Alex says this is a better New Yorker piece, filled with cultural tidbits and personal descriptions of a humorous character.

The people of Kurdistan are mostly Sunni Muslim, but pre-Islamic religions still survive, syncretistic practices are not uncommon, and, under the surface of intellectual life here, one finds resentment of the early Arab propagators of Islam.
...
Jalal Talabani, the chief of the P.U.K. ... is rotund and garrulous, a kind of Zorba the Kurd, who believes that there is no inappropriate time to crack jokes or to eat large quantities of barbecued meat.

Zorba the Kurd. Huh huh.