'This business belongs to the old monk's family,' explained
Yacoub. 'They can tell us whether it would be possible to talk to him.'
Yacoub and I went into the shop; Mas'ud chose to stay outside and guard his car. The owner offered us seats and sent off his two grandsons, one to find out the whereabouts of the old monk, the other for bottles of Pepsi. Then he returned to serving his customers, a pair of elderly ladies upholstered, despite the heat, in velvet dresses with thick white scarves over their heads.
'Can you tell on sight who is Muslim and who is Christian?' I asked Yacoub.
'Only with the old people,' he replied. 'The old Christian ladies wear smaller headscarves which they tie in a particular way. Also they never wear green, the Muslim colour.'
One of the boys came back with the drinks. When Yacoub had taken a gulp, he continued: 'Years ago they say you used to be able to tell what religion someone was just by looking at what they wore: the Christians always had new clothes, while the Kurds had old broken ones.'
'Why was that?'
'In the villages the Christians had the best land; now the Kurdish agahs - the tribal chieftains - have just walked in and taken it from them, to distribute among their own people. They steal the crops of the Suriani from under their noses. There is nothing we can do. The government needs the support of the agahs if they are to win their fight with the PKK, so they never interfere.'
Yacoub finished his Pepsi and handed the can back to the boy. 'In the towns,' he continued, 'the Christians used to have all the jewellery shops; they were the tailors, shoemakers, leatherworkers. In the old days no Christian craftsman would employ a Muslim. But in the eighties, when most of the young Christians had already emigrated, the shop owners were forced to take on Muslim apprentices. Now those apprentices have opened their own shops. When I was at school fifteen years ago, perhaps 80 per cent of the shops were owned by the Suriani. Now it's less than 20 per cent. We still dominate the jewellery trade, but we are certainly not richer than the Kurds any more. If anything it's the reverse.'
Before long the door of the shop opened, and the second grandson walked in leading a doddering old man in baggy pantaloons. Yacoub greeted him and asked him some questions in Turoyo.
'Is this the old priest?' I asked.
'No,' replied Yacoub. 'This is Bedros, his son.'
'The old man must be pretty ancient.'
'He is. Bedros says his father is very deaf, and quite blind too, but we can certainly try to talk to him.'
We levered the old man into Mas'ud's car and drove through the labyrinth of Midyat's narrow bazaar alleys. Once we were out onto a rubble track in the outskirts, Bedros pointed out the silhouette of a monastery on the skyline, atop a hill overlooking the town.
'He says that this is where he lives,' translated Yacoub. 'It used to be the Monastery of Mar Obil and Mar Abrohom, but now that there are no monks his family looks after the buildings and tries to stop them falling down.'
We drove into the old monastery cloister. Chickens and ducks pecked about the yard; piled up in front of the sculpted doorway leading into one of the two churches was a great mountain of straw. A family of long-haired Angora goats drank water from a disused fountain lying against the nave wall. The monastery had become a farmyard.
Bedros led the way into the house he had built amid what had once been the monastery kitchens. At the back of the living room, fast asleep under a gaudy poster of the Last Supper sat an ancient figure in a black cassock. He was slumped in a wooden chair, his head tilted forward, and over his face was lowered a wide-brimmed Homburg hat. As we walked in, the old man stirred and opened first one eye, then the other. The second eye was clouded blue.
Bedros walked up to the old priest, cupped his hands and bellowed into his father's ear. The old man bellowed back.
'What's he saying?' I asked Yacoub.
Yacoub smiled: 'Abouna Shabo says, "If they are not Christian I will not talk to them." '
Bedros reassured him, and explained what we had come for. An extremely loud Turoyo conversation ensued. Father and son were joined by Bedros's wife, who appeared from the kitchen and joined in the shouting match. At one point the old man lifted his shoe and pointed out to me a hole in its bottom, apparently to indicate that his daughter-in-law was not looking after him to his full satisfaction. But eventually he began to talk of the siege, and as he did so, Yacoub translated.
