Where God Was Born

by Bruce Feiler

  “Show mercy to your servants.

  Satisfy us at daybreak with your steadfast love

  that we may sing for you all our days.

  Give us joy for as long as you have afflicted us,

  for the years we have suffered misfortune.

  Let your deeds be seen by your servants,

  Your glory by their children.

  May the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us;

  let the work of our hands prosper,

  O prosper the work of our hands!”

  He closed his book. “Then I pretty much stood there and watched him die.”

  I asked Chaplain Messenger how living in Iraq had affected his faith, and he practically gushed with his answer.

  “Hey, I’m just amazed at how much of the Christian Old Testament—oops, I mean the Jewish scripture—is influenced by the Babylonian Exile,” he said. “Gee whiz! If you take the exile out of the Jewish experience, I would say half of Jewish scripture would lose its meaning. For Jewish people, it was a major shift. But as a Christian, I realized my faith was changed there as well. God was not just in the Temple. He was everywhere. He is wherever you happen to be.” He paused. “I wish I could say I learned as much from the Koran.”

  “Why, did you read the Koran while you were here?”

  “Roger.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “I have to say, most of what I know about Islam I learned from living here,” he said. “I had opportunities to learn before, but frankly I didn’t give a rip. My lasting impression is ‘Don’t accept at face value when someone says that all Muslims are the same.’ They are not. There is a difference between Shia and Sunni; there is a difference between moderate and fundamentalist. I’ve come to understand that the Koran can be interpreted in different ways. There are factions that will interpret it to support jihad, just as some will interpret the Bible to support Holy War.”

  “So do you fear Islam?”

  He thought for a second. “I have seen people celebrate in the streets every time there’s a car bomb, or a foreign national is beheaded. These kinds of things do not make me want to embrace Islam. But I do not fear it. And I don’t think that means the religions cannot get along here. In fact, they already are.”

  He led me outside to a wooden deck with picnic tables and umbrellas, where we were met by a visitor. Soon after arriving in Baghdad, Chaplain Messenger began going door-to-door in the Rusafa district, introducing himself to local religious leaders. Did they need a generator? Would they be interested in dialogue? A few resisted, but more were welcoming. He quickly developed relationships with the heads of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Armenian Orthodox Church, and the Sufi, Shia, and Sunni branches of Islam. The only community who shunned his advances were the Jews, who were afraid of appearing to cooperate with the Americans. He had invited a number of his fellow religious leaders to this meeting; one was able to accept.

  Imam Mohammad Saleh al-Ubaidy was a mesmerizing sight: a short, seventy-four-year-old man with mocha-colored skin, a bushy gray beard like that of some nineteenth-century German philosopher, thick-rimmed black Persol glasses, and a white turban with red trim. He wore a floor-length robe the color of pewter and carried a wooden cane. He could have been a wizard in a Harry Potter novel. Imam al-Ubaidy was the spiritual leader of the 14th of Ramadan Mosque, the blue-domed building on Firdos Square that was often used as the backdrop to reports on CNN and Fox News. The front door of the mosque is not ten yards from where the statue of Saddam was pulled down by American soldiers on April 9, 2003, with help from local Iraqis. I asked the imam if he was present on that day, and he said he was in hiding.

  We were joined this afternoon by about a dozen U.S. soldiers and a few Iraqi workers from the base, as well as the imam’s son. Over the next half hour different strands of conversation took hold. Islam is a religion of peace. America is a country of diversity. Abraham was born in Iraq. Over several years I had participated in dozens of discussions like this, as people of different faiths grappled head-on with the increase of religious violence. Though typical, this conversation was also extraordinary. Imam al-Ubaidy had risked his life by coming to a U.S. military base. The American soldiers, by serving in Iraq, were risking their lives as well. Chaplain Messenger had organized this event entirely out of his own restless desire to forge a spiritual benefit from the war.

