The Kurdish herbalist reaches for a sachet as fragrant as a wild meadow, garnished with linden, rosehip, slivers of dried ginger, cinnamon stick and a touch of mystery - his mother's tea for flu and colds. "This is the mixture she used to prepare for me when I was a kid" says Suleyman Onur, surrounded by the dozens of herbal teas, aromatic herbs and spices. Each is bagged or tied in bouquets piled high on the shelves of the oldest herbal shop in Diyarbakir, a restless predominantly Kurdish city in Turkey's southeast, not far from Syria, Iraq and Iran. The shop "Kor Yusuf" or "Joseph the Blind" established in 1891 has kept the nickname of its founder, a Chaldean Catholic of the Syriac rite whose descendents moved to Istanbul in the 1950s, ceding the shop to Onur's parents. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES