Majed, Yousif, and I sat down at a nearby table, and ordered beers and lunch. I kept stealing glances at the bearded man. Sitting impassively chewing in the darkened restaurant, his face sealed with privacy, he looked utterly unapproachable.
Our beers came, followed by platters of chicken kebab, broiled tomatoes, rice, and greens. Majed and Yousif told me about several buildings visible from the restaurant. Yousif’s father had been imprisoned in the basement of one for over a year, during which time no one in the family had known where he was.
Then Majed nodded a hello at the bearded man, who nodded back.
I started. “Who is he?” I asked.
“Kamerin Khairy Beg,” Majed said. “He’s the son of the prince of the Yezidis.”
I was in luck! I had heard much about the Yezidis, often erroneously referred to as “devil worshipers,” and felt hungry to learn more about them.
“Can you ask him if I could come visit him sometime?” I asked.
“Ask him yourself,” Majed said, grinning. “He speaks some English.”
I made my request, and Kamerin Khairy Beg nodded.
“Yes, of course, with great pleasure, I would be honored to welcome you in my home,” he said slowly. His unapproachable veneer had completely vanished. Before me sat a gentle and somewhat shy-seeming man with kind, brown eyes.
As it happened, Kamerin Khairy Beg lived in Baadri, the historic home of the Yezidi princes, located in a remote area about two hours from Dohuk. I’d been hoping to travel there for Sarisal, the Yezidi New Year, coming up in mid-April—would it be possible for me to visit then?
Absolutely, Kamerin Khairy Beg replied, the festival would be an excellent time for me to come. I would be his guest, of course—he would send a car for me—and could stay with him and his family as long as I liked.
MOST NON - MUSLIM KURDS belong to one of three religions, which have no direct connection with one another, but which some scholars refer to collectively as the “cult of the angels.” Drawing on precepts from both pre-Islamic faiths and Islam, the cult consists of the Yezidis, who live mostly in northern Iraq; the Ahl-e Haqq, or Kakais, who live primarily near the Iran-Iraq border; and the Alevis, who live mostly in Turkey. Scholars disagree as to the number of believers in the religions, but estimates range from one-tenth to a probably exaggerated one-quarter of all Kurds, with the largest group being the Alevis and the smallest being the Yezidis. The Alevi Kurds may number about 1.5 million, the Ahl-e Haqq about 700,000, and the Yezidis about 300,000.
All three religions believe in one God, and in seven divine angels who protect the universe from seven dark forces. Good and evil were both present at creation, the cult holds, and are equally important in the continuation of the material world. A belief in the transmigration of souls through reincarnation is also central to the religious group, which is a universalist one, meaning that it regards all other religions as legitimate.
Both the Ahl-e Haqq and the Alevis worship Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and the main prophet of Shiite Islam, and Ismail of the Safavid dynasty, who first spread Shiism across Iran in the sixteenth century. The groups are therefore sometimes classified as being on the extreme edge of Shiism, although for the Ahl-e Haqq, their founder Soltan Sahak is far more important than are Ali and Ismail.
Only the Yezidis are exclusively Kurdish. Over one-half of Alevis are Turk, while some Ahl-e Haqq are Turcoman. The Alevi religion contains Turkic shaman elements, as well as Shiite and Zoroastrian ideas, while the Ahl-e Haqq draw on Shiism, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism, a gnostic sect that began in the A.D. 200s. The Yezidi religion is a mix of pagan, Zoroastrian, and Manichaean beliefs, overlaid with Christian, Jewish, and Sufi Muslim elements.
The Yezidis’ reputation for devil worship is based on their veneration of Melek Tawus, the Peacock Angel, who is the chief of the seven angels. As in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the religion holds that after God created man, one angel refused to bow down before the mortal, as God ordered, and was thereupon cast out of heaven. In the three major monotheisms, this angel—Satan—remains forever damned, but in Yezidism, God forgives the angel, named Melek Tawus, and reinstates him.
Melek Tawus’s emblem is the peacock, and the religion’s most revered object is a life-sized bronze figure known as the Great Peacock. One ceremonial practice, begun in the nineteenth century, involves taking one of six brass replicas of the Great Peacock to every single Yezidi community, no matter how small, for the collection of alms. Over the last fifty years, however, due to wars and repression, some replicas have been “retired.”
