A Phoenix Rises, but Embers Still Glow

April 14, 2012 – Bakhtmy, Iraqi Kurdistan

For 3 years in the late-1980’s, Saddam Houssein honed his despotic talents by executing his al Anfal campaign in northern Iraq. Although the Kurds numerically bore the brunt of al Anfal, all minorities, including the Assyrians, Yezidi Kurds, Shabaks, Jews, and others, felt the wrath of another tyrant gone mad. Through his infamous cousin, unfortunately dubbed in comic book fashion “Chemical Ali”, Saddam created a devil’s stew of horror which still leaves a toxic aftertaste: Chemical attacks on civilian populations; brutal military operations against the Kurdish peshmergha; the destruction of at least 4,000 villages with forced resettlement of populations to collectives; the relabeling of ethnicities; the involuntary wholesale relocations of other ethnic groups into unfamiliar terrains; and, mass disappearances and executions.

Younan stood by a pile of concrete-and-rebar rubble, the remains of the Assyrian village of Bakhtmy’s once largest church, St. George (Aita Mar Guargis).

“On May first, 1987, the Iraqi army destroyed our village of Bakhtmy. I was 25 years old. I will never forget it. They came to the village in the morning and gave us 3 hours to gather what we could and leave. They blew up the church with TNT.” “Did you watch?” “Yes, the entire village watched from over there,” Younan said pointing to a knoll a short distance away. “And they also blew-up the smaller church, St. Maria right over there. And over here is where our family home was. Like all of the other homes, they destroyed ours with a bulldozer. Bakhtmy was gone in one day.”

With the help of Younan and his brother I was able to imagine that what they still saw so vividly 25 years ago. Without them it would have been difficult, for Bakhtmy was rebuilt by the Kurdish Regional Government in 2007. Many many other villages wait in the queue..

It was Holy Saturday, the day before Orthodox Easter, which was to be celebrated that night at the new St. George church. Younan, visiting from Germany where he now lives, had returned to northern Iraq as he does every year. He invited me to spend the afternoon in the village with him and his brother, Yusef.


Ten minutes outside of the city of Dohuk, just past a heavily armed checkpoint, a prematurely weathered sign announcing the village, written in Arabic, Kurdish, and Assyrian, pointed west. We turned onto a narrow asphalt road casually draped over the rolling countryside and passed an area punctuated by mounds of rubble patiently being reclaimed by spring-green grass. “This was a Kurdish village,” said Younan.  Ahead lay the new Bakhtmy. A new St. George church stood at the entryway to the village, and a white Assyrian flag with its red and blue lines rippling from its center lazed against a brushed blue sky.

Younan continued as two of his young nephews scampered nearby among the piles.  Although he too experienced it all, Yusef was content to listen. “We took only what we could carry and began to walk to the north towards the town of Semel, where we lived in tents for 2 months before we could start building new homes. It was very hard.”

Eventually Bakhtmy and 9 other Assyrian villages became the collective village of Monsoria on the outskirts of Semel. The history of Semel itself is like holding up a small vanity mirror to the history of the upper Mesopotamian region over the past two millennia: Christian, competing Christian, Yezidi, Arab, Kurdish – each era wheeling about the other, each having its own intrigue, tragedy, violence, and death, and sometimes, resurrection. 

Upon our arrival to the 150-home village, we wended through brightly colored houses on orderly unpaved streets. Passing through the lavender gate, Yusef’s wife and manicured garden welcomed us. Soon we were sitting at the kitchen table having lunch as Yusef’s wife continued to work in the kitchen, chatting with us all the while. This all had a sense of the mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes.

(Having just returned from spending time with the Yezidi Kurds in the Sinjar region several days prior, I could not help but think that their Phoenix remained buried in cold ashes.)

We finished our leisurely tour on a low hill a kilometer from the village - the site the St. Daniel chapel, also destroyed 25 years ago. Atop a tidy pile of rock rested a stone with a cross with “Aita Mar Daniel” in Assyrian script chiseled in. While lighting a devotional candle retrieved from a can secreted away in the rubble, Younan explained, “When we came back to St. Daniel’s, everything was destroyed except for this stone that stood over the doorway. We believe it was a miracle.”

