I was traveling from northern Iraq to Istanbul Turkey, by bus. It was cheaper that way and gave me the chance to see Turkey from the ground instead of the air. It was during the Iraq-Iran war, an event known by everyone in the world. What was not known as widely or perhaps just ignored by the international community at large, was the yet unaccounted, unmentioned war between the Iraqis and the Kurds. If one goggles the word Kurd, a short definition pops up immediately: Kurd = A member of a largely pastoral Islamic people who live in Kurdistan; the largest ethnic group without their own state. Not even a mention there about their numbers in Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Well, despite a definition like that, the Kurds of Northern Iraq around the city of Zakho, the point of my departure, insisted that they were not at all “a largely pastoral Islamic people” but lots of them were Christians of the Coptic or Chaldean faith.
What is Coptic? Again, if one goggles it as well, this information probably will pop out: Coptic = The liturgical language of the Coptic Church used in Egypt and Ethiopia; written in the Greek alphabet, the Coptic religion being the ancient Christian church of Egypt.
Almost as old as the idea of Jesus itself.
What are Chaldeans – well – apparently the Assyrians that 3000 years ago were a powerful empire. They spoke Aramaic. They still do, today.
They are those that built the ancient city of Nineveh with its 19 gates guarded by enormous winged bulls with human heads. Ashur, Sargon, Semiramis, Nineveh, Nimrod, the Epic of Gilgamesh are all Assyrian names and places.
It was about 7 or 8 p.m. when we left Zakho and headed for the Turkish border. The bus was full of Egyptian, Turkish and Lebanese men that were working in Iraq and now they were traveling to Istanbul on their way home to their respective countries. The only women in the bus were I and the wife of an engineer that my husband worked with in Iraq for the past 18 months of his contract. She was sitting next to me. Beside us, there was also an old Syrian woman in her sixties that were traveling with her youngest son.
The night fell and from the neighboring hills on both sides of the road, like fireworks launchers, the Khalshnikows begun to roar. The red-orange dotted lines of the bullets drew almost continuous lines across the valley, above the ribbon of the road on which our bus was moving imperturbably towards Turkey.
I was young and had no fears at all. The crossfire was not new to me – I saw it before in the Shatt-Al –Arab Delta, at Basra and in the middle of the desert between Baghdad and Amara. There it happened between the Iraqi Army and the Iranians. The missiles they exchanged made a different kind of noise or damage than the machine-guns and the mortars. The explosions were far away, in the oil-fields or army barracks and still shook the ground under our feet or made the windows of the bus vibrate almost to the point of cracking.
Here, near Zakho the fight was between the Iraqis and the Kurdish Resistance.
Somehow I grew accustomed instantly after my arrival 3 months before to the fact that those two wars were not mine, nobody aimed at us, the guests.
Both parties’ members or sympathizers in any conversation we had, tried to reassure us that nothing will ever happen to us, foreigners. We were Guests. We were welcomed there, because our family members were there on work contracts ratified by our country of origin and Saddam’s Hussein’s government. We had the right to be there and the right that our neutrality and presence be respected. We had the right to visit the sites of ancient Mesopotamia and we were assigned sometimes a small military Jeep with some soldiers to guide our bus to Babylon, Nineveh or Ur on the shortest, safest roads possible.
That last night of mine on the Iraqi territory I was looking through the window at the starry sky, the moon and the fiery exchange of tracers and I asked the two Egyptians sitting behind us if they were worried. Not at all, they said. I assumed that much because they were obviously in a good mood, chattering and laughing, happy to go home to their loved ones.
But I wanted to know why they were so sure that nothing would happen to our bus that night.
Cannot some poorly trained fighter aim at us by mistake? No, they reassured me, because both sides knew that two European ladies were on board. I thought they were kidding and wanted to know how anybody would have such information.
I was explained that the Kurdish guerrillas had spies that informed them about the passengers. They would never harm Christian ladies from abroad, because most of them were Christians themselves. Besides, the bus belonged to a Turkish company and if a mistake happened and damage to the bus or the passengers was done deliberately or through human error, the Turkish army would punish a lot of people for that mistake.
On the other hand, the Iraqi department for the control of the foreigners also knew who was on board because that was their job. With so many people in charge knowing, they said, the bus was safe. Mainly and foremost thanks to our presence.
True or not, I wasn’t scared, either way, watching the exchange of fire like I was watching some news or a movie on TV.
The only way I reacted to it all was remembering how I met some of those Kurds only few days ago.
Just a week before my return to Istanbul, we were wandering around the streets of Zakho, as tourists do, when I saw a funny looking skeleton made of wood and metal rising above the roofs, not far from the bazaar. It was some type of construction like improvised scaffolding, holding a big cast iron bell and a small shabby cross on the top. The cross was somehow bent on a side rather than standing straight, like someone aimed at it with stones and hit it.
