The Christians of Kurdistan

Every day the church bells of Ankawa compete with the muezzin's call to prayer. The oddness, the sheer unexpectedness of that familiar sound in such an antipodal setting, hits me every single time. 

This part of the world's recent history has been the opposite of peaceful, descending into the

barbaric with the arrival of ISIS in 2014. But it was a place once remarkable for long periods of diversity and tolerance, with Sunni and Shia, Christians, Jews, Shabak, Yazidis, Kakai and numerous other ethnic minorities co-existing. But the spasms of violence when they came - either from within or without - were, well, biblical. Outside forces - the Mongols and Ottomans chief among them - regularly visited genocidal violence on a massive scale on the lands now known as Iraq. (Up to 2 million were killed during the Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1358.) Alexander the Great was here. But there were also fratricidal massacres visited upon neighbors for religious, tribal or, later, political reasons. 

But for generation after generation the minorities - or components, as they preferred to be called here - held on. Their culture, unique and ancient, is tied to the land and the forefathers perhaps like no other place.

No more. First the Baathists, then Saddam and later ISIS put paid to that. Now the Jews are completely gone, exiled or fled. The Christians and Yazidis are hanging on by a thread. The Kakai, the Turkmens, the Armenians, are still being targeted, either actively by armed militias, or passively by societal laws that deny them their rightful place.

So when I hear those bells ringing out over an utterly changed landscape, a country that now looks to be consuming minorities rather than embracing them, they strike me almost as an act of defiance. The Christian leaders feel under siege. ISIS killed thousands of Christians; more than 100,000 were forced to flee. The leaders feel as if the West is not doing enough to help Christians rebuild, come home, or be resilient. They do not understand. 

St. Georges in Ankawa.

Christianity has been in Iraq longer than Islam, having arrived with Thomas the Apostle - the erstwhile Doubting Thomas - on his way to India. The Neo-Aramaic speaking Assyrians that remain are thought to be among the oldest Christian communities in the world. Yes, here you can hear the language of Jesus spoken. Prayers of welcome in al-Qosh washed over us visitors in a language from the bible.

Statistics are hard to come by in Iraq. The Census, seen as a political tool, is regularly postponed. Best I can determine, there are about 40,000 Christians in Erbil and about 140,000 in all of Iraqi Kurdistan. That number continues to shrink. Before ISIL there were about 320,000. It's dropped to about 500,000 in greater Iraq, which stood at over a million a couple of decades ago. But who knows? The fact is it's a small number and getting smaller.

I visited four centers of Christianity in the IKR: Ankawa in Erbil, Koya, Telskuf, and al-Qosh. Each place I was moved deeply by the story of these Iraqi Kurdish Christians - be it the astonishing Hormizd Monastery, hovering above al-Qosh since 640 A.D., or the resilience of the people of Telskuf, who were taken by ISIS in 2014. But without a doubt the most poignant, affirming, and emotional was the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in Erbil.

Midnight mass on Christmas Eve in Erbil.

Watching this minority celebrate so elegantly - and in the midst of a pandemic - was an honor. And to hear the service in Aramaic! Everyone was in their Sunday finery and very formal. It was a profound moment that will stay with me.

With the village elders, Christian and Muslim.

In October of 2019, we visited the Shrine of Marbina Qadisha. It sits on a hill just outside Koya. It is a beautiful spot, until you hear the priest refer to this as "the land of death." So many times have the Christians been laid to the sword, said Father Denha, that the hills are filled with burial sites. Few of the people, he added, died of natural causes.

It is believed that part of Marbina Qadisha was built by monks from Mosul (Ninewa) who fled the Mongol invasion in the 13th Century. The site is alternately known as Marbina Behman, who was also credited with building on this site, though some 900 years earlier. (The differences in history in these parts - depending on who's doing the telling - is ridiculous.) According to Kurdistan Tour Guide, "Mar Behnam was born in the 4th Century AD to Senarib, the Zoroastrian Assyrian King of Adiabene, which had its capital in modern-day Erbil. During a hunting trip, he came across Mar Mattai (St. Matthew) and, convinced of his theology, became a devout Christian and devotee ... He brought his sister Sara, then suffering from leprosy who was reported miraculously healed and they were both baptized along with forty of Behnam's men.

