Where the Insane Are Cured

Pir Zêdo cradles the egg in his cupped hand, and with eyes closed softly intones a prayer as a young man in his tight fitting T-shirt stands to the side.  When done, they walk down the steps into the courtyard, Pir Zêdo guiding the man to the one spot where sun shines through the leafing mulberry tree.  He gently circles the top of the man's head with the egg, again murmuring prayer.

I watch transfixed.  Pir Zêdo suddenly drops the egg to the concrete; its yoke is deep orange.  With no fanfare, it is over.  The man gives Pir Zêdo's wife some money and he leaves.  “He will wake up tomorrow and the yellowness in his face will be gone,” Pir Zêdo tells me. Although the young man is not insane, the faith for the cure of his jaundiced face and fatigue is as complete.

I am in the town of Ba'adre in (Iraqi) Kurdistan visiting perhaps my best friend among the Yezidis, Amer Sedo.  It is the town of the Yezidian Prince's family, although the current prince, Tahseen Beg, has long since moved to the town of 'Eyn Sifni to the southeast.  Ba'adre is one of a string of Yezidian towns and villages that border the eastern edge of the Mesopotamian Plains, most hugging the gentle foothills of the increasingly rugged Zagros Mountains.

We are taking a leisurely afternoon walk below Amer's home built on the hill overlooking the town.  It abuts a teetering high stonewall, all that remains of Palace of the Prince.  After photographing the nishangah (shrine) of Sultan Eyzi, we wander on.

Remains of the Prince's Palace

nishangah Sultan Eyzi

Amer stops in front of a narrow tan building of unusual in design, its roof line sweeping like a generous Yezidi handlebar mustache.  But even as such, being tucked away on a tight residential street, it can be noticed and then quickly dismissed.  That would be a mistake, a mistake that Amer will not allow.

This is the Mazar Hajial.  This is where the insane come to be cured.  All are welcome, regardless of faith or ethnicity.

We open the door into the adjacent courtyard and are greeted by Pir Zêdo, a gentle man of soft features, beard, and voice.

Pir Zêdo and Wife

We proceed into the cavernous narrow room, barely noticed by the frenzy of swallows whose nests tucked into the florescent light fixtures above in the vaulted ceiling.  Pir Zêdo's wife brings tea and joins us as we sit on the thin patterned pads that border the room.  The conversation is leisurely and the tea sweet.

The mazar, renovated in 2007, has been here for “more than 1,000 years,” and the mejawar (keeper) has always been from Pir Zêdo's family.  She brings a picture of his father from the house:  Pir Ali, stooped with his hoop-handled cane and long white beard is a vision out of Victorian travels.

Pir Zêdo's father, Pir Ali

At one end of the chamber there is a door.  A locked door.  “May I look in?'”  “No no no.  Only me.”  He and he alone.  He explains that he only goes in to light the oil soaked cotton wicks on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and during the nights when the insane are cured.  Then and only then.

The day the afflicted is treated, a sheep is killed, and the “madman” is taken inside the mazar.  Pir Zêdo ties his hands and feet, softly “beats” the man saying the prayers all the while, lights the candles in the inner chamber, and leaves the afflicted to pass the night alone inside.  In the morning, the insanity is gone.  Done.  Infallible.

“When was the last time you cured someone?”  “Five months ago."

Pir Zêdo gently shakes my hand as we leave.

Pir Zêdo in front of Mazar Hajial

The Last Temple

My last three visits to the Sinjar (Shingal) region of northern Iraq have focused on visiting and photographing all of the Yezidi temples (mazara) located there. (Please see previous postings.) With the attentive help from my good friend, Sheikh Xarbi, I completed the journey in April. 
Rob Leutheuser 

On Friday we visited what I thought were the last four mazara on the north side of Sinjar Mountain – Sheikh Barakat, Sheikh Shems, Sheikh Mand, and Sheikh Amîn. It being the first day of the Iraqi weekend, all were being visited by enthusiastic Sinjari Yezidis, as much to enjoy the weather and picnic camaraderie as to visit the mazara. The setting of the latter pair – Mand and Amîn – was absolutely spectacular, but the four mazara had been renovated roughly a now-standard design with the spire's capped with tan block stone and sharply fluted. The exceptions were becoming more difficult to find.