'It was Mar Hadbashabo who saved us!' shouted the old priest. 'The saint was wearing white clothes and attacking at the front of the Christians, throwing the Muslims back from the barricades of Ein Wardo. At evening time he stood on the church tower. We all saw him, even the Muslims, those sons of unmarried mothers! At first they tried to shoot him, thinking he was a priest, but the bullets went straight through him. Then they thought he was a djinn. Only towards the end of the siege, only after three years, did they realise he was a saint.'
'Let's go back to the beginning,' I said. 'What were relations with the Muslims like before the war?'
'They were not good,' said the old man. 'But before the war nobody was ever killed. In those days the Kurds were in the hills and the Christians were near the towns. We lived separately. But we were always fearful of what might happen, so as the war approached we began to sell our animals and buy guns. We had more than three thousand. They were old-fashioned matchlocks, ones that you had to light with a fuse, but they did the job. We melted down all our copper pots to make shot; the monks melted down their plate. We collected together a good stock of wheat. When the war broke out, and the Turks told the Kurds to go and massacre all the Christians, we were ready. By night all the Christian villagers came to Ein Wardo. They came from Midyat, Kefr Salah, Arnas, Bote, Kefr Zeh, Zaz Mzizah, Basa Brin. In the village there were about 160 houses. By the time everyone had gathered there were at least twenty families in every house.'
The old man broke off, turned to his son and began to berate him again.
'What's he saying now?' I asked.
'He's crying "Grapes, grapes," ' said Yacoub, grinning. 'He wants his son to bring him some fruit.'
Bedros's wife was sent off, scowling, to the kitchen. She returned with a huge bunch of ripe grapes. The old man lowered it into his toothless mouth and tore off the bottom three or four. He munched them noisily, and a broad smile spread across his face. When he had finished I asked about the siege.
'We built walls between the houses so that the village looked like a fort,' he continued. 'Then we dug tunnels so that we could, go from house to house without getting shot by the Muslims. The strongpoint was the church, and on the roof we had a cannon that we had captured from the Turks in Midyat.
'They came after fourteen days: around twelve thousand Ottoman troops and perhaps thirteen thousand Kurds - irregulars who just wanted to join in the plunder. Any Christian left outside Ein Wardo was killed. Many were too slow and did not make it. In Arnas the Kurds captured thirty-five pretty girls. They locked them into the church, hoping to take them out and rape them one by one. But there was a deep well in the courtyard. All the girls chose to jump in rather than lose their virginity to the Muslims.'
'Did your supplies last for the whole siege?'
'The first summer we were not hungry. But by the middle of the winter things began to be difficult. We ran out of salt and people became ill for the lack of it. One group of about a hundred people tried to escape at night to get some salt from Midyat and Enhil. They were ambushed. Most of them got back, but fifteen people, including one of my brothers, never came back. That winter I lost my sister too. She went outside the barricades to fetch wood. The Muslims were hiding behind rocks. They captured her and cut her throat. That night I found her. Her head was separated from her body. I was twelve years old then.'
The old man's head dropped, and I thought for a minute that he, like Fr. Tomas the previous evening, was going to burst into tears. But after a minute's silence he recovered himself, and I asked if he had fought in the defence of Ei
n Wardo himself.
'They thought I was too young to hold a gun, but they let me collect stones to drop down the mountain slopes. I did my bit. There was plenty of opportunity. The first year the attack was very strong. Once I remember it was so strong that people ran away from the walls and began to retreat to the church, which was built with four very strong towers that could be held if everything else fell. But the monks, our leaders, threatened to shoot anyone who ran away, and in the end the defences held.
'That winter was very hard. One loaf of bread would go to each family per day, which meant that there was only one piece for each person. Many were wounded, but there was only one doctor; he did what he could, but most of the wounded had to rely on the old men who knew about roots and herbal remedies. But we never gave up. We had heard that the British had landed in Iraq, and we all believed they would come to rescue us. Of course nothing happened, but the hope of relief kept us from despair.'
