13 Kilometers with Kulbars

Rain and snow may be blessings in Tehran and many other cities, but for men who move about in the snowy, mountainous border region of Iran and the territory of Kurdistan, over 125 kilometers west of Sanandaj, not only are snow and rain not blessings, but what turn their bread into stone. When it snows hard, these men don’t just pay with their livelihoods, they also pay with their lives. This is the annual story of kulbars in the border province of Marivan, a story we’ve all overlooked — that is, until December 16th, when the frozen corpse of Azad Khosravi was found in the Tateh Pass.

But the greatest tragedy wasn’t what happened to Azad, it was what happened to his little brother, Farhad. On a dark morning in the snowy mountains, Farhad, at 14 years of age, made a sacrifice and paid with his life. His sacrifice of taking his own warm clothes off and covering his brother with them was not only for his brother, to for all the two thousand kulbar who daily trek the impassable route in pursuit of bread for their families. Azad and Farhad opened the eyes of many — one of them myself, Sadegh Emami, a reporter dispatched from the “Fahikhtegan” newspaper to Marivan and the Tateh Pass — to the phenomenon of kulbars, border-crossing couriers. I travelled to Marivan in search of Azad and Farhad’s story, not only to tell the story of these two brothers, but also to shed light on kulbars and their conditions.

The assignment to travel to Marivan was given to me in a matter of hours, much in the same way that I was dispatched to Mahshahr to report on the turmoils after the rise in gas prices there. Finalizing the trip took a few hours, and in the meantime so did the possibilities of air travel to Sanandaj — there were no flights available until Monday December 23rd. On Sunday, I left the west terminal for Sanandaj, and arrived there in the afternoon. From there, I left for Marivan by taxi. The passenger sitting in the front seat was carrying on a conversation with the driver, and the middle-aged man sitting to my left inserted himself into their conversation every so often.

I rarely talk about an assignment on my way to it. But this time, the story turned out differently. My mobile phone rang while we were en route. They called from the newspaper “Sobh-e No” for comments on the various accounts about Mahshahr. I was one of the people who had travelled to Mahshahr, so I had to answer the questions. When the call was over, the man sitting in the front seat shifted, turned toward me, and asked in Persian with a Kurdish accent, “What do you do, mister?” I could tell from his eyes that he thought I was an officer of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. And I had guessed right. During our conversation he mentioned several times that if I weren’t an officer and was indeed a reporter, then I should write about the reality of situation at hand. And this is where my journey to Marivan really began.

The first thing we discuss is the representatives of the county of Sanandaj in parliament. He asks: “Do you agree that representatives sell their time to other representatives?” Rather than a yes or no, I say, “There are so many other ways of making money in parliament that there’s no need to sell one’s time.”

It seems he’s not talking about making money. He continues: “God is my witness, God is my witness, we have six representatives from the province, but not one comes forward to talk about the people’s suffering.” He gives me the first bit of information about the work of kulbars: “The only route to take to bring back the loads without getting hassled is the Tateh mountain.” He tells me about the flood of tourists to the area during spring and summer. He laments the lack of internet reception in the mountains there preventing him from showing me the beauty of the region he is telling me about on his Instagram. Not only is there no internet reception, but there’s no phone signal either. So he keeps telling me about the problems: “But please, if you’re coming here…if you’re an officer just going to work, never mind…but if you’re really a reporter, then do the right thing, take footage to give to the news media, News 20:30 or channel 1.”

I ask, “How did this issue become political?” He says in his same Kurdish accent, “I’m not a political person; I’m not thinking I want the government to collapse. Collapse for Trump to come in? For John Kerry to come in? For the president of (the Zionist regime of) Israel to take over? For them to determine our lives? What we’re asking is, Why are gas prices so high? Why are things not regulated?”

I say I want to accompany the kulbars on their return to Iran from the border area of the territory of Kurdistan. The driver says in a Kurdish I can understand, This man cannot take that route. The front passenger says, Why not? The driver, who is a former kulbar, says in his Kurdish, He can’t. The front passenger will not have this. He doesn’t say, You can’t do it, but keeps speaking of the difficulty of the trek: “This route isn’t flat. God is my witness, in some parts the route narrows so much so that the kulbars have to get into a single file moving like an army of ants.” I ask, “What if one of them slips?” Now the driver gets into the conversation: “Things don’t get back in order, mister…that’s why I say you can’t go.”

