I do at times wish to have perhaps given more thought in the bazaar to bringing home a lovely tea set with those tall thin glasses and miniature sugar spoons, or a handmade textile of sorts that’s not possible to find here—like a small woven rug or a vibrant scarf with endless uses. The bother of lugging too much through airports is why I avoid it. Stupid reasoning, maybe.
"Less is more" tends to win with me.
So here I am empty-handed. But, by no means am I impoverished in spirit, thought, or the chance to be made better by what has been seen and what is still being seen in my memory. I have wished a pathetic number of times in the past three days to be behind my camera in front of people like these men here. So I guess that is what I brought home. And I am grateful—grateful tenfold, frankly, for that than if I had bought the loveliest of tea sets in all of Kurdistan.