A persecuted group within a persecuted group, the followers of the three religions have suffered repeated violence at the hands of Muslim neighbors. During the Ottoman regime, at least twenty pogroms were waged by Turks against Yezidis, resulting in mass migrations to the Russian Caucasus. In the early 1500s, tens of thousands of Alevis were slaughtered by Sultan the Grim for suspected pro-Persian sympathies. Throughout Persian history, the Ahl-e Haqq have been shunned, vilified, and, as late as the 1920s, crucified and lynched by Muslims. All three groups have been repeatedly and falsely accused of sexual promiscuity.
In Iraq, the Yezidis are often referred to as the “original Kurds.” The reference is an odd one, seemingly based more in politics than in fact. The phrase is often used by Kurds with a dislike for Islam, by Kurds who want to see Yezidism more closely associated with Zoroastrianism, an “Aryan” religion, and by Kurds eager to place the Yezidis squarely in the Kurdish political camp. In fact, most Yezidis, who are Kurds, do actively support the Kurdish cause. But the Baath regime declared them to be Arab, and the Kurdish leadership, cognizant of the group’s strategic position on the Iraqi-Kurdistan border, fought back by publicly honoring the Yezidis as “original Kurds,” and using the pre-Islamic elements of their religion to promote a secular Kurdish nationalism.
SHORTLY AFTER MEETING Kamerin Khairy Beg, I visited the Yezidi Cultural Center, not far from Majed’s house. A broad walkway led to its front door, where I was ceremoniously received by about ten men who swept me down a dark and drafty hallway, into an equally dark and drafty room. Most of the men wore red-and-white turbans, and many sported the walruslike mustaches for which the Yezidi are famed.
Sitting upon dilapidated sofas and chairs, we nodded hellos. Cans of soda were popped, and we nodded some more. Then we waited. Though they were obviously expecting me—Dr. Shawkat had called—no one spoke English.
One hour later, Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil arrived. Dr. Khairy came in first—a small, gaunt man in a formal black suit with cheekbones that seemed sharp enough to cut through the lucent pallor of his skin. Mr. Fadhil followed. Though somewhat taller and bigger than Dr. Khairy, he was equally thin, with a broad and creased brow, worn brown suit, and rumpled white shirt. Between the two of them—one a medical doctor, the other an English teacher—they spoke passable English. They were also close friends.
“What can we do for you?” Dr. Khairy said.
I explained that I wanted to learn more about Yezidi culture and history.
“Yes, well, we don’t know much about our culture or history ourselves,” he said. “We’re trying to learn that now. This is the first time in many years that we can have our own religion. We couldn’t do it before. The Iraqi regime didn’t accept it.”
“We don’t know what it means to be Yezidi,” Mr. Fadhil added.
“But don’t you have a museum?” I asked, feeling disappointed. “Or hold concerts or lectures?” To me, a cultural center connoted some sort of cultural activity, though from what I’d seen so far, the place did seem to be nothing more than a dilapidated social club.
“We’re trying to make one now,” Dr. Khairy said. “Do you want to see?”
The two men led me down the hall to a small room. Inside were a few dusty exhibits showcasing traditional dress, household items, and farm implements.
“The center was only founded in 1992, after the uprising,” Dr. Khairy said
apologetically. “We have no money.”
Of course, I thought, embarrassed at my own obtuseness.
“Many of our villages were destroyed, especially in Shaikhan and Sinjar,” Dr. Khairy said, mentioning the two areas, still under Baathist control, where most Yezidis live.
“But they didn’t destroy Lalish,” Mr. Fadhil said, with a nod of satisfaction.
My ears pricked up at the mention of the holy shrine of the Yezidis, located in a valley enclosed by mountains, about an hour and a half from Dohuk. Lalish contains the tomb of the mystic Shaikh Adi ibn Musafir, the great prophet of the Yezidi religion. The son of a Muslim holy man, Adi was born in a Lebanese village around A.D. 1075, and studied in Baghdad with Sufi masters, before retreating to the remote Lalish valley. Discovering a region of great beauty, he remained there the rest of his life. A man emaciated with fasting, renowned for his piety and miraculous powers, he was said to recite the entire Quran twice every night. Pilgrims came from far and wide to see him.