He laments the lack of factories in the city. I ask how this situation is related to the unsafe conditions. He says: “There are more than 100 monied people in Marivan, but they don’t invest in the city. There were plans to build a hamburger factory, but it was abandoned half way.” After a half hour of talking, the passenger sitting to my left and taking up 40% of the back seat asks in a thick Kurdish accent: “What is the issue here?” I took him to be an Iranian Kurd who does not speak Persian, but I realized from the Kurdish conversation that he had come to Iran two years earlier from Kirkuk in Iraq. The front passenger who claimed not to know about or engage in politics kept hinting at politics in our conversation. He asks: “But seriously brother, is Mr. Rohani serious that he only found out about the spike is gas prices on Friday morning?” “I don’t know,” I interrupt. He goes on to say that Mr. Rohani was being mocked for this in the foreign press.

In the city of Marivan, a friend took me to an inn. We planned that I be taken on Monday morning to the site where Azad and Farhad Khosravi died by someone intimately familiar with the area. At 9 AM, we found Kak Abed. He had traditional Kurdish clothes on and had arrived with a beat up old ’84 model Kia Pride. We got on the road and started talking and I put the voice recorder on the dashboard. Kak Abed was a former kulbar himself. He said he carried a load in 2018 and made 600,000 Tomans [Iranian unit of money worth 10 Iranian Rials]. It was a staggering sum. As a former kulbar, he had total familiarity with the job, but said the job wasn’t worth it. Over the following hour and a half he told us everything he knew about kulbar couriering. While we were talking, he would point out Toyotas driving the loads they had received from the kulbars into the city.

That conversation is a story for another time, but the primary goal of our trip was getting to the Tateh mountain and the site of Azad and then Farhad’s deaths. Kak Abed asked: “Do you want to enter Iraqi soil?” I tell him that I would have liked that very much, but the newspaper hadn’t authorized that. We agree that I climb for as long as I have the strength to so that I can experience firsthand the challenges kulbars face.

There is a police outpost at the head of the route. We try to take the roads for as long as we can on this long mountainous route, but the police officer says the road is closed. We are forced to park the car and start for the mountains from the same point kulbars do. After a short distance, we enter the same road the officer says is closed, but there is no trace of snow and ice. Every few steps, Kak Abed says, “the officer lied,” and nothing else, just repeats that he officer had lied.

In some parts of the route huge chunks of snow have avalanched, and other parts where snow has turned into ice. At the beginning of the route, we spot a team of three of four kulbars without loads. I try to speak to one of them in Persian and film it, but he refuses. He says in Persian, “They have a file on me for getting into an argument, and I don’t speak much Persian.” He doesn’t give me an interview, but he does pose for a selfie. He says: “Post my picture on Instagram and call me a hard-working kulbar.” He asks for my Instagram handle and we part after the photo. Kak Abed tells me a few steps later that the kulbar didn’t talk because he fears the [Iraqi] Kurdish territory side: “They say they’ve afraid the TV station Rudaw would get a hold of the footage and air it [Rudaw is a broadcast and digital news network based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq]. They're afraid that the other side will not give them any more loads and even cause them trouble. The guide says that the kulbars have been filmed on several occasions and the footage was given to the democratic party and the Komalah [the communist part of Kurds in Iran].

We climb a bit higher. We finally find someone willing to talk in front of the mobile phone camera. He was on his way back from the border on the night of the accident. The first thing I ask him about is the site of death, since I’ve taken this route to at least visit that site. He directs me to go further up look for a painting on the wall before the Tateh Pass,100 meters to the other side. I ask him to tell me about that night. He says; “It was cold that night. I was returning from the border around 8 PM. About 20-30 people were on their way toward the border. I told them to turn around, there was a blizzard. 10 of them turned around and the rest went on. At the time, I didn’t know whether Azad and Farhad were part of this group that continued on, but I later learned that they were.” I say, “Everyone said they were inexperienced.” He says: “That’s right, they were inexperienced. Where’s a 14 year old boy’s experience? He’s supposed to be playing at that age. But if he had continued on for 5 more minutes, he would have reached the owners of the merchandise goods, but none of them heard the boy because of the blizzard, no matter how much he had shouted.”