We walked towards it but as we approached, the buildings around us grew taller, hiding it behind their roofs. We became lost for direction and asked a man passing by about the bell and the cross in English, French and German. The Arab did not speak any of these languages but understood something though and mimed the sign of the cross with his right arm across his chest and an inquiring expression on his face. We nodded.
Very friendly and obliging as always the Iraqis were to us everywhere, he guided us to a maze of shantytown-like streets to a very small building, made of mud bricks and painted neglectfully white with lime. Part of the roof was affected by fire and the damage was patched up with all sorts of bits and pieces.
In front of it, on a small porch by the door, there were a multitude of shoes and boots, like in front of any mosque, a sign that there were people inside. It was a late Sunday morning and we understood that the modest building, not bigger than the surrounding shabby houses was a Christian church and that a service must have been going on inside.
Being the first such place we were about to visit there, my husband and I were quite curious to see how such a church in an officially Muslim country looked like.
The first things that stroke us were the shoes. We were familiar with that aspect of the mosques but we never imagined that Christian churches in the Middle East required also to be entered barefoot.
It was early March and still cold, so reluctantly we took our warm boots off when an old man dressed like any other Arab in the neighborhood came out and insisted gesturing frantically that we put them back on. We did not want to stand apart from the people inside and tried to make that clearer to him. Using a half dozen Italian words, the man tried to convince us that he knew that for Europeans, entering a church barefoot was not customary; that he understood and knew that fact; that we were guests, and therefore privileged; and that it was too cold for us to be barefoot. Apart from that he mimed in a universally understood gesture that our “expensive” boots might be stolen while we were inside.
He kept on bowing and showed us such respect and humility, I felt embarrassed.
The warning about possible theft surprised us because the Iraqis we knew, were extremely honest and would never steal. Just the other day in the markets after buying some oranges I forgot my little coin purse on the merchant’s stand. There was not much change in it, just coins. I kept the paper bills in my bag.
We were almost two streets away when the panting, sweaty man who sold oranges caught up with us. He must have had quite a run. He was yelling “Madam, Madam, takeeka!” (Madam, wait!) But I did not react to that because I did not imagine he was calling me. Once he reached us finally, he tapped my husband on the shoulder, as the local custom did not allow him to touch me, a woman, although he handed my purse to me and not to my husband. I realized only then that I forgot something on his stand.
He also refused the tip I wanted to give him for his trouble. But did not refuse the cigarettes I gave him in the end, for which he bowed several times. I wanted to thank him somehow and since everywhere we went we were offered cigarettes as a sign of friendship, I gave him a pack of Marlboro which was apparently all the rage in that country cigarettewise.
That, would have never happened in Istanbul for example, where people were mugged New York style whenever the thieves had a chance to corner someone on an isolated street or even in a cheap hotel’s lobby. I saw it happening.
I concluded that theft in a Christian neighborhood was more common that it would be in the Muslim one.
Inside the church was warm and crowded. The happy event was actually a christening of a little boy.
The interior walls were uneven, improvised and the mud plastering was smeared with the same lime as the exterior but a bit of sky-blue pigment was added. On the bumpy walls there were 2 or 3 small icons of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, none larger than a postcard. Next to them, some newspaper pages with photos of some Greek-orthodox and perhaps Coptic high hierarchy priests were pinned or glued, so yellow with age, it was hard to distinguish the Arabic and Greek writing as well as the faded portraits. I thought one of them to be the Archbishop Makarios. Perhaps was in fact the Pope of Alexandria. I was wondering what was he doing in a Coptic Church if it was Makarios indeed. There was one oil candle lit up under Jesus’ tiny icon on the wall. There were no benches, but just one small row of very shabby, very old chairs in front, by the “altar”. Nobody sat on them. They must have been reserved for important guests. The worshipers were seated on some cheap rugs straight on the mud floor, like in a mosque. The altar itself was in fact some sort of a kitchen table covered with a “made in China” tablecloth on which some pious hands had embroidered a bunch of very colorful crosses and Greek symbols.
The parents of the baby being baptized were striking in more ways than one.
First, they were extremely young, not even 19-20 years of age. The father, very dark haired and with one continuous thick black eyebrow, had a typical Middle Eastern complexion. He was dressed in the traditional Kurdish daks, with the torso covered by a regular shirt on top of which he was wearing the traditional short, tight coat looking more like a waistcoat with long sleeves than a jacket. He had a thick belt around his waist and his head was covered with a turban. He looked like most men in the streets outside, except for the fact that his clothes seemed brand new, definitely for the unique occasion of the day.
