It was in March 2011 when I visited Baghdad for the first time in my life, even though I grew up only 300 kilometres north of the city. As an Iraqi Kurd, a member of a group that is ethnically and linguistically distinct from Iraqi Arabs, I live in the northern city of Sulaimani, which is part of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Because of the ethnic and religious conflicts that have torn Iraq apart over the past decade, Iraqis from the Kurdish region rarely venture to the South of the country.