We climb up a little further. We find another kulbar. After explaining myself, he agrees to tell us about the kulbars in Persian. He has covered his face almost entirely with his hat, with only his nose and eyes visible. I ask a question, but he speaks four words in Persian and the rest in Kurdish. And the first thing he says is: “I don’t know what to say until you ask a question.” My first question is, “How many people travel this route daily?” He says: “When the weather is good about two thousand people a day.” I am only able to discern names of the cities that he mentions, Marivan and Saghez. and that people come from those areas to work as kulbars. He speak in Kurdish for 40 seconds. I ask: “Is it really difficult to speak Persian?” He says: “Honestly, I get Persian, but I can’t speak it well.”

Along parts of the route barley and alfalfa hay (feed) are spread on the ground. These are rest spots where exhausted mules incapable of continuing on stop to refuel. To skip this, some kulbars feed their mules stimulants like Tramadol, or alcohol to perk them up. A little further up, we get to a fork in the road, one path on the left, one on the right. On the right, the kulbars carry back loads from the border, and on the left is the Tateh Pass by which kulbars somehow circumvent the Zhalaneh police station. Three kulbars with loads are on the move at the fork in the road. These are the first kulbars that I see with loads, which means they were able to reach and pick up loads, now returning with their hands full. The rest of the kulbars on the route are returning empty-handed because they couldn’t get their hands on any goods. On the right side, a young man with Kurdish attire and blond hair refuses to talk to the camera. I ask about their conditions. He says things are tough, that he was not working on the day of the accident but that he was among the three thousand people looking for Farhad, only to find him a few days later. During our conversation, three kulbars, whose loads include a German BOSCH brand vacuum cleaner, pass by. Further ahead, we see two kulbars, one young, around 31 years, and another, middle aged and tired. They don’t have much information about the site of the death. We pass them and get to the highest point at the border of Iran and the territory of Kurdistan. Kak Abed says: “Down there, the first village belongs to Iran, the second village from which smoke rises belongs to the territory Kurdistan. A little past that on the left we see the town of Halabja [in the Kurdistan region of Iraq], which Kak Abed calls Martyr Halabja. I ask why. He refers to Saddam’s chemical bombs. I really would have liked to hike down and follow in the footstep of the kulbars from the beginning of their route, but instead I had to turn around and look for where Azad and Farhad had died.

We went to the Tateh Pass. We trekked for a few hundred meters. There were mules’ hoofprints in the heavy snow about 30 centimeters deep. We pass this and get to where there is also a burnt tire in addition to the hoofprints. Kak Abed who is walking ahead of me calls out to announce the site of Azad’s death. I keep walking and realize from seeing the painting on the rock that this is the area where Azad had frozen to death, and from where Farhad had set out to get help, only for his body to be found a few days later. We stay there for a few minutes. The trail is dusty and challenging, so we turn around and hike down. We see almost no kulbars on the way down. A few people strike up a conversation with me down the route, close to the outpost. I ask about Azad, say that I’d heard some people refused to help him. There are two middle-aged men who hadn’t been able to pick up loads and were retuning empty-handed. They say: “It was dishonorable. Had they helped, Azad might have lived.”  Another struggles to speak in Persian: “If this boy was a Kurd, one of their own, why didn’t anyone help to save his life?” He also has grievances against kulbars who own mules: “Some of the people working these routes are only in it for their own money.” After traveling quite a bit of distance, we finally got to the main road, drank some tea, and got going to visit Azad and Farhad’s parents.

 

Traveling to the village Ney

On the way to the Village called Ney, we call the village chief, who doesn’t answer his phone. Maybe it’s because of the volume of calls in the past few days when he’s been the center of attention. We have to call one of Kak Abed’s friends. Kak Abed says: “It’s better to pay a visit with someone they know.” So it’s planned that we visit Osman Khosravi, Farhad and Azad’s father, accompanied by Kak Osman. We coordinated things with Kak Osman and headed toward the village. You arrive at Basij Square a few meters after you pass the highway on the way to Marivan from Sanandaj. Ney village is on the left side of the road. We arrived at Ney around 4:10 PM. I hadn’t prayed yet, and I knew that going to the Khosravi house for a talk would take at least one hour and I would miss my prayer time. So I decide to pray in the Nay village mosque. Sunni mosque architecture has its own beauty. I see two people washing the grounds as I enter the mosque. One of the mosque attendants who had a large build and a relatively long beard who also spoke good Persian told me I could go upstairs to pray. Kak Osman arrived by the time I finished praying. The three of us head toward the deceased Azad and Farhad Khosravi’s paternal home.

