The El Camino found a second life in Kurdistan, particularly the 1978–1987 fifth-generation models. In Kurdish pop culture, the car is affectionately nicknamed the "Barzani Tank" (though this nickname is sometimes applied to other sturdy vehicles like the Land Cruiser as well) or simply the "Muscle."
Why did this specific American car become a Kurdish icon? el camino kurdish
Unlike a single, signposted trail, the Kurdish road is fractured into four painful corridors: The El Camino found a second life in
In the shadow of the Camino de Santiago—a spiritual route of self-discovery in Western Europe—lies a different kind of pilgrimage. It is not a quest for a scallop shell or a cathedral, but a desperate, centuries-long search for a home. This is El Camino Kurdish: The road of the Kurds, one of the world’s largest stateless nations (30–40 million people), scattered across the rugged mountains where Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria converge. It is not a quest for a scallop
Today, the El Camino Kurdish has largely moved off the mountains and onto the autobahns of Europe. Since the 2015-2016 migrant crisis and the recent seismic shocks in Rojava, hundreds of thousands of Kurds have walked the Balkan Route: from Turkey to Greece, across North Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, and finally to Germany or Sweden.
This is the 21st-century Kurdish camino. It involves WhatsApp smuggling networks, rubber boats deflating in the Aegean, and the scent of tear gas at border fences. In 2022, I interviewed a young woman from Qamishli in a Berlin hostel. She had walked 2,500 kilometers over six months. She had no scallop shell (the symbol of the Spanish camino), but she wore a yellow-red-green bracelet.
"What is your shell?" I asked. She touched her temple. "Memory," she said. "The map is in my head. The road is my home."
