Le voyage de Teteshapi à Erbil, Uruk et Ur

Real talk, I was flying back from Chennai to Frankfurt. You fly through the night, and while the direct flight would take you over Iran, they don't do that for security reasons. Instead, the flight path goes over the Persian Gulf and then along the Tigris, eastern Syria and Turkey. The first light of dawn is starting to show over Northern Iraq, so you can start to see that, but still see the city lights. Mosul would have been visible on the left, but I had a window seat on the right to see Kirkuk and Erbil.

Erbil from the air at night is one of the most recognizable cities on Earth from the air: almost perfectly concentric circles with spokes radiating from its center. You could almost believe that it is a planned city, like Brasilia. However, at the center of those spokes is the Citadel of Erbil, perhaps the oldest continuously occupied town on Earth. It was contemporary with Uruk, and maybe older. Flying over Iraq, the Earth feels so big and small at the same time. So old and new.