I didn’t have any pre-conceived notions of their lives but for what I had seen in the news. The gas was shut off because of an unpaid bill. If I’m not mistaken, the house was almost at the end of the village. There was a pen in front of the house with a few heads of sheep. Farhad and Azad’s cousin said they had bought the sheep the previous year and the flock had grown. Though the house is in a village, it doesn’t have much of a foundation and it’s a little too small, at least for 6 people. No one was home. I ask why no one is there. They say that the family had been planning repairs for a few weeks with the help of villagers, so the family was staying with relatives for a few days until the repairs were done. I ask Kak Osman who says the gas has been shut off? One of the young people who knows Persian says: “It’s not like that, they have gas pipes, but not all the way to the house itself.”

We were in the village on Monday, when the young people were busy painting the windows. Mamoosta Abubakr, an officer born in the village Ney, comes over to welcome us as soon as he hears that we are there to do a report. A few moments later, a young broad-shouldered boy, who I come to understand from what he is saying is Behzad, the younger brother of Farhad and Azad, says in his rudimentary Persian: “Please do us the honor to come visit my father is at my uncle’s house.” Though it’s quite a distance to the uncle Kaveh Khosravi’s house, I preferred to walk and talk with the village’s Mamoosta. I tell Mamoosta right away that I find it difficult to call him Mamoosta, and would rather address him “Haj Agha” like a Shi’a clergy. He says: “This past week, we’ve been busy trying to finish the repairs as quickly as possible. They’re going to work through the night to finish.” I say I’ve heard their gas was shut off. He says in a mixture of Persian and Kurdish: “No, no, it hasn’t been shut off. Don’t pay any attention! It’s just a rumor. They were done laying down the pipes inside, they just hadn’t finished it outside, but the gas has been turned on for three days now.” He shows me the piping from the neighbor’s gas meter. “See! These pipes aren’t painted yet, which shows they’ve recently been installed. A charitable person got this done.” I want to take a picture. He says: “If you start from where the pipes are painted, it’ll show that the piping is new.” He continues, “There are people who take advantage of this situation too. Some people went and raised money in the name of the family under false pretenses. We’re against this, because if there is going to be any help, it should be given directly to the family.” I ask about the accident. He says: “I can say that this kind of thing has not happened for maybe 50 years. There were people who lost a child, but two children, no.”

You can tell from talking with Mamoosta that he has some higher education. I seize the opportunity and ask him as many questions as come to mind. “What job were these poor creatures doing before their accident?” They couldn’t have been sitting idle at home before the night of the accident. Mamoosta mentions strawberry farming in the Marivan region: “They were farmers. There are strawberry hothouses around the village. Azad and Farhad’s job was to fill pots. These two were the only people sought after for hire by the surrounding villages. Azad didn’t talk much and minded his own business. He filled about three thousand pots a day. He was a favorite.” I interrupt him and ask: “So then why did they take up couriering?” He continues: “This wasn’t their first time, they had gone before. It’s not farming season, so they went. If there was work here, they wouldn’t have sough that kind of work.” He looks at me: “Do you know what I mean? I’m saying they went because there was no work.” He points to the house being repaired and says: “Some village sponsors helped to make these repairs possible. The people painting right now are from the village. They worked today and they’re due back tonight to remove the water heater, cabinets, and cupboards and get them better ones.” I ask about a rumor that the First Vice President has promised assistance. He replies: “Yes, but the issue has fallen by the wayside and they haven’t paid much attention.” I say I hear that some people are trying to make the issue political. Without letting me finish the sentence, he says: “Yes! Yes! I already said there were locals who turn things political. For example, they say they did the work to make a buck. The government doesn’t do anything for the family if the issue becomes political. These people were not political…not at all…they minded their own business. The four brothers were close in age, so it would have been natural for them to be up to no good, but not once did that happen, no one heard a peep from them.”

Mamoosta praises the well-behaved children of Kak Osman Khosravi: “The most important thing to me is that despite their poverty, they never stole, not once, which is admirable. We have people around here who may even be doing well, but they also steal.” I also ask about Farhad. He considers the boy savvy: “I mean if he were by himself in the mountains, he would have survived. Kak Farhad was several times smarter than Azad and Zanyar.” When Mamoosta is recounting the part about Farhad taking his coat off to give to Azad, his hand automatically slides up to his own coat. He undoes a few buttons and says: “He took his coat off and gave it to his brother and left to find help. If he were alone, he would have come back alive. This was God’s will and we must have faith in it.”

