Why I needed the knitting needles in Iraq

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Yesterday I wrote about my unfortunate experience buying knitting needles and someone wanted to know why I was trying to buy knitting needles in Iraq. The reason lies in my love of spinning wool. I used to carry an old fashioned wooden spindle with me when I went anywhere and a bit of wool. We were living in a village called Keshkuul near the Iranian border and made freinds with a family. Somehow the subject of spinning wool came up and I was asked by one of the boys in the household if I would knit him a scarf. The wool was unfortunately very harsh and the resulting scarf more like a piece of armour than a thing to wear every day, but that was why I needed to find knitting needles. They were not for sale in the village. The villagers had very little in the one village shop and had even given up going to the Mosque. They had no electricity as the government said the villagers were lazy so there was one TV ariel sticking out of the only house that had a generator. This, like all the other houses was a mud brick one.. I was on an archaelogical rescue dig and the village was submerged under water in a few years.