“I was seven years old when I started working in this bazaar,” 37-year-old Idrees Ahmed told Rudaw English. “My dad had worked here since 1965.”
The centuries-old bazaar is located south of Erbil Citadel in the city’s center. It is a maze of narrow paths and alleys between mudbrick walls and shops selling everything - mountain honey and homemade cheese, tailored traditional fashions, slabs of freshly butchered meat, the newest cell phones, piles of juicy strawberries, rows of shoes and slippers, enormous pans of sweet baklava, and bolts of colourful, sparkling fabric like those in Ahmed’s shop - all sheltered under a roof of ridged metal.
A fire tore through the bazaar last May, burning down a total of 270 shops in the Qaysari Bazaar and seven storage units. More than 100 people were injured in the blaze, according to data from the governor’s office.
Back then, Rudaw spoke to Ahmed. In a video of the interview that has since gone viral across the Kurdistan Region and beyond, Ahmed is seen with tears streaming down his face as he watched the devastating blaze ravage his three shops - one he inherited from his father, who had passed away in 2020, and two he had rented.
When speaking to Rudaw again last week, Ahmed explained the tears he shed were not for the goods he lost, but for the memories he had with his late father that were burnt by the flames.
“The fire happened around 9:10 pm, it was exactly then when I got a phone call. When I came here it was really crowded. Because of the traffic, it was 9:30 pm by the time I arrived. When I arrived, the fire had reached my store, the stores were burned. My stores had all completely burned down,” he said.
He said firefighters arrived quickly, but it took hours to bring the fire under control, partly due to the highly flammable materials in the bazaar like the fabric for sale in his shop. The flames continued to burn well into the night, until around 3 am.
“Firefighters, guards, and Asayish [security forces] were here, but it was hard to control because the fire was big, and a lot of people were coming. They were helping us,” he said. “There was this guy, we were taking his goods outside so they wouldn’t catch fire.”
Fires are a frequent concern in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, especially during the scorching summer months when the risks are heightened. Safety standards are often ignored, with many buildings lacking adequate fire extinguishers, evacuation routes, and emergency exits.
This was not the first time Ahmed’s store was destroyed by fire.
“Our store has burned twice. This is the second time that it burned. Our store also burned in 1987,” he said, explaining that at that time only his father’s and a few other shops were burned and there was not a huge financial loss because there were few goods stored in the shop.
He recalled his father’s words: “My father was very grateful. He always told me ‘son, be grateful to God. God gives and God takes. Be grateful to God. God has taken it, and God will give it back.’”
Ahmed hopes his eldest child, his son, will continue the family business.
“I am married. I have three children, two daughters and a son. My son is 13 years old. My daughters, one is ten and the other is nine. My son likes the bazaar, he likes this profession, he is used to it. I bring him here, it makes him very happy. We are Kurds, and Kurds take pride in their work and everything they have,” he said, breaking into a wide smile that reaches his eyes.
For Ahmed, the bazaar defines his identity as a Kurd and he feels the responsibility to keep it alive and thriving. “The Qaysari bazaar is known worldwide. It is not only known in Kurdistan. In Erbil, this bazaar is popular. Erbil is known for this bazaar… People come here from everywhere, from Europe, they visit the Qaysari bazaar.”
“Everyone here is family, the time we spend here together, we don’t spend it with our family at home because we spend most of our time at the bazaar. We are all like brothers here at the Qaysari,” Ahmed said.
Prime Minister Masrour Barzani visited the Qaysari Bazaar after the blaze and promised that the government would “restore everything, brick by brick.”
In September, Erbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw announced that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had started compensating business owners affected by the fire, with payments ranging between 2.5 million and 20 million Iraqi dinars ($1,890 to $15,200).
Ahmed said that he was given a “small amount” towards the renovation of his store.
“The renovation work began after two months and continued for nearly nine months until completion. Erbil’s governorate office provided us with a small amount of money to help support us in renovating our shops. The amount given to me to restart my business was five million dinars (around $3,300),” he said.
That amount was not enough to cover the renovation work that needed to be done so Ahmed had to find money from other sources.
“After my stores burned, we sold our house, we sold what we had to revitalize the store. There is nothing in our hands, even now there is nothing left. We spent all we had on the store because we owed a lot to the bazaar [wholesalers]. We paid back our debts. We still have debts to pay back,” he said.
He has also given up the lease on the two shops he had been renting. “The rent was too much for us. We could only reopen this one,” he said, referring to the shop he inherited from his father.
Asked if he had ever considered closing the shop after going into debt and selling all his property to revitalize it, Ahmed said: “We would not sell our store for a million dollars so that it stays under our watch, and so that we can keep it as a memory. For our Kurdishness too, we are recognized by this. People have known us here for generations.”
“The original people of Erbil, my father’s generation who are the elders, none of them have sold their stores. They have all remained here,” he added. “I believe in myself, always. God willing, as long as we are safe and well, God will provide. The market will do better, and will be brought back to life. We await God’s providence.”
On Wednesday, the bazaar officially reopened.
“Work on both the new and archaeological sections of the Qaysari Bazaar, which had a total of 270 shops, has been completed,” Sangar Mohammed, supervisor of the renovation process, told Rudaw last week, noting that only aesthetic repairs remain, which will be undertaken by shop owners.
Mohammed said that the historical section of the bazaar, where the walls are made with mudbrick, “has not been modified but has been renovated in the same way.” However, in the new section of the market, everything has been rebuilt.
Back in business, Ahmed explained that few of his customers are Kurdish.
The KRG has struggled to pay the salaries of its civil servants on time and in full for a decade due to financial hardships that worsened after the suspension of its oil exports in March 2023, following a court ruling on a dispute between Iraq and Turkey over the Kurdistan Region’s independent oil sales.
Ahmed said this means most Kurds do not have money to spend at the bazaar. “How does the business stay alive? It depends on Turks, Arabs, and others who primarily buy things from us. Kurds rarely come, because they don’t have much money. It is mostly foreigners who buy things,” he said.
Baghdad has taken on the responsibility of covering the KRG’s payroll and is engaged in ongoing negotiations with Erbil to ensure the timely disbursement of salaries so Ahmed is hopeful that business will be better this year.
“Our morale is high, always. We do not break or fall. Our morale stays high because we are Kurdish and Kurds never fall to their knees. They are stubborn. They do what they have to,” he said.