  Yet I was frustrated. “I hate to ruin this party,” I said. “But everyone is getting along too well.” I believe in dialogue. I have committed myself to the idea that by going back to our common ancestor—Abraham—Jews, Christians, and Muslims can build a foundation of mutual trust. I am convinced that exploring how these religions have reinterpreted our shared heritage can shed light on how we can coexist today. But I’ve also come to believe something else: Unless we focus on our differences—and how to accommodate them—interfaith dialogue can become bland and directionless.

  I turned to Chaplain Messenger. “With everyone’s permission, I’d like to invite you to ask the toughest question you can think of to the imam.” Chaplain Messenger took a breath and sat forward. “You’re talking about how we can all get along,” he said, “but has Islam been taken over by violent extremists?”

  The imam leaned forward, too. “God never instructed his people to be violent,” he said. His voice was slow and confident. “Some leaders say this because war suits their purposes, but that is not in the Koran.” He continued for several minutes, talking about the peacefulness of the Prophet Mohammed and the different factions of Islam, and when he finished, I asked him if he would like to ask the toughest question he could think of to the chaplain. “I congratulate you as a man of peace,” he said, “but what about the violence Christians have perpetrated against Muslims over the years?”

  “I think the problem is the same with the Muslims,” the chaplain said. “Not all Christians practice what they say they believe. We can’t even keep churches together because we fight amongst ourselves.” He continued, talking about the peaceful ministry of Jesus and the violent nature of some Christians, and when he finished I did something that I had not previously done in Iraq. I said, in public, that I am Jewish.

  I have pushed myself further than I ever could have imagined in recent years to speak openly about my faith. I believe deeply that one key to addressing the problems in the world is getting over the notion our mothers all taught us: “Don’t talk about politics and religion in public.” The extremists talk openly about religion; those of us who believe in mutual respect and tolerance must speak as well. But the one piece of advice I heard most often before coming to Iraq was not to tell anyone my religion. The experience of Danny Pearl—an American, a Jew, a reporter—has haunted every journey I have taken since he was beheaded while reporting a story in Pakistan in 2002. In the Middle East, what you believe can still get you killed.

  Yet at this moment, sitting at Firebase Melody, I felt both safe and compelled. I invited the imam to ask me the toughest question he could think of. He seemed surprised by my admission and said he admired how Jews did not abandon their faith over the centuries. Then he took up my challenge: “You talk about openness,” he said, “but what about the fact that in the time of the Prophet, Jews embraced Muslims, but now they prevent them from praying freely in Jerusalem?” I tried to answer the question. “Muslims are allowed to worship more freely in Jerusalem under Jews than when it was the other way around,” I said. “Still, I don’t condone every action the Israeli government takes.” I continued, talking about how Jews got along better with Muslims than with Christians for many centuries until the rise of Israel, and then, for a second, there was silence.

  What would happen now?

  One premise of my journeys across the Middle East was that traveling through the land where God was born and discussing the Bible along the way would change how I feel about the Bible, about the land, and about myself. But on this particular trip I wanted more: I wanted to know if the Bible could elucidate the sp
iritual crisis we all face today. In Iraq, that question drew me back repeatedly to the foundation story of the Bible.

  Creation is the story in the Hebrew Bible that shows its greatest debt to Mesopotamia. In the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, the world begins with the mingling of two great bodies of water, Apsu, freshwater, and Tiamat, saline water. Apsu is killed by one of their offspring, Ea, prompting Tiamat to wage war with her descendants. In the ensuing struggle, Ea’s son Marduk creates the world by taming Tiamat and splitting her body in two.

  The Genesis story has clear echoes of its Babylonian forebear. When God begins to create heaven and earth, the earth is “unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water.” Before God does anything, the world is covered with a dark, watery chaos. The Hebrew word for “deep” in this verse, tehom, is the root word for Tiamat. God then splits these waters in two, exactly as happens in Enuma Elish. Part of the waters are tucked above the sky; the rest become the seas. Water and darkness precede God’s Creation, and they succeed it as well, just more confined. The earliest verses of the Bible introduce the notion that order is not the natural state of the world; chaos is. Before there was good—to use God’s phrase—there was evil.

