ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — He rejoices when the young sit around him. He has lessons on life to pass along and a story to tell, particularly to boys who are madly in love or whose hearts have been broken.
People call him Ali Ashq – “Ali the Lover” -- but Ali Abdullah Sheikh calls himself “the minister of loneliness,” comparing himself to a butterfly freely flying over the mountains and belonging to no society.
Ali is 75 years old. More than 40 years ago, a girl broke his heart and he isolated himself from the rest of society and decided to live alone in the mountains. Since then, he has been living around the Geli Eli Beg Waterfall, located between Korek Mountain to the north and Bradost Mountain to the west in Erbil province.
Ali says he left his parents and his village, Sreshma, on “the third night after Ahmad Hassan Bakir became president of Iraq.” Bakir was the fourth president of Iraq, serving from July 1968 until July 1979.
"I was a shepherd and I was in love with my cousin. Her parents did not let her get married to me. Their excuse was that my brain was not OK," he explains, expressing his grief.
He adds, "It was not true. There was nothing wrong with my brain. They just did not want to give their daughter to me."
He has not returned to his parents or his village since 1968, and does not know anything about his cousin except that she married someone else after he abandoned society. "I have no feelings toward her anymore,” he says. “It’s over."
Ali describes his parents as irresponsible. "I have forgotten about them," he says.
In the beginning, he slept in caves and under trees in the mountains. Since the 1980s, he has been sleeping in a small room overlooking the waterfall. The room was originally built as a bathroom for tourists visiting the waterfall, but was never used, and so Ali took it over.
Ali’s room is dark and stuffed with old blankets, dirty dishes and a lot of unnecessary equipment. However, he speaks fondly of his few possessions. "No president in the world has what I have," he says.
Shopkeepers around the waterfall and the traffic police based in the area are very generous toward him, Ali says, providing him with food, water and fuel in the cold winter weather.
Moreover, a professor at Sulaimani University promised to build him a house that overlooks the waterfall, with a statue of Ali in front. The professor wants Ali to become the symbol of love in Kurdistan.
Ali is annoyed by all the tourists who come to the waterfall. "They are noisy and behave as if they have never seen nature," he says, adding that he prefers night to day because it is calm and he can think; during the day, he mostly sleeps.
His speaks his final words sadly: "Don't be mad for anyone, because they don't deserve it."
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