WTF Iraq: The first installment

This post marks the official start of my new series, WTF Iraq, in which I share with you freaky weird things as seen in everyday life here.

Let's start with these two:

It's so hot Erbil that the bazaar vendors face significant sun damage to their products. That, it seems, doesn't deter them from trying to sell their products anyway. I saw a stack of misshaped Kinder eggs for sale around the corner, ice cream with a whole first layer of ice-cream flavored puddle and now this, a power cord Jon bought in the bazaar for $6USD in the box. When he pulled it out at home, it looked like this:



Needless to say, they're not so good about returns here.

But here's the real freaky weird WTF of the day. Last night, while on a late night Felafel run, we found this sitting in the middle of the sidewalk:



That's right, boys and girls, a coffin. In the middle of the sidewalk, in front of a cell phone store. When we tried to ask the store owner who was inside the coffin, we couldn't get a real answer. After posting it on facebook, we learned that this coffin, as well as two others, are ancient graves from city leaders that were there long before the marketplace, street or sidewalk popped up. Everything else was built around it and shop owners look after the grave site as part of their daily business.