I ask Mamoosta if at least 30 people die on this route annually. Farhad and Azad were not the first and won’t be the last. So what should be done now? He says: “There’s nothing we can do!” It’s clear he hasn’t understood me. I repeat, “What should the government do? What’s the solution?” He replies: “The solution is for the government to open the borders, which used to be open and inclusive. Kak Osman has a family of 6 now. If the borders were open, and the family had permission to bring in a load even twice a week, that would have meant 200,000 Tomans in income for each load. I believe 400,000 Tomans would have been enough for this family. Because they could have supplemented that with income from collecting trash and dried bread. What we need is inclusive borders. Right now the border is only good for kulbars who have the strength to carry the load. We have several widows in this village. If the borders were open, they would have lent their cards to the villagers, taken their share of 40 Tomans and handed them the rest. This way people could make a living.”

We reached Farhad and Azad’s uncle’s house. Before entering, I asked Mamoosta if there were particular customs for giving condolences. He said pay your respects according to your own customs. I entered the house. I recognized Kak Osman from the photos I had seen of him. He had come to the door to greet us. I gave my condolences and we sat down. I told them the reason for my visit right off the bat. But everyone else talked more than Kak Osman did. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they aired grievances. During the three days that I was in Marivan, I summed up the people’s concerns. Everyone wanted just one thing: open borders. But there were people in Farhad and Azad’s uncle’s home who talked about other matters in between their complaints which were different than other people’s difficulties. Things that were ordinary to me, but new and unusual to most other villagers. Maybe it’s not terribly uncommon. During the ordeal, many of the news outlets tried their best to take political advantage of this bitter situation for their own benefit. Some of these attempts were obvious at Farhad Khosravi’s funeral. Who knows, maybe some people attended Farhad’s funeral because of a guilty conscience. The same people who refused to help find Azad Khosravi, instead getting themselves out of the snow and blizzard and taking off. But aside from the political issues, the villagers had legitimate grievances.

Kakeh Khosravi, Farhad’s uncle, shows me his card. On it is written, “Card for crossing border areas, issued to cocoon-weavers and kulbars.” He asks: “What can you do with this card when the borders are closed? Of what use is this card?” He takes out a credit card from his bag, on which it written, “Border-dwellers credit card.” There is a bank account number on the card as well. Apparently, a small sum, about 300,000 Tomans per month would be deposited into the accounts of village kulbars as payment for not going to the border. But some people say the money was never deposited, and some say there was a maximum of two deposits. Kakeh Khosravi says: “If you don’t believe that there were no deposits into this account, take the card and keep whatever they deposit into it.” After considerable complaints, he says: “If we didn’t have problems, we wouldn’t go all the way up to the top of a mountain. This isn’t a border, dear friend, it’s the valley of death. The government set up a border a few kilometers down the road, so why did they close it?” He says, helpless in the face of his changing fate: “These two boys are gone, it’s finished, we have to think of something for the future so these accidents don’t ever happen again.” He points to the state the father of the two dead boys is in and says: “This man (Kak Osman) makes 200,000 Tomans a week on his own collecting trash and dried bread.”

There are so many grievances about the closing of the borders that there was little time left to talk to the father of two dead boys. And it’s hard for him to speak in Persian, so Kak Osman who plays the role of interpreter, assists: “On the same day, three mules died of cold on the trek. How could kulbar couriering be proper work for humans?” He doesn’t even stop to interpret and talks nonstop for a few moments. Just then someone with a newspaper in hand enters the house and greets everyone. He goes to another room and from then on to the end of our visit, which was another 20 minutes, we didn’t see Kak Osman Khosravi anymore. I don’t know what happened, but in the middle of our conversation a young man wearing Kurdish clothes came towards me where I was sitting and asked: “Sir, are you a government man?” Kak Osman the interpreter who was beside me replied, “No! He’s a reporter.” So he says: “I believe it because you say so.” I could tell from the gist of the conversation that if I had been sent from the government, they would not have received me properly, at least not that man. That said, everyone else in the house received me with Kurdish hospitality and in the end even insisted that I stay for dinner. But there were still too many questions I needed to find answers to.

