Michael Jansenfinds a surreal sense of calm in Suleimaniya, in Iraq's Kurdish region.
The Tigris twists and turns through the dull dun desert beneath the white wing of the South African plane contracted for flights to Iraq by Royal Jordanian. Suddenly we are over the dark, fringed expanse of Lake Tharthar, fed by sluggish tendrils of the ancient river which has seen so many civilisations rise and fall.
The approach to "Suli" is over a patchwork of rolling desert and fields burnt brown by Iraq's long summer. A wadi green with brush and low trees slips beneath us as the tall stewardess warns us, for the fifth time, that mobile phones switched on before the doors are opened will be confiscated and not returned. The plane is eased onto the runway and makes for the apron before the terminal modelled on the rounded yurt-tents of the nomads who still roam this land. Karin and I show our journalistic credentials and passports to an official.
"Back in five minutes," he says briskly and returns in 10. It would have taken 10 weeks or even 10 months (and, perhaps, a large bribe) to secure a journalist visa from Baghdad.
The airports at Suli and Irbil are open gates to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north and the rest of the country. The Kurdish - not the Iraqi - flag flies over Suli's airport. Kurdish tranquillity generally prevails, except along the region's mountainous frontiers where a few thousand Turkish- and Iranian-Kurdish guerillas are battling the vast armies of Ankara and Tehran in terrain where only sure-footed foot soldiers can deploy. Like the Iraqi Kurds, they want autonomy.
We take a bus to the checkpoint and pick up a taxi to join the stream of traffic into town. Along the roadside stand clumps of large white plastic containers filled with costly blackmarket petrol. Kurdistan, like the rest of postwar oil-rich Iraq, suffers from a shortage of fuel for vehicles and generators.
The Zagros mountains form a bare, dark-brown backdrop for Suli, a medium-sized town with an Iranian rather than Iraqi flavour. We pass the unfinished breeze-block homes of the poor, water trickling out of pipes from kitchens and toilets and seeping into the soil. We pause before ambitious upmarket two- and three-storeyed apartment buildings in construction, some bearing signs for flats for sale.
On the left side of the highway stands a wall painted with scenes from the idylls of the Kurds: pastoral running water, lakes with sailboats, a thrusting horse's head, quail and partridge and sheep, trees and hillsides. The Kurds, a solid, rural folk planted in cities like Suli, have romantic fantasies.
The Suli Palace, our five-star tower-block hotel, looms over the old city's warren of shops and a charming park where children slide down plastic chutes while men in baggy trousers, cumberbunds and turbans chat as they stroll between the trees and sparse flower beds.
The main thoroughfare is packed with afternoon shoppers, although the roadway has been ravaged by a public works department intent on drainage. The gorgeous grapes, apples, nuts and pomegranates piled on barrows come from Iran. The tins of olives and oil in the stalls are from Syria, the manufactured goods from Turkey. Northern Iraq depends on neighbours for wellbeing. In addition to food, they provide electricity to this power-starved country: here we receive 17 hours a day, Baghdad has only one or two.
Turkey, outraged by recent attacks by Turkish-Kurdish rebels, has suspended regular flights from Istanbul to Suli and Irbil and threatens to close the border. Dr Diar Ahmad, deputy chief executive officer in one of the largest Kurdish enterprises, says his 27 companies are already feeling the pinch because goods are not coming.
"There are more than 500 Turkish companies operating here," he remarks. They, too, are suffering.
Still, no one feels crisis-ridden, although the Turkish army has pledged to invade if the Kurdish regional government fails to meet Ankara's demands for extradition of Turkish-Kurdish rebel leaders and a halt to the flow of funds and arms to the guerrillas. If next Monday, Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President George W Bush fail to find a formula to mollify the generals, this city and region, the only peaceful part of Iraq, could become a war zone.