He was a bit short but very handsome and apparently very flattered by our presence there, which made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
His wife was evermore arresting: blue eyed, her hair was a natural reddish-blond, thick, long, wavy, exquisitely beautiful, covering her shoulders and her back to the waist and flowing freely like in a shampoo commercial. Her brilliantly white, fresh, young skin had natural brown beauty spots here and there and on her little nose and on her cheeks there were some freckles. Her blond eyebrows were accentuated with a black pencil in a very visible effort to make them more visible. She was wearing lipstick and eyeliner and she looked very very pretty.
What made her stand out of any local crowd was what she was wearing: a light brown classic cut inspired business suit – jacket and knee length pencil-skirt – very poorly tailored, obviously by some village seamstress who probably made the effort to copy something from a illustration in some magazine. She was manifestly not very used to cut patterns like those for the local women. The whole outfit was a clear courageous and probably perceived locally as outrageous attempt at western fashion for this young mother. Her attire was so unusually looking to me, after the 3 months already spent in Iraq that I had to make efforts not to stare.
I saw plenty of women dressed similarly in Baghdad, but that was the capital and if they were that adventurous, they were wearing a black bourka on top of the suit (even if it was worn casually open, like a lawyer’s robe, letting the viewer see the front of the body) or if they did not wrap themselves in that black mantle, then their skirt was ankle-long or maybe their hair was covered by a scarf. Or any other little compromise of the sort.
The blond Kurdish beauty here did not compromise in any way. She was making a religious statement apparently: I am a Christian and my religion allows me to be a woman; to have a waist, to show my gorgeous hair and even a bit of my legs.
I have a feminine shape and I’m proud of it. My man is my lover and he is proud of me; he is open-minded and we are a modern family.
This is what transpared to me from her personal statement.
The baby was fair, with a thin yellowish tuft of hair on the top of his had and very dark eyebrows for a baby. He looked pink and fat and healthy and was totally wrapped up and tied tight with a white ribbon, like a parcel, proof that the baptism where he was dipped in water 3 times, was over.
When we entered the church the priest stepped aside for a second – and we felt very guilty and embarrassed for the interruption - and invited us to sit down on the front row on those fragile, limping chairs. We did and few minutes later we were asked by both parents and the priest to bless the baby. I was never too sure about that but I think that we were instantly bestowed with the honour of becoming some sort of godparents, or honorary witnesses or something like that. So flattered seemed the whole congregation by our presence.
We were thanked profusely for our presence, for our “gracious” attitude and a lot of other similar and blown out of proportion things.
We were invited to the house to celebrate with food and dance, but we had to refuse, since our driver was supposed to pick us up in less than an hour and take us to Mosul. The priest spoke English well enough and interpreted for us. He was able to convince that extended family and their friends (I hope) that we were not making up excuses to get away, but we really were at the mercy of our driver who was pressed by time.
It gave me a bad feeling that we had to go, because their hospitality would had been the most valuable and worth rewarding with an acceptance, as in their view we were “brethren in faith” from far away, a once in a life-time occasion.
For me it was a very emotional event, that visit to the Coptic Church. Mysterious and explanatory at the same time.
I am not a very religious person. I do not really go to church unless somebody invites me to a christening or wedding or funeral. I go there out of respect for that people’s event – loss or gain, happiness or pain.
This time though, it was different. I really understood for the first time what a third world country meant.
How people saw the facts of life there.
What disinheritance meant.
How conflict evolved, why and how the act of faith for some people equals the importance of the physical act of survival.
That was a faith as primordial, as pure, as strong as instinct.
The very existence of that shabby building there, amongst the golden, elegant, rich, dominant minarets.
I looked around at that shabby church without a bell-tower, with its crooked cross at the top, its dirt floor and its newspapers with human saints on the dilapidated walls. The burned roof, the empty walls, made me compare in my mind the European luxury of our cathedrals in which spirituality was lost or shattered in tiny bickering bits and pieces of dogmatic arguments of a multitude of confessions (in fact petty & stupid differences). I realized there and then that like Christmas, the Western World’s Christianity is nothing else but a commercial state of facts, bank accounts and statistics; nothing more for most people, especially those in charge of it – from the most modest of the country priests to the heads of the Church themselves.
Years later, having a random a chat about the Chaldeans and the Copts with an Ethiopian priest, I was told that probably the young family in that northern church in Iraq might have actually been an Assyrian family ( "Nestorian" )and not necessarily a Kurdish one.
Fact is, we did not ask what they were, we just assumed. That was heart of the Kurdish country, what else could they be?
Then, in the Eighties I decided that I should look at mosques built in Nesblandia with a bit more sympathy and tolerance – although it seems they are as rich and as shiny in Nesblandia as they are in the countries that invented them. But the Christian Churches in the Arab world were not so shiny.
It’s the best I can do for two opposing causes that I do not believe in, I thought - compare them.
Today, reading about the fate and misfortune of the Assyrians in Iraq, I don't know what to think anymore. I am struggling hard not to let go of that left over shred of tolerance I was so proud of in the Eighties.
How sad is that?
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