 

Farhad’s cousin’s account

Before I left Farhad’s uncle’s house, a young man, the cousin of the deceased Farhad and Azad, asked for my Instagram handle. He had already started following me on Instagram before we got to Marivan. His Instagram handle was “Nasseh Yazdani.” I ask him to tell me his account of the death of the two brothers, which he does at noon on Tuesday: “My cousins wanted to go to the border at night, but their parents wouldn’t let them. They insisted, arguing that their friends go because their parents let them, why couldn’t they? In the end, somehow they managed to go. They caught a ride around midnight. My two cousins Zanyar and Jahangir, and Mahmoud (Jahangir’s father), all of them villagers, headed in the direction of the kulbar border area of the Hawraman Tateh region that’s near the Zhalaneh police station. They would go to the border from there. When Jahangir and Mahmoud saw the bad weather conditions at the location where merchandise loads are picked up from their owners, they stayed put and didn’t return. But three others, because of their youth and inexperience, didn’t take the bad weather conditions into account and started on the trek.”

He continues: “After crossing a very tough part of the trek, Azad loses steam and says he cannot continue on. Halfway up, they throw down the loads so at least they themselves could safely get to the destination. They travel for another 5 minutes to reach the top of Tateh mountain. That’s where Azad loses steam. Farhad enlists Zanyar to help, but Farhad is too tall for them to carry back. Zanyar suggests that Farhad continue the trek, but Farhad sends him off to get help, while he stays behind to watch over Azad. Before leaving around 6 AM, Zanyar calls Behzad’s mobile phone with Azad’s phone asking for help, but does’t properly convey the situation. He says, you need to come, Azad cannot walk anymore. The response he hears is that it’s not a big deal, Azad’s legs are just shaky and will be fine. Zanyar leaves, but the weather conditions were so bad that he never returns. It’s unclear anyway whether he went to fetch help or not. Farhad waits for some time, but realizes that help isn’t coming. So he gets on the road himself. Behzad (Azad and Farhad’s brother), and his uncle Borhan arrive to help. By the time they get to the top of Tateh, it’s 8:30 in the morning and Azad is no longer alive. They find his body stuck to the snow and ice. Borhan hoists Azad’s corpse on his back to carry it to the road, and Behzad goes searching for Farhad, but the more he searches, the less he finds. Unfortunately, the witness to the ordeal changes his story each time, but it seems that everyone was thinking of their own life in that severe weather. We searched the mountain for three days. Farhad had trekked halfway, but had turned around. He wasn’t anywhere near Azad, having gotten himself to the bottom of the route. If he had continued on for 5 more minutes, he would have reached the road, or even if he had stayed put on the same road, he would have been alive now and we would have found him, but this is not what happened, and we found his corpse in such a state that his face and hands were black.”

 

Details about the route kulbars take

My search into understanding the bitter events that befell Azad and Farhad Khosravi on their couriering journey resulted in new information.

Many of us reading this, myself included, may not know the details of the journey that these loads take to travel from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Tateh Pass to Marivan to Sanandaj, and finally to Tehran, Iran. It all starts on the soil of the territory of Kurdistan. According to what I heard from kulbars and other informed sources, the request for a load is issued from Tehran or another city by a big merchant or someone with some rank and repute in the bazar. This merchant may be transacting with a merchant on the other side of the border, but neither would be inclined engage in this transfer without an intermediary, which is basically not possible anyway. This is why a merchant who wants to buy goods such as shoes, Samsung television sets, vacuum cleaners, mobile phones, garments, etc. searches for an intermediary in Marivan. The intermediary plays the most important role in the chain of transfer and delivery of the goods. Trusting this intermediary is naturally not easy. The merchant stands to lose or gain 10 Million in one transaction.

Someone who used to be a kulbar himself and knows this process well, sums things up: “The intermediary tells the merchant that they can deliver the load to Tehran guaranteed at the rate of 40,000 Toman per kilo.” This means the intermediary is responsible for anything that might happen to the load on its way. And he must provide a binding guarantee to the original owner of the goods — who is a monied person — with either capital or a deed of value, so that in the event the load doesn’t reach its destination, the owner of the load who has paid the merchant on the other side of the border doesn’t lose money and has a mechanism by which to demand his property. Another one of the kulbars says: “The intermediary who charges 40,000 Tomans for this, pays 5,000 per kilo to the people on the other side of the border to carry the load from Halabja with mules to a certain altitude, 12,000-18,000 Tomans to the kulbars, and 3,000 Tomans to the cars that transport the goods to Marivan. The rest is pure profit for the intermediary.

 

How are the loads transported?