  Before there was peace, there was war.

  The rest of the Hebrew Bible seems to support the idea that God is constantly struggling against forces of chaos, disorder, and disrespect. He boots Adam and Eve from his garden after they disobey his order; he destroys the world with a flood after the people act sinfully; he lashes out at his freshly liberated people after they build a golden calf at Mount Sinai; he summons Nebuchadnezzar to wipe out Jerusalem after the people despoil the Promised Land with debauchery. His chosen people, too, struggle against waves of evil enemies—the Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians. The idea that the Bible represents some halcyon time that if we only get back to we could all live happily ever after is absurd. The Bible suggests there never were good ole days. Every day is a struggle. The Bible is neither conservative, in that it recommends returning to a better time, nor is it optimistic that a better time lies ahead. The Bible is redemptive, in that it gives humans the ability to save themselves.

  And how should they do this? How should humans re-create themselves in a manner that will stanch the lingering waters of evil and summon the tides of good? They should do what God does at the start of Creation in the face of chaos. They should use the only force the Bible shows will quell the deep and fill the darkness with light. They should use words. “And God said.” They should use ideas, prayers, pleas, complaints, lamentations, and psalms. God, at the end of Creation, commands humans to be his partners. “Be fertile and increase,” God tells humans. “Fill the earth and master it.” Created in God’s image, humans now have the ability to create on his behalf. They also have the ability to lord over God’s other creations. They can’t make evil go away, but they can speak truths to control it. They may not be able to eliminate chaos, but they can use words to calm it.

  But what words should humans use? What words are left that don’t divide, alienate, or disunite? I was struck by a pattern that recurred during my travels in Iraq. What inspired Chaplain Munson on the eve of war? Jeremiah 29 and Psalm 91. What inspired the rabbi to emigrate to Israel? The prophets’ vow to uplift the children of exile. What inspired Chaplain Messenger to extend his hand to the enemy during war? The lesson of Babylon is that God belongs everywhere, to everyone.

  The Torah is central to Judaism, the Gospels to Christianity, the Koran to Islam. But I was beginning to wonder if the second half of the Hebrew Bible, precisely because it is oft overlooked, and precisely because these stories are shared by all but claimed by none, might offer fertile, common ground. The figure of the prophet transcends the Abrahamic faiths. Christianity embraces the Hebrew prophets; in the Gospels, Jesus even refers to himself as a prophet. Islam believes there are 124,000 prophets, and the Koran lists by name 25, including David, Solomon, Elijah, Ezekiel, Jonah, and Zechariah. Both Christianity and Islam quote the Hebrew psalms. War fills the second half of the Hebrew Bible, as does chaos and depravity. But the enduring images from these books come from their call to justice, their direct expression of the human need for God, their vision of a world with freedom for all where, as Psalm 104 declares, “the sinners disappear from the earth, / and the wicked be no more.”

  Sure enough, this dream is how Imam al-Ubaidy broke the silence at our Abraham discussion in Baghdad. “If Jews, Christians, and Muslims go back to our roots, we will be in peace,” he said. “We don’t need to find one person. We don’t need to agree on everything. We need to find our principles—peace, love, justice, and tolerance. We need to realize the future belongs to God, not to us.”

  And just like that, the tension eased. Nothing was resolved in our encounter. No treaties were signed. But just for an instant, in the middle of a war, the sound heard coming from northern Baghdad was not bullets.

  It was words.

  . 5 .

  A FUTURE WITH HOPE

  I would leave Baghdad with one regret: I didn’t get to see Uday’s disco. During my time in the capital, titillating news swept through the expat community. The Al-Rashid hotel, famous as the location where CNN broadcast the opening nights of the first Gulf War, was reopening its nightclub. The disco had been carefully modeled after the one where John Travolta danced in Saturday Night Fever, complete with lighted floor and a mirrored ball. Uday, Saddam’s elder son and prospective heir until he beat his father’s favorite servant to death, apparently kept a private room in the back. The Al-Rashid hotel was inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, so only select individuals had access. One invited me for a beer. Prudence, for once, overcame my curiosity.

