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Kurdish Sanctuary for Christian Refugees
26.11.2009
By Abeer Mohammed and Neil Arun in Ankawa, Erbil,
Kurdistan region of Iraq
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Christians fleeing violence in Baghdad and Mosul
flock to bustling suburb of Kurdish capital.
November 26, 2009
ERBIL-Hewlêr,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — A sharply-dressed Iraqi
Christian man stands on the threshold of his new
shop, dangling a struggling rooster by its feet.
Omar Farooq Jerjis came to Ankawa for the quiet
life. The 28-year-old says he fled Baghdad three
years ago because insurgents kept trying to kill him
for working with the United States military.
His new venture is a beauty salon. The rooster he
holds upside-down is about to be sacrificed for good
luck. The bird flaps its wings and arches its neck,
trying to right itself, as Jerjis recalls what drew
him to Ankawa.
“I decided to move when I heard my cousin say this
place was just like Baghdad in the 1980s,” he said.
“Baghdad is my home but this neighbourhood has given
me a future I could not have there.”
Ankawa is a largely Christian town of concrete
villas and bustling small businesses on the
outskirts of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s
semi-autonomous and relatively secure Kurdistan
region. Since 2003,www.ekurd.netits
population and its perimeter have expanded
dramatically with the influx of refugees fleeing
violence in Baghdad and Mosul.
Always diverse, Ankawa has become a vivid microcosm
of the Christian dialects and denominations that
once thrived across Iraq. Though the newcomers
placed an inevitable strain on resources, officials
and older residents acknowledge that they have also
invested heavily in the local economy.
“The displaced Christians revived Ankawa,” said
Jerjis. “It used to be a village of mud houses. Now
it is a civilized neighbourhood.”
Holding down the rooster on the threshold of his
shop, he severs its head with a sweep of a knife.
Blood spurts across the floor. Following Arab
custom, Jerjis dips a hand in the blood and places a
crimson print by the doorway. Above the palm-print,
he uses a bloodstained finger to paint a cross – the
symbol of his faith.
“Living in Ankawa does not mean I have forgotten my
roots as an Iraqi Arab,” he said.
Christians have inhabited Iraq for more than two
millennia. There were an estimated 800,000 to one
million followers of the faith prior to 2003.
In the turmoil that followed the US-led invasion,
the Christian population has dwindled substantially.
Under attack from criminals and hard-line Islamist
militias, tens of thousands fled to neighbouring
countries such as Syria.
Ankawa is an anomaly – one of very few places in
Iraq where the Christian community has expanded over
the last six years.
Security is the main reason for this, according to
the town’s mayor, Fahmy Maty. A suave former lawyer
with a constantly ringing cellphone, Maty credited
the Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, with
accommodating the Christians’ growing needs.
In the last six years, he said, three new
neighbourhoods had been built around Ankawa, and
land for some 4,000 new homes had been set aside.
The town’s population had nearly doubled, from
10,000 in 2003 to nearly 20,000 at the latest count.
Despite the rapid expansion, he said friction with
Ankawa’s older Christian residents and the Muslims
of Erbil had been avoided, “The Christians behave
compassionately towards the refugees.... We also
have no problems with our Muslim brothers.”
As in the rest of Iraq, Chaldean Catholics are the
largest sect in Ankawa, followed by groups such as
Assyrians, Syriac Christians and Armenians.
Between them, they speak a range of dialects and
languages, from Syriac and Aramaic to Kurdish and
Arabic. Some Christians regard themselves as
ethnically distinct from other denominations, others
do not.
The degree to which they identify with nearby Muslim
communities – be they Kurdish or Arab – also varies
sharply. According to Maty, the displaced Christians
from Mosul and Baghdad generally speak fluent
Arabic, with little or no Kurdish. Ankawa’s older
Christian families, meanwhile, speak fluent Kurdish
and little Arabic.
“The displaced people are unlike us,” said Habib
Shamoon, a 64-year-old Christian carpenter in the
traditional Kurdish garb of baggy one-piece suit and
cummerbund. “We are Kurds but they are Arabs,” he
said, helping himself to hot beans from a roadside
vendor.
At a school for Assyrian Christians in Ankawa,
17-year-old Raabil Shlemkho said he took most of his
lessons in the Syriac language. “The displaced
Christians do not study here,” he said. “They study
at their own schools, in Arabic.”
Lubna Khalil, an 11-year-old Assyrian schoolgirl,
said in halting Arabic that the newcomers spoke a
“different Christian language and did not know
Kurdish”.
Um Marina, a Christian refugee from Baghdad, said
she was not overly troubled by the language gap –
her young daughter had already picked up the Ankawa
dialect.
Far more upsetting for her was the relatively high
price of living and the chilly reception from some
locals.
“My neighbour was Christian but she never greeted us
for the first few months that we lived here,” she
said. Um Marina said she had taken up work as
manager of a local store, selling wedding dresses,www.ekurd.netbecause
her husband had been unable to find a well-paid job.
Sami, a building contractor who refused to give his
last name, said he considered Ankawa his new home.
Originally from a Muslim neighbourhood in the
violent city of Mosul, he said he fled after his
neighbour of 20 years began threatening him.
“At first I suffered here but now I make good money
from my business,” he said. “I will not consider
leaving Ankawa. Let’s say it in sectarian terms –
this is where I can be with my people, the
Christians.”
Mayor Maty said the high rents in Ankawa were partly
the result of soaring demand, created by the new
refugees. He added that he expected Ankawa’s economy
to continue booming, fuelled by the foreign
organisations that had set up base there.
The US has a heavily guarded consulate in Ankawa,
and several aid agencies and oil firms also rent
large villas in the area. Cranes and cement mixers
toil on construction sites along the perimeter.
Among the many buildings going up, one structure has
recently been torn down – a police cabin on the road
into town.
“The police are everywhere – we don’t need
checkpoints,” said a grey-haired American man
shopping at a local store. Behind him, burly foreign
men with shaven heads and sunglasses inspected
bottles of liquor.
Outside the new beauty salon, Jerjis was tidying up.
He said he planned to give the slaughtered rooster
to an employee who was too poor to afford meat. From
a window, a woman called out, “Make sure you clean
the pavement.”
“All done,” Jerjis replied, splashing water over the
bloodstains.
Abeer Mohammed is an IWPR senior local editor and
Neil Arun is an IWPR Iraq editor.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, iwpr
net
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