was called, was slow to take off. David Michelmore's team and others from UNESCO and the Kurdish Regional Government worked to create a plan for the citadel's future and have it added to the permanent World Heritage List.
In the meantime, the government did nothing to stop the buildings' decay. Where houses would have been previously reroofed by refugees, they collapsed. Where walls would have been re-plastered or repaired, they fell. After all these years, the citadel's biggest threat wasn't the people who lived there, it was having no one to live there at all.
Finally, in the spring of this year, the plan for the citadel was approved and the first scaffolding was erected to care for the houses most in need.
The plan is an ambitious one, says Dara Alyakubi, Head of the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization. "If you come back in 10 years, you will see the citadel full of spirit, full of culture, full of renovated architectural heritage." Alyakubi imagines it will be much like a new Old Damascus, where visitors will dine and shop and businesses will base international offices.
For Erbil's quickly growing economy, the citadel could be a jewel for the right investors, he predicts. Traditional building and crafting techniques will be saved from obscurity, and the excavations of historical sights will boost tourism for the entire region. "It will be the heart of the city," he says.
But to Qader, the renovations mean little. He hopes to see his old neighborhood and his childhood home restored. He hopes his children can live there one day. But like all the buildings in the citadel, his house is government property now.
The citadel will again be full of life, but not the one he once had. The most he can look forward to is that others will share his burden of sustaining history.
"For me, I don't care about who comes to the citadel. What I care about is that I live here. I lived here when they were gone. I lived here until now, lonely," he says. "It's a justice to let me live here with others."
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