The loads are transported for two hours, either with a mule or a donkey, from the Iraqi Kurdistan territory to the mountain and unloaded there for the kulbars to pick up. The second phase is where the kulbars come in, who either carry the loads themselves or transport them by mules. When the weather is favorable, the mules, that can carry 80-120 kilos, take all the loads. The presence of mules at the border lowers the price of everything. In other words, kulbars charge by weight to carry loads.

For the most part, kulbars head toward the border between midnight and 4 AM to catch the early loads. Three hours later they reach the border where the owners of the loads are waiting for them, each offering rates that vary between 10,000 Tomans per kilo all the way up to 18,000. Though, 18,000 per kilo is reserved for loads that must get delivered in bad weather. If no mules are available, the kulbars charge 12,000 Tomans per kilo, and if there are mules available, the rate is reduced by 1,000 or 2,000 Tomans. The maximum weight kulbars carry is 30 kilos, meaning that in good weather conditions, a kulbar can earn 360,000 Tomans per load. The journey back usually takes 6 hours. The most difficult type of load to carry are garments and fabrics, and the easiest are television sets, which is why the rate for garments is higher than rates for television sets. And the biggest profit to be made lies in two products — contraband and cellular phones. One of the kulbars who had cellular products that Monday said: “I had a 25 kilo load, so I would have normally made 300,000 Tomans by the usual rates, but because I was carrying cellulars products at an estimated value of 90 Million Tomans, I received 750,000 Tomans for the 25 kilo load.” Same goes for carrying satellites. Kulbars charge more because there’s always the risk of arrest. Based on my own experience as a kulbar on Tuesday, LED television sets — for having to remain stable during the transport — are a good choice for kulbars. Two large Samsung LED devices weigh around 48 kilos. Calculating at 12,000 Tomans per kilo, the kulbar can make 570,000 Tomans. The kulbars who are after a bigger profit request larger loads. One of them says: “Some carry up to 70 kilos, but they take Tramadol before the journey.”

That said, not all kulbars are that fortunate. Some of them get in touch with the Iraqi Kurdistan side of the border ahead of time and only set off to the border if loads would be available for them. But even then, they will not score anything if other kulbars and mules arrived ahead of them — like the 15 people I saw en route there — and so they end up returning empty-handed anyway. If getting there takes 3 hours, then coming back takes twice as long because of the load. Some of the kulbars on the route tend not to talk, like the three kulbars at the head of the Tateh Pass who would not talk, despite my insisting. All they said with a thick Kurdish accent was: “It’s dangerous.” They have arrived at the half-way point of the trek back in the Tateh Pass, and have another three hours ahead of them to reach the destination.

The spot where the kulbars unload the goods is across from the Zhalaneh police station, maybe 2 kilometers away in the worst weather conditions. Next to the Toyotas they call 3F of 4.5F, there is a scale where the loads are weighed and cash payments are made right there and then. There are guards along the route kulbars take who watch two things: one, that the kulbars don’t steal the goods, and two, to alert everyone else if police cars drive up. Kulbars have been known to steal the goods to sell in the bazar and pocket several times more than their couriering rates. The guards are there to prevent this from happening. This is why a kulbar nobody knows or an outsider will not be given a load. One of the kulbars tells me: “They ask for our first and last names, our father’s name, and telephone number and address.”

One of the kulbars with a raspy voice agrees to talk, in Persian no less: “I headed out at 6 AM from near the Zhalaneh station and arrived around 10 AM. I picked up a load and returned. It’s 1 PM now and I will deliver this 30 kilo load of cigarettes in 3 hours.” I ask if he comes every day. He says every 9 days. I ask what he makes. He says: “It pays well, I mean, what can I say, we piecemeal together a living from here and there.” I ask if it would be better for the borders to be open. He says: “It would be easier for us if they open. When they’re closed, you have to travel longer distances, 3 hours there and 6 hours back.” Kulbars spend a portion of their income on making the trek. He says: “The roundtrip costs us about 50,000 Tomans.” I ask if it’s hard. He says: “See for yourself. It can’t be described. Where you are tells you the story. These mountains themselves speak of the difficulties.” And finally says: “Did you get it?” I partially did. He offers to be at my disposal should I have any more questions. He tells the guide in a Kurdish that I understand: “Forgive me, my Persian isn’t so good.” I ask the kulbars what happens if one of them slips on the narrow uphill trails? One says: “They all tumble down. Do you know how some people meet their end (die)? They slide down with a tire under them. Sometimes they clock at 50 kilometers per hour. Their heads bash into rocks and that’s the end of them. Out of 30 deaths a year, 10 of them die this way.”

