The Lalesh Temple

...Continued from yesterday:
     For the duration of her stay in Dohuk, Kurdistan, Claire will be giving daily training sessions for the nurses at the city's 200-bed public hospital, which is also a teaching hospital.
      Last Tuesday, April 9, Claire had the day off as it was a Kurdish national holiday. Every April 9 the Kurds celebrate the  anniversary of the liberation of Bagdad and the fall of Saddam Hussein.
       Claire spent the holiday with some fellow MedGlobal volunteers seeing the countryside around the Dohuk area.     

     Claire also had off yesterday, Friday, as the work week is Saturday through Thursday, Friday being the Muslim holy day. Thus Friday is the weekend, as, she informed me, nobody works on the holy day.

      I spoke to Claire via Facebook chat yesterday morning, which was late afternoon in Dohuk.

     When we spoke she was in a coffee shop in town with some MedGlobal volunteers with whom she'd spent the day. 
    They'd just returned from a trip Lalesh, a small mountain village about 50 miles from Dohuk.

   On the way to Lalesh.

     Their destination was the Lalesh Temple, the holiest shrine in the Yazidi faith,

...to which all Yazidis are expected to make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime.

    When Claire and her friends arrived at the entrance they were warmly welcomed by the keeper of the temple, who allowed them to take pictures. However they were told to take off their shoes, as it is required that one be barefooted inside the temple.
    Next to the temple door there is a sculpture of a black snake, the symbol of wisdom for Yazidis.

    Claire said that within the vast temple grounds there were many buildings and thousands of barefoot people who'd made the pilgrimage to this holy site.

   These ancient pots stored in an underground chamber  hold oil used to light the lamps, one pot for each day of the year.

    In this room Pilgrims tie three knots in a scarf  as a prayer. When one's knots are untied the prayer will be answered. One unties the knots in a scarf before retying one's own knots.

     I love the significance of untying each other's knots.
    

    All over the grounds pilgrims were having picnics.

     One family invited Claire and her friends, obviously foreigners, over to their picnic. Though the family among them knew only a few words of English and Claire's group knew no Yazidi, the international language of friendliness, hospitality and generosity sufficed.

   I asked Claire what there was to eat at the picnic and she told me that this family had a whole roasted goat. However, being a vegetarian, Claire ate the beans and rice which they had also brought.
    Claire said everyone in the family was happy to meet some Americans.

    And these Americans were happy to meet this family.