ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The  Bangladeshi workers of Erbil usually open their weekly market in front of Nishtiman Bazar, a shopping mall in the city’s downtown area, on Fridays. Despite having lived and worked in the region for several years, they maintain a grasp on their cultural cuisine, the market being a showcase of their favorite foods and vegetables.

Bangladeshi workers are known for adding a variety of vegetables to their cuisine, and many have brought seeds from Bangladesh to the Kurdistan Region to cultivate them there.

There are 15 kinds of vegetables at their market unique to this part of the region. Bangladeshi, Nepali and Indian customers typically frequent the market. 

Mohammed Samayim has been a vendor in the market for six months. 

"I sell vegetables every Friday because my customers are usually at work on other days of the week,” he said. “On Friday, they're off, and they're buying vegetables here." 

Zanko Sheikhani, a local customer, said he’s come to the market to try some food. 

“It's mostly vegetables,” he said. “They might be very beneficial for our health, but we were unaware of that.”

Last year, the government-imposed ongoing lockdown left Erbil’s low-paid Bangladeshi workers in a precarious state. 

Dozens of workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Philippines work in the Kurdistan Region. Mohammed Fazlulbari, the new Bangladeshi ambassador to Iraq, told Rudaw last month that their country is looking to improve bilateral relations as well as cooperation in the area of trade and commerce, adding that “the KRG is a very important reason for promoting trade and commerce.”

Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed