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Kurdistan gives Iraqi Christians a refuge
16.7.2007
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Christians head north to live uneasily among another
minority
July
16, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Through prickly weeds, past old tires and the rusty
skeletons of long-discarded chairs, Father Zaya
Shaba makes his way to the home of his newest
parishioners.
"They are very grateful," he says, "to obtain such a
dirty place."
Not so long ago, Wafaa Dankha Hena and her family
lived in a fine house in Baghdad. Five bedrooms. A
huge kitchen. And a threat scrawled on the front
gate:
"Wanted: Christian Blood"
And so they fled to Kurdistan region (northern
Iraq), to a one-room hovel where mice scurry at
night and snakes slither by day. In this largely
peaceful region controlled by the Kurds, thousands
of Chaldean Catholics and other Christians have
found a safe, if not always comfortable, refuge from
the mayhem and persecution elsewhere in Iraq.
"Because of the Kurds, we survive," says Sabah
Shamaya of the Chaldean Culture Center in Irbil. But
he warns:
"If the situation keeps going like this, it will be
a disaster for Christians in this country." |
Father Zaya Shaba, left, a Chaldean priest, pays a
visit to the home of Wafaa Dankha Hena, whose family
sold everything to leave Baghdad for the storage
area beneath a house in a Kurdistani (northern
Iraqi) mountain village. Photo.Times |
First in, last out
Centuries before the birth of Islam, St. Thomas the
Apostle brought Christianity to Mesopotamia -- now
Iraq -- and founded the Chaldean church. At the time
of the 2003 U.S.-led liberation, Iraq had some
1.2-million Christians, the majority of them
Chaldeans, who worshiped with relative freedom under
Saddam Hussein's secular rule.
Postinvasion, Christians quickly became targets.
Islamic radicals torched Christian-owned liquor
stores. One priest was beheaded and another peppered
with bullets. Churches throughout the country have
been burned, bombed and stripped of their crosses.
In Baghdad, seat of the Chaldean church, the
84-year-old Patriarch Mar Emmanuel III is so worried
about his dwindling flock "that he can't sleep at
night," Father Shaba says.
At least 500,000 Christians are thought to have fled
the country, joining the nearly 1.5-million other
Iraqis now living abroad. But those who don't want
-- or can't afford -- to leave Iraq are heading to
the north, where Christians have long lived
peacefully with another minority group, the Kurds.
"Here there is a chance of work," says Josephine
Hurmoz Oraham. "Here people will help."
Until December, Oraham and her family were among the
many Christians in Dora, an area of Baghdad
increasingly under the sway of an anti-American
Shiite militia. Her son and four daughters were
alone in the house one day when U.S. soldiers swept
through the neighborhood, followed by militants who
threatened the girls with guns.
"Why did the American troops come to your house?"
the men demanded of Oraham when she got home from
work. "Did they enjoy their time with your girls?"
Terrified, the family packed a few clothes and drove
four hours north to Ainkawa, a Christian village
outside Erbil, the Kurdistan capital. So many other
refugees were there it took Oraham 20 days to find a
place to rent.
For $800 a month, she and her children now share two
rooms and a kitchen with two other Christian
families - 17 people in all, most of them female.
The only furniture is a makeup table covered with
bottles of Rapsodii nail polish.
"No TV, no computer, no money," Oraham says.
"Everything here is so expensive."
She works as a cleaner in Irbil, but makes so little
that her husband kept his job at a power plant in
Baghdad. He visits his family once a month, bringing
food. When in Baghdad, he sleeps at his office
because he is afraid to stay in their house.
For the first time in four years, however, Oraham
and her family are not afraid to attend church.
Ainkawa, with a prewar population of 17,000, has
three churches and a nunnery that runs a
kindergarten. Many of the children are refugees from
other parts of Iraq. So are some of the nuns and
priests.
Mayor Fahmi Solqa says more Christians are arriving
by the day, joining the 1,500 or so families already
here.
Newcomers must register, making them eligible for
small monthly stipends from the church and Kurdistan
Regional Government. Townspeople donate food,
furniture and clothing.
"Of course, receiving such a big number of families
is making problems," Solqa says. "But our president,
Massoud Barzani, is encouraging people to come.
There is not much difference between Christians and
Muslims. Kurdistan is for everybody and we have to
live like brothers."
The Kurds of northern Iraq are non-Arab Muslims who
have been semiautonomous since the 1991 Gulf War,
when U.S. fighter jets began protecting the area
from Hussein's Arab army. Both Kurds and Christians
are highly critical of the central government in
Baghdad. It is dominated by Shiite Muslims who,
critics say, have done little to curb the carnage
that is forcing Christians to flee.
But some Christians say the Islamic violence against
them has been exaggerated.
"There's nothing against Christians -- they are
facing the same problems as Muslims," says Father
Rafael Benyamen Yousif, a Chaldean priest. "How many
mosques have been bombed?"
Still, Father Yousif hasn't been to Baghdad in
years.
"Why should I go? I'm a priest - they would kill
me."
Safe, but out-of-place
Though thankful to be safe, many Christians who have
found refuge in northern Iraq do not see a future
here. Nor do they see a future in the many areas
still roiled by terrorism.
"I feel like I am homeless in this world," Wafaa
Hena says.
In February 2006, she and her family left their big
house in Baghdad after once-friendly Shiite
neighbors demanded Hena wear a head scarf. Others
threatened to rape her and her 12-year-old daughter.
As Christians, they were accused of collaborating
with Christian soldiers from America.
The family sold everything -- two cars, furniture,
all of Hena's jewelry except her wedding ring -- and
took a bus to Damascus, Syria. They stayed until
their money ran out, returning to Baghdad to find
their house pocked with bullet holes.
In November, they left again, this time for Shaqlawa,
a Muslim-Christian village high in the mountains
north of Erbil. All they could afford was the tiny
storage room of a rundown house. They enclosed the
breezeway with plastic sheeting to give some
protection from snakes, bugs and climate extremes --
110-degree heat in July and heavy snow in January.
"It's torture taking a bath in the winter," says
Hena, who heats water from a hose over a small
burner. There is no tap water and the electricity
frequently goes out.
A mechanic by trade, Hena's husband makes about $8 a
day as a carpenter's assistant at one of the many
construction projects in the thriving Kurdish north.
The family gets $100 a month from the nearby
Chaldean church, where Father Shaba ministers to
them and dozens of other refugees.
Villagers have also donated food and clothing, but
Hena does not feel comfortable among Kurds whose
language and culture seem so different.
"People are calling us names -- Arabo -- because we
are talking in Arabic," she says. "Wherever I go, we
feel that we are strangers, worthless."
The family would like to move to Australia, where
her husband has relatives, or maybe to America. They
have no ill feelings toward the United States, even
though the war has driven so many Christians from
their homes and maybe out of Iraq forever.
"When the Americans came, we believed Iraq will be
like heaven," Father Shaba says. "Unfortunately, it
became the opposite."
sptimes com
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