I talk to someone who isn’t carrying a load. He says: “We’re content with this situation, but they won’t leave us in peace. Last night (Monday), the Zhalaneh station came up and confiscated 100,000,000 Tomans worth of goods. Kulbars make 300,000 to 400,000, but there’s no future in this job.” I ask if he would still work as a kulbar if there was a factory in Marivan. “No, I would’t work as a kulbar if I made 100,000 a day.” I ask who benefits the most in this work. He says: “Sometimes, the kulbars, sometimes the owners of the goods, and sometimes the owners of the mules.” Those who own mules charge the highest rate on this route. They charge 100,000,000 for a load of 100 kilos, that’s 10,000 Tomans per kilo. But kulbars who are on foot charge 12,000.”

 

What becomes of the goods that are destroyed

Kulbars assume no responsibility if the goods are destroyed for any reason whatsoever. All that responsibility lies with the intermediary who has guaranteed the goods. Someone in the know says: “Right here in Marivan, we have people who didn’t even have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes, but now they have 10 Billion Tomans invested, and we also have former investors who are now broke, all because of this guarantee.” When kulbars are too tired to carry on, they abandon their loads. Sometimes they toss them down the mountain so the police don’t get their hands on them, but the original owners can pick them up.

 

After delivering the goods

After delivering the goods to the cars that wait for the kulbars, the cars are covered with cloth. They take side, dirt roads to circumvent the police station. Hundreds of Toyotas transport goods on this route on a daily basis, but no measures are taken to prevent this. The daily income of these cars — which cost up to 300,000,000 million Tomans — is a minimum of 1 million Tomans. Of course if the load contains cellular phones, the income goes up to 5 million. It’s easily possible to see this route with binoculars from the Zhalaneh station, and to even close the transport with even one border patrol officer at the pass, but it seems an unwritten rule is at work here: that the transfer just cannot be done before the eyes of the border patrol monitoring kulbars. Hundreds of vehicles that transport kulbars to and from the area do this transfer right near the station, and 3F and 5.4F Toyotas receive and load up the goods easily and without any problems. If the police wanted to blockade this course, they could totally cut off the transfer of goods by closing off those dirt roads. One of the kulbars says: “Do you think it’s possible to carry the contraband so close to the station? In reality, there is no actual road to the station and the officers don’t bother the kulbars. These border patrol stations don’t have any interest in kulbars. Their only concern is to prevent ant-revolutionaries from entering the country.”

 

Being a kulbar is not very popular

One of the villages the kulbars pass on their way to reach the vicinity of the Zhalaneh station is called Dezli. One of the locals says: “Many young people from Dezli don’t come to work as kulbars. They either keep livestock or do other work.” The same goes for the Dareki village. They say many of those villagers are monied people. That area is full of walnut, cherry, and sour cherry trees. Cherries sell anywhere from 7 to 25 Tomans. And a thousand walnuts are traded for 200-500 Tomans. This being the case, very few people from this village choose to work as kulbars.

The architecture of the village buildings isn’t too different than the architecture in the big cities. The façades of many buildings are made of marble, and many of the homes have electric blinds, which isn’t even common in many neighborhoods of Tehran. Nevertheless, being a kulbar is still the best source of income for some people. A young man with a big smile says: “I was a motorbike messenger in Marivan for a few months and made 800,000 Tomans per month. I just made 800,000 for two days of work as a kulbar.” Marivan province had the seventh highest unemployment rate in the country at 28.6% according to the official national census of 1395 [2016] of the Iranian statistics center. 

It is true that many kulbars don’t have any other work, and the government has not taken any measures to build a factory in this city to create jobs, but there is another party to consider here as well: the monied people who work as kulbars. I saw one of these types on Tuesday. He had a private car worth 100 million, and a three-story house, two of whose levels he rents out. One of the kulbars said: “I’ve seen gold jewelers here on the route too.” Another says: “It pays about 100,000 to be a laborer in this city right now. The pay for couriering is high. Do you think that making 700,000 Tomans for 9 hours of work is to be taken for granted? It’s true that there are no factory or civil service jobs in our area, but even if there were, many people would probably not work those jobs because they could make more as kulbars. You can see for yourself, we have people who own the latest model cars and homes, but still work as kulbars.