  But I wasn’t able to resist entering one of Saddam’s plushest lairs. The Republican Palace is the political epicenter of Iraq. Tucked behind three layers of checkpoints on the banks of the Tigris, the palace looks like the kind of building a ten-year-old boy would construct if you gave him all the money in the world and invited him to build a mansion in honor of himself. The 270,000-square-foot monstrosity sits on a manicured plot covering forty-one acres; two wings flank a central foyer. The front consists of a stately colonnade, once topped by four bronze heads of Saddam, each weighing three tons.

  Once Saddam’s chief residence, the Republican Palace had been bombed during the first Gulf War, then it was rebuilt. After Operation Iraqi Freedom, it became the headquarters for the Coalition. I was invited to meet Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Jerry to his friends.

  If the outside of the Republican Palace was a testament to megalomania, the inside was an expression of how far the mighty can fall. A Marine stood in the front door; over his head was a poster of the fifty-two most-wanted Iraqis, each face on a playing card. Red Xs covered the faces of those who had already been caught, including the ace of spades, SADDAM HUSAYN AL-TIKRITI, President. The ten-foot-wide marble halls reminded me of the Pentagon; they teemed with U.S. service personnel and preppily dressed staffers from Washington. The bathrooms had bidets and gold-plated faucets. In the opulent throne room, just above the seat of power, a mural showed Scud missiles soaring skyward; on the opposite wall was a mural of their presumed destination—Jerusalem. The room now served as an interfaith chapel.

  “So what does it feel like to come to work here every day?” I asked Kristi Clemens, my American escort.

  “It’s like Groundhog Day,” she said. “Every day the same thing. We’re here fighting terrorism, yet we come to work in a palace. Standing here on Christmas Eve, having Catholic mass in Saddam’s throne room, it was surreal.”

  Paul Bremer’s office was located in Saddam’s former reception room. A walk-through metal detector stood in front of the entrance, followed by two men with machine guns. In the antechamber, a dozen desks were buzzing with aides. Books were scattered everywhere: a Kurdish-English dictionary, A History of Islamic Societies, The Constitution of the United States: It
s Sources and Applications. Bremer’s office was small, and the curtains were drawn, presumably to shield him from attack. His desk had a laptop computer, a Koran, and a wooden sign: SUCCESS HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS. The bookshelves were mostly empty, save for a box of bran flakes, an espresso maker, and a photograph of him with Dick Cheney and one with George W. Bush. The latter was signed, “To Jerry, the right man for a big job.”

  Ambassador Bremer was gracious and surprisingly relaxed, given how pressured his time was and how little sleep he was said to receive. He seemed thinned by the job, with a blue-and-white striped shirt, blue trousers, and his trademark desert combat boots. We may have been in Baghdad, but the man who had served six secretaries of state had the air of a Yale-bred diplomat at home in any throne room in the world.

  We talked about food; Bremer complained about not being able to indulge his love of French cooking. We talked about archaeology. I asked him if the past seemed more present here. “The lawyers take you to Hammurabi,” he said. “And the Christians will talk about the Assyrians. Saddam used to invoke the Mongol invasion. History in this part of the world is more alive than it is in the United States.”

  But in the few minutes allowed to me, I wanted to talk most about religion. Raised a Protestant in WASP Connecticut, Bremer served in U.S. embassies in Afghanistan and Malawi before being named ambassador to the Netherlands in 1983. While serving in Europe, Bremer and his college-sweetheart wife, Francine, were inspired by the legacy of the Catholic Church, with its saints, shrines, and prayer. In 1993 Bremer became visibly moved watching television coverage of Pope John Paul II connect with young people on World Youth Day. The following year, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. Prayer became central to his life, and before leaving for Iraq, he sent his wife scurrying around Washington for the one thing he refused to leave without: a finger rosary to keep in his pocket.