We arrived in Qamishli on the eve of Eid's beginning (for Sunnis at least; Shia Muslims begin their fast a day later) and the city was bustling in a way that reminded me of Christmas festivities in provincial country towns in southern Germany. The same dark cheer, tables of wares displayed, twinkling lights. All that was missing was gluhwein.

Border towns - the centre of town is 1000m away from the border crossing into Turkey - have an allure all unto themselves. Perhaps the fact that most of the people are strangers, all on their way to somewhere else, nobody quite achieving that lived-in familiarity that residents of capital cities, for instance, often display. I prefer the border atmosphere, and could easily imagine living in a town such as Qamishli, surely a centre for blossoming intrigues and the like...

We weren't quite sure what we planned to do in Qamishli. It had something to do with borders, and something to do with Kurds we hoped, and perhaps had something to do with Iraq. A teacher back in Damascus had talked wistfully of kaliiche, a Qamishli cookie speciality, and first we went in search of that. It turned out they tasted like the Austro-German lebkuchen, or I guess like the special ingredient that goes into lebkuchen as the texture was quite different. We ended up with 3.5 kilos of cookies to take back with us to Damascus (thanks to our kind driver).

Qamishli, at any rate, boasts two, perhaps three, restaurants that one might distinguish from the usual kebab-joints and hunger-mahalls. Sahara, which seemed permanently closed during our stay, probably due to Eid, and Gabriel's, where we ate on our first evening in town. With a fully-stocked bar, we tucked into a full half-Syrian half-European meal. Hummous, Fattoush, Tabbouleh, Kibbe ma'liiyeh, Mutabbal, Chips, Beef with mushrooms etc. All rounded off with the misnomer of the Jordanian-brewed Pennsylvania beer.

Later that evening, meandering back to our hotel we stopped off at yet another sweet-shop (this, I might add, after a session on the world's slowest internet connection in an internet cafe) in search of our mystery sweet (we didn't know the name at this point). At any rate, we ended up discussing with the owner about hiring a driver to drive us to Iraq, and then, after various twists and turns, discussing the matter further with a Kurdish 'fixer' of sorts. It turned out to be a dead-end, not least because of our poor timing bang at the beginning of Eid, but also because he only began to grasp what we wanted to do in Iraq after several attempts at an explanation. The shop-owner and fixer talked between themselves in Kermanchi Kurdish (the Turkish variant/dialect, as distinguished from Sorani Kurdish, which is much closer to Arabic) and I enjoyed recognising the odd Turkish word. It was a jolt into the kingdom of the new, that which waits to be discovered. Always one for a headlong dive into mystery, it made me very happy to be in Qamishli.

Next morning, having to send a file via email to London urgently, I searched and asked around for an open internet café. In the end, it was a middle-aged Armenian man who opened his shop for me so I could use his computer to connect to the internet - imagine that happening in London on New Year's Day...