Ancient Kurdish festival offers taste of enduring love, mysticism

Located in Iran's Kurdistan province, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Iraqi border, Hawraman is an ancient village with an unfathomable uniqueness. Houses have been built on rugged mountains, where a family's rooftop serves as the upper neighbor's yard, making the entire village resemble a gigantic stairway from afar. Sitting right across from the village is a massive garden that has much in common with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Lifestyle in Hawraman has dodged the waves of 21st-century technology that continue to hit communities across the world. The architecture is characterized by walls erected with stones that are not transferred to the site but extracted from the very mountain they are built upon. What makes the construction style exceptional is "weshka kalak" or the "dry walls," to which cement is a stranger.