Mazar Sheikh Mand

I had considered leaving the Sinjar the following day, but swiftly changed my mind when Sheikh Xarbi said that there was one last small mazar we could visit. And so we did. 

Mazar Sheikh Qurish sits at the very edge of the mountain's northern foothills that mound up from the tapering alluvial fans melting into the Mesopotamian Plain. We drive for a half an hour on the roads of opportunity through the greened winter wheat, and where not planted, the broad fields of either yellow or lavender wildflowers. We pass small herds of sheep and smaller herds of families searching for the wild spring tuber, quma, coveted by all. Nice puffy clouds, not always a feature, drift overhead.

And there the little temple stands, its softly curved and fluted spire rising above a field of yellow that hides slabs of unmarked stone headstones tilting in the ground. Its humble beauty takes the air from my lungs.  I stop for a long moment to absorb. It is visceral. It is entire.

Mazar Sheikh Qurish

A group of women are washing the swaths of bright cloth (perî) that are hung inside of all mazara, the cloth that is kissed, knotted, and unknotted by the Yezidis upon every shoeless visit. Large pieces of red, yellow, green, silver, white, purple, and gold fabric are draped over the enclosing stone wall and on the struggling olive trees, drying in the sun, waiting to be rehung.

Drying Peri

And in the shade of the mazar brewing tea over an open fire sits an amply mustached Yezidi with scarf loosely wrapped around his head. We join him. The day is complete.

Mazar Sheikh Qurish

A Return to Sinjar: Yezidi Temples - Part I

In Iraqi Kurdistan there are many Yezidi temples, the most famous collection being at Lalish, the Yezidis' most venerated site. But because of the isolation of the Sinjar, the temples and shrines are the least known to the occasional contemporary visitor. Being less confident of my continued access to the region, sooner has become more of an imperative, and so the journey continues.

Sheikh Abdul Qader Temple

26 October 2012 - We jankle along the rutted tracks through the apron of low hills at the foot of Sinjar Mountain, looking for the Yezidi temple Sheikh Abdul Qader.  Soon we see its squat spire gleaming white on the autumnal brown landscape, at once dramatic and humble, as we later find its keeper, Sheikh Mijo Seado Uso.

Sheikh Mijo Seado Uso

I am once again in the Sinjar, called Shangal locally, an isolated region in northwest Iraq, fully defined by the 60-mile long mountain of the same name. From space the mountain looks like the ridged back of an enormous science fiction creature emerging from the featureless Mesopotamian plains, heading due west to the nearby Syrian border. My goal is to visit more Yezidi temples and shrines – mazar – that grace this traditional and sometimes forgotten heartland. (Please visit "Yezidi Faqirs and Sheikhs in Sinjar", March 2012, and multiple other posts in this blog.)

Sheikh Ezid Temple

Although many are flat-roofed, the Yezidi temples are generally known for their domed tops or conical spires, the latter often fluted. They commemorate both holy and historical persons, as well as angels from Yezidi cosmology, sometimes being one and the same. In the Sinjar they are most often found in the foothills, close to where the traditional villages were located before Saddam Hussein forced their abandonment; others are tucked deep in the mountain.

Sheikh Abu Bakir Shrine

The shrines are much much smaller and often appear spontaneous with stacked rock walls. They denote natural features such as trees, rocks, caves, and springs that are sacred to the Yezidis.  They too are given names like the temples. All mazar are the object of devotion and the destination of pilgrimage.

Sheikh Suliman Baxri Xider, mejewer

Each temple has a keeper, or mejewer, responsible for maintaining the temple, lighting the candles (wicks soaked in olive oil), and accepting the donations from visitors.  It is a duty passed down through generations and often shared by members of the family.  Usually, but not always, mejewers are members of the sheikh class.

Sheikh Shems Temple interior

The inner chamber of all temples is festooned with tangles of colorful silk cloth hanging from the walls.  Upon entering shoeless, Yezidis tie knots into the cloth for good fortune, and untie knots of others thereby fulfilling the wishes of those who preceded them.  Also common to the inner sanctums is a pillar in the center upon which the olive oil fires are lit, and round rocks are placed waiting to be stacked, again for good luck or the granting of wishes.

Sheikh Romi Temple

Once again I owe my deepest of gratitude to my dear friend Sheikh Gharbi, without whom my visits to the Sinjar would be impossible.