'The Christians of the West have never done anything for us,' said Bedros, rolling a cigarette with his right hand, and spitting out the spare tobacco with a loud gob into the corner. 'The Turks help other Muslims if they are in trouble in Azerbaijan or in Bosnia, but the Christians of Europe have never shown any feelings for their brothers in the Tur Abdin.'
'The worst hunger was the following year,' continued the old priest, ignoring his son's interruption. 'During the siege no one could grow anything, so supplies were almost exhausted. I remember that second winter we were permanently hungry, and would eat anything: lizards, beetles, even the worms in the ground.
'But the Muslims were also growing hungry, and in 1917 disease - cholera I think - struck their camp. God willed it that we did not get the disease in Ein Wardo; somehow we were spared. The attacks grew less and less and gradually we became brave. At night we began to break out and attack their camp. Once we attacked the Ottoman barracks in Midyat.'
'You can still see the bulletholes,' said Yacoub.
'After three years,' continued Abouna Shabo, swiping at the bluebottles which were trying to settle on his face, 'they despaired of ever conquering us and said that we were being protected by our saints, Mar Gabriel, John the Arab and especially Mar Hadbashabo. Eventually a famous imam, Sheikh Fatullah of Ein Kaf, came to the Muslim army and said he would try to make peace between the two sides. The Muslims asked the Sheikh to say "Give up your guns," but the Sheikh, who was an honourable man, advised us not to surrender all our weapons.
'In the end we handed over three hundred of our guns. The Sheikh gave us his son as a hostage and said we should kill him if the Muslims broke their word. He then went on his donkey to Diyarbakir and took a written order from the Pasha-Commander that the soldiers and the Kurds should leave. I will never forget the sight of the Ottoman army taking down their tents and marching away down the valley towards Midyat.
'We gave the Sheikh back his son, saying we could not bear to kill the son of such a man, even if the Ottomans did break their word. Before the siege there were three Kurdish families living in Ein Wardo. When the fighting began we sent them away, but afterwards we welcomed them back. After that we lived together in peace and had no more trouble from the Muslims.'
'What do you mean, no more trouble?' said Bedros. 'Every day now we have trouble. How many Kurds live in the village now? Today they almost outnumber the Christians in Ein Wardo.'
'After the war, when I was a young man,' said Abouna Shabo, 'we were friends. But then we were in the majority, so they could give us no trouble. Now the Muslims have all the power and it is different. My son is right.'
'They give us very bad trouble,' said Bedros. 'In the last three years ten Christians have been killed in the villages around Ein Wardo. We cannot be friends like this.'
'Could we go and visit Ein Wardo?' I asked.
'It is too late today,' replied Bedros. 'It's not worth it. The Kurdish village guards will give you problems. It's after 3.30 already. Get home. Get behind the monastery walls.'
'These days feel just like those before 1914,' said the old priest, pulling himself slowly out of his chair and making his way, bent-backed, across the room. 'It feels like before a storm. You can see the black clouds, and the first drops are already falling.'
'Do you think there will be another massacre?' I asked.
'How many people are there left to kill?' said Abouna Shabo.
'There will not be a massacre,' said Bedros. 'Just a few killings every year. Priests will be kidnapped. Others will be kicked off their land.'
'All is in vain,' said Abouna Shabo, disappearing through the door. 'The English troops will not come!'
'And even if they did come,' said Bedros, showing us out, 'it would be too late now. We would not be here. How many years are left for us? Three years? Five? Ten?'
'Only God knows,' said the old priest. 'Only God knows.'
After Midyat, driving back through the wooden skeletons of the charred olive groves, Yacoub saw something hanging from a tree.
'Did you see that?' he said suddenly. 'In the branches.'
'What?'