 
Nearby was the grave of their grandfather who was the caretaker of the chapel. Yusef and Younan shared a wordless moment.

On December 2, 2011, Yusef’s liquor store in Semel was looted and burned. He lost everything and is still awaiting financial restitution from the government.

On that day a flash of religious tensions dimmed the skies in Iraqi Kurdistan. In several cities, including Semel, mobs of young Muslim Kurds targeted Christian and Yezidi establishments – primarily liquor stores, but homes and social clubs as well – burning and looting them, ostensibly for being in violation of Qoranic law. Other explanations are offered, but the result is the same: The embers of religious and ethnic strife continue to glow.

Anton and Surp Giragos Church - Diyarbakir, Turkey

On May 6, 2002, I wrote:
“The Armenian church was frightening in its decaying sadness and squalor. Inside the compound where 2 Armenian families lived stood a monumental skeleton of the former church, its stone arches standing naked in regimental order.

“The old man, likely shrinking in size every day, led me through the muddy and garbage strewn courtyard to a small building. He unlocked the blue door, the only splash of color to be seen, and ushered me into a small church.

“Anton turned on the lights, but it was still dark, all the windows long since permanently boarded up. It looked like mildew, but it didn't smell like it. It was fresh and cool. Wide-cuffed tan-and-brown frocks with large metal crosses attached to the shoulders hung on one wall; near-dead crimson gantlets were piled on a small table; and, bibles in varying states of disuse were stacked in two nearby alcoves.

“Anton busied himself straightening up remnants of past lives while I tried to absorb it all. The alter area was a garage sale of Virgin Mary memorabilia. I felt that if I touched anything it would crumble into dust. But of course I did, and of course it did not.

“The future of the church's community is already past.”

March 19, 2012

I knock on the thick steel door in a back passageway of Diyarbakir's old city enclosed in its massive basaltic walls. I knew the way well having returned many times over the years. But now there are two gleaming brass door knobs circled in curvacious Armenian letters. A young man comes, and after a short introduction he welcomes me in, closing and locking the door behind us.

Although I knew that Surp (Saint) Giragos church had just undergone a complete restoration, I was unprepared.

Diyarbakir's past dominant cultures is a literal Who's Who of Anatolian/Middle Eastern empires, from the Hurrians 5,000 years ago and likely before, continuing uninterrupted through the Ottoman Empire. Overlooking the Tigris River it is now the largest city in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey.

Periods of history bore witness to vibrant Armenian populations as late as the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, and largely ending with their genocide in 1915. The remnant Armenian community essentially left the city in the 1990s due to political and economic reasons, some relocating to Istanbul, others to Europe.

Surp Giragos church, originally constructed in the 16th century, was the largest church in the region and particular in its 7 alters. It was rebuilt several times through the centuries, and following WWI it was used by the Turkish state as a military depot and other secular purposes. The church was repatriated to the Armenians in the 1960's; in the nineties its flat earth-covered roof collapsed.

Its restoration began in 2009 and was principally funded by a foundation created for this purpose, and the municipality of Diyarbakir led by its Kurdish mayor. The Armenian Patriarchate from Istanbul officiated the internationally attended consecration mass in October, 2011. There has not been another service held in the church since.

How many Armenians remain in Diyarbakir? Hasan, one of the two young Muslim Kurds caretakers, tells me, “Maybe there are 15, but I don't really know.” Later in the compound I share a tulip-shaped cup of amber tea with an Armenian man and his daughter. He is from Siverek, 90 kms to the east. “In Diyarbakir? No, there are not any here. They have all left.”

Hasan allows me to visit the small chapel I visited 10 years ago. He unlocks the blue door and light streams in. Although swept clean and empty, it smells the same.

I knew that Anton had moved to Istanbul in 2004 due to poor health. I ask about him. He is still in Istanbul but his health continues to fail, I am told. He is blind and can no longer speak.

But Surp Giragos glories in its restoration.

Postscript - The Bell Rings On

On November 4th, 2012 the new bell, the church's first since 1915, was to be rung. I visited Surp Giragos two weeks prior and admired the impressive100 kg bell that waited to be hoisted up the still-under-construction bell tower.  