"Upon learning of his children's conversion, King Senarib reportedly killed his children and their 40 companions on a hill in Nimrud. However, the king soon regretted his actions" - as one hopefully does - "and was later reportedly baptized himself by Mar Mattai. He also built a monastery on the mount where Mar Mattai healed his daughter." 

Yes, rich men and their money buying forgiveness and respectability. Twas always thus.

With Father Denha Toma.

Persian Christians also built here and the Syrian Orthodox church - known as the Jacobites - you surely jest! - had control over it until 1839 when the Syrian Catholics took it over. Any research available does back Father Denha's view that the lands around the Shrine are indeed blood-soaked. Nader Shah, a Persian Emperor was particularly unpleasant in the 18th Century.

Despite these horrifying tales, we were greeted warmly at Qadisha. The sun was just going down and the village elders - both Christian and Muslim - sat around on a terrace overlooking the valley. They told tales, as we drank tea, of the nearby town where a church sits right next to a mosque and the neighbors faced the problems of life together, rather than made problems for one another because of the differences in their faith. 

While jotting down notes for this post, I reached back out to Father Denha through an intermediary shortly after our visit to get some more of the history out of him. 

He had been killed in a car crash two days before. We attended his funeral in Erbil.

There are rarely happy stories in this part of the world. Even when they start out well, they usually veer off into some past outrage, especially when locals are talking to outsiders. There has simply been too much communal trauma - and no capacity to address it. So, talking to foreigners, people who have no experience with such horrors, is a way of being reassured that what they have been through - being hunted down by dictators or barbaric hordes - is not normal life but that feelings of post traumatic stress are. 

In another Christian community I met four Chaldean families who had been

Monastery of Our Lady Al-Saida in al-Qush.

displaced from their homes when ISIS came and virtually wiped their town from the face of the earth. ISIS was hellbent on destroying the diversity that marks this part of the IKR. They went after the minorities with ruthless single-mindedness. Most of the Christians fled to other nearby Christian enclaves or, those with money, further afield to Europe or the United States. The end of ISIS was not the end of all things bad, however. The militias that stood up when the Iraqi army fled remain. The worst of them are pro-Iranian, but the Shabak and Chrisitian militias, too, roam the area. They rule with iron fists, bullying, beating, extorting those not of their creed, tribe or sect. ISIS boobytrapped houses, schools, and agricultural fields on their way out. Other areas are introducing new policies of giving away abandoned - or leastwise un-reclaimed - Christian lands to Arabs, thereby further diluting the teetering demographics. It is one challenge after the next.  

The church in Telskuf.

We met with some families who have returned to villages that had once been invaded by ISIS. They describe a near-impossible life. No water, intermittent electricity, most homes and government buildings destroyed. Worst of all, due to an accident of geography, they lie just across the KCL - the line that divides IKR from Arab Iraq with a considerable no-man's land in between. That means they have no Kurdish support. ISIS booby traps remain. They even planted landmines in the farmers' fields. Three of the four families we met were farmers and describe the horrors of trying to scrape a living when just plowing the land that has been in their family since Ottoman times could send them to kingdom come and a premature reunion with those very forefathers.

Adrian.

They moved back because they didn't want their land, their homes to be "Arabized," when Arab Iraqis move in and take over, a process that is happening in towns such as Mosul and Kirkuk and dozens of villages around the IKR. "We are proud of who we are. It's so hard seeing someone else take over your land," said one when asked why they would move home in the face of such hardship.

I also met Adrian, (right). When I shook his hand, I told him that we had the same name. After lunch I went over to make a fuss of him, told him we were the coolest and asked for a selfie with him. He smiled, but didn't say anything.

His Mum came over to me and said, "Since ISIS he doesn't talk any more."

And that hits you. All the things we've read and seen about the horrors of ISIS were suddenly embodied in that mute little boy who carries their reality around in his tortured head. Yes, the troubles of the Christians of Kurdistan are very much still continuing. Their fate, too, hangs in the balance.