'In the trees back there. I only caught a glimpse. It looked like a body.'
'Shouldn't we go back?'
'No,' said Mas'ud firmly. 'It is very dangerous. We must keep going.' 'Why?'
'If it was a corpse the PKK may still be about. They hang village guards by the roadside as an example to other collaborators. We must not go back.'
Mas'ud pressed his foot on the accelerator and the car lurched forward.
'I have heard of this before,' said Yacoub. 'The PKK stuff the collaborator's mouth with banknotes. It is to show that the village guards are taking Turkish money to betray their own people.'
Back at the monastery, Afrem was waiting for us. We told him what we had seen and he agreed that we were right to have pressed on, saying he would send out a search party in the morning. Then he took me aside.
'Listen, William,' he said. 'I have bad news for you. Soldiers were here all day wanting to speak to you. I told them you had already gone, but they did not believe me and waited for five hours. They left just forty minutes ago. They will come back tomorrow. I think you should leave as early as you can.'
'Don't worry,' I said, smiling. 'I'm going tomorrow.'
'It is for the best,' said Afrem gently.
Hotel Cliff, Hassake, Syria, 26 August
This morning, by the time I had got up, the monastery search party had already returned. They said that whatever Yacoub had seen the previous night, there was nothing there now. There was no body; the branches were empty. Yacoub, still convinced he had seen a corpse, suggested that the army could have removed it at dawn.
The previous night I had wanted to get out of the Tur Abdin as quickly as I could. But now the absence of a dead body swinging from the tree, and the reassuring clarity of the bright morning light, made me think I had perhaps been exaggerating the dangers, and I decided to try to see Ein Wardo before heading for the Syrian border. Yacoub, however, declined to come, saying the road to Ein Wardo had frequently been mined. It was up to me whether I wanted to risk it, but he was staying in the monastery. Nevertheless Mas'ud agreed to take me there as long as we left straight away. We said our goodbyes, and set off just after eight.
In Midyat, Mas'ud stopped to make enquiries in the bazaar. He had been anxious about landmines, but learned that two tractors had passed down the road from Ein Wardo the day before, and decided it would be safe to risk it. We passed the bullet-marked Ottoman barracks the Ein Wardo defenders had attacked in 1917, and headed off up the track.
As we drove the road climbed, and the narrow green valley grew hilly and arid. In the valley bottoms some narrow strips were still under plough, but the slopes were given over to sheep. At one point we passed a shepherd's stone sheiling and were chased for ten minutes by a huge Anatolian sheepdog with a collar spiked like a medieval instrument of torture. A few minutes after the dog had given up chasing us we rounded a bend in the road, and high above us Ein Wardo
came into view.
It was easy to see why the Suriani had chosen it for their last line of defence. The village perched on top of a near-vertical moraine at the end of a valley; its slopes were so steep and the gradient so regular that they resembled a man-made glacis. At the top of the slope, a ring of stone houses formed a curtain wall as convincing as that of any Crusader castle. It was a perfect defensive position.
Dominating the village at one end of the slope was the church. At first, from a distance, you could see only the square steeple, topped with an ornamental cupola. But when you climbed the snaking path leading up to the village you were presented with a very different view. The four corners of the church were punctuated by massive thick-walled towers, each bantering upwards to a flat terrace. Each tower was pierced by three circuits of narrow loopholes and arrow-slits. A fortified church, it seemed, was the only kind of defence the Suriani could build in the years before the First World War without provoking the suspicion of the Ottoman authorities. All it lacked were crenellations or battlements at the top of the towers.
Leaving Mas'ud with his car at the entrance to the village, I clambered up the slope over a tumble of ruined houses, many still pitted with bullet or shrapnel holes. Compared with the ruinous look of much of the village, the church was still in a very good state of preservation. A series of outhouses (once perhaps the home of the priest) had collapsed and were now roofless, but the main fortification was still quite intact.
From The Holy Mountain Page 14