I returned the day before the natal ringing of the bell.  A gathering was a foot.  I spoke with a Canadian Armenian who arrived just that morning for the celebration.  He was tired but seemed at home.  The bell hung unseen above looking down on squads of workers scurrying with intent.   

I was unable to stay on, but I am sure the Armenian Patriarchate from Istanbul got along just fine without me.

............................

(December, 2013)  from Al-Monitor:
http://asbarez.com/117363/turkey%E2%80%99s-kurds-seek-forgiveness-for-part-in-genocide/

(January 2015) from the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letter-from-turkey

"My Heart Did It"

Saturday, 16 October 2010

“ 'My Heart Did It,' thats what Kar Belaktus means” Linda said,explaining to me the name of the church. Linda? What a jolt of a name to hear on the high bluffs above the Tigris River. “We are Chaldeans.” She was short and plump with the eyes of an angel, and though her face should have been weathered, it was not.


After a planned visit to a Shabak community (a syncretic religion followed by a hyper-minority of Kurds) failed to materialize, I found myself racing across the tired autumnal landscape of upper Mesopotamia in northern Iraq to visit the village of Derabûn. Nazim, a young Yezidian, was at the wheel dodging the large transport trucks hauling goods and construction material from Turkey under a luminescent mid-day sky polished by the dust blowing from the south of Iraq. Eight-foot tall phragmites grasses huddled around the infrequent seeps and struggled to appear green in the hot wind. Gratefully Nazim kept the windows up and the air conditioning on as a radio station from Zahko serenaded us with class B American rap and hip-hop. We passed through a half dozen small settlements before reaching Derabûn, each of which was defined by religion – Muslim and not-Muslim. Christians and Yezidis found kinship with one another, both suffering from Islamic persecution intermittently throughout their histories, and intimately since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Derabûn is half Christian and half Yezidi, segregated only by the road.

Nazim and I first drove a kilometer past Derabûn to the ruins of what he said was an old fortress. It was an unremarkable collection of tall crumbling walls; the view of the Tigris on the other hand was anything but. Even now so late in the season, and in spite of Turkey's manic construction of a system of dams upstream, it flowed wide and shallow around intermittent islands. Soon the fall rains would come and briefly swell the Tigris with silt-laden water. Nazim came up behind me. It was not a fortress, he corrected himself after reading the bent roadside sign painted in white Arabic script, it was an old church – Mariam Adra. I suspected that during its history it had been both. As I walked back to the car against the wind, I picked the spikey burrs out of the socks that should have stayed home, while taking care not to step on broken glass.


Kar Belakrus' fresh white paint was as startling as Linda's name. It did more than reflect the filtered sunlight. Atop was a modest sized cross with clear light bulbs within its frame, and below it a sign colors yet faded with a literal image of Christ, his heart in flames on his chest. His skin was not weathered either.

Linda, in her blue flowered cotton shift, was sweeping under the portico when we arrived with her uncle, Zachary. She fetched the key and opened the side door. It was cool inside the simple church. The church had undergone a major restoration in the last 3 years Linda explained first in hesitant English then in soft song. She and Zachary showed us the improvements with quiet pride – the new ceiling 16 feet above, and the new rectory with the priests' and deacons' black cassocks with gold cuffs hung primly in the open armoire. (I couldn't help but think of their contrast to the thread-worn and dusty gray cassocks with red braiding that that I saw hanging on pegs in the bunker of the Armenian chapel in Diyarbakir, Turkey 9 years ago.)


Linda and her husband, the church's deacon, returned to Derabûn 5 years ago. It became too dangerous for Christians in Baghdad where some of her extended family had lived for some number of years. Her grandfather's house is right there, she pointed behind the church, next to which is the house that her brother now a Canadian citizen is rebuilding for occasional visits. And those olive trees next to the church, she told me, were planted by her grandfather and father. They will begin the modest harvest soon. And the six houses that lined the dirt lane next to the church were her family's.

We retreated to Zachary's garden, a small plot of grass that wasn't struggling to be green. His wife brought tall glasses of cold water, and then small cups of Turkish coffee that tasted so good that I almost suffered the dregs trying to get the last sip.

The wind wasn't blowing in the garden, but the sky was still burnished.