Yezidi legend has it a bit differently, saying that Shaikh Adi was miraculously born to an elderly couple, and left home at age fifteen to seek his fortune. Five years later, riding across a plain bathed in moonlight, he passed a tomb, where an apparition arose before him. Terrified, Adi knocked over a jug of water nearby. The apparition turned into a boy with a peacock’s tail who told him to fear not, he was Melek Tawus, come to reveal to him the religion of the true world. The Peacock Angel took Adi’s soul to heaven for seven years, where God taught him the truth of everything while he slept. When his soul was returned to his body, Adi awoke to find the water still running out of the overturned jug.
“I would like to go to Lalish,” I said to the two men. “Can you help me?”
“Yes, yes, of course, we can take you,” Dr. Khairy said, with some enthusiasm.
“It’s our job to introduce our religion to foreigners,” Mr. Fadhil added, with considerably less enthusiasm.
LEAVING DOHUK A FEW days later, we passed a simple checkpoint of the type that guarded all towns in northern Iraq, and turned onto a road zigzagging up a rocky mountain. Though it was only midmorning, families were already out, setting up tents and building bonfires for picnics. A pickup truck packed with goats passed, followed by flocks of jogging sheep, their plump, wooly bodies swaying to and fro above short, stubby legs. The voice of Ibrahim Tatlis, a popular Kurdish singer from Turkey, drifted out.
We stopped to pick wildflowers—mostly the scarlet, purple, or yellow sheqayiq (ranunculus) that were everywhere, but also red gulale (poppies) and tall stately hero (hollyhocks). Both the Kurdish men and women love flowers, and will stop to pick them when given the chance.
The final approach to Lalish was narrow and hilly, bracketed with trees and boulders, and more picnicking families. Three men dancing merrily together, one chubby face beaming, caught my eye. Then I spotted the tops of two fluted cones—the signature architecture of the Yezidi tombs—and we arrived at an enclave of cream-colored buildings, cars parked in a large lot out front. Sitting atop a nearby wall were dozens of men and boys in traditional dress, talking, nudging, and nibbling on seeds and nuts.
Before getting out of the car, Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil removed their shoes. All Yezidis must go without shoes in the holy city, they said. As a visitor, I could wear mine until we entered the temple. I shivered on their behalf. The spring day was cold and wet.
Several round old women in voluminous dress greeted Dr. Khairy. He kissed their gnarled hands, and they kissed the top of his head in an age-old gesture that seemed straight out of a medieval world.
Climbing up a few wide steps, we reached a paved courtyard where cross-legged vendors were sitting before neat piles of seeds and nuts. A barefoot woman in a plain white sheath and head scarf appeared, lugging buckets brimming with water. Seeing my camera, she stared fixedly down at her feet and hurried by, water slopping around her.
Outside Shaikh Adi’s shrine
“She is faqriyat—like a nun,” Dr. Khairy said.
To the right of the courtyard stood a gateway with heavy wooden doors that marked the entrance to the sanctuary. Don’t step on the threshold! Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil warned me repeatedly as we approached; as soon as we crossed over, they ordered me to remove my shoes.
We were at the top of a flight of stairs leading down into a second paved courtyard, shaded with mulberry trees. To the right was a maze of living quarters and reception areas where we would later eat lunch, while straight ahead was another doorway, this one marked with ancient inscriptions, geometric designs, and a six-foot-tall vertical figure of a snake. Blackened with soot or shoe polish, the dark reptile seemed to jump out of its dull stone background with an immediacy that made me shiver.
“Yezidis respect all black snakes,” Dr. Khairy said. “Because during the great flood, when Noah’s Ark hit a mountain and made a hole in the ark, the black snake put himself in the hole and saved humanity. For this, we never kill black snakes.”
Crossing the second threshold, made smooth by pilgrims’ kisses, we passed into a dark, cavernous room—the shrine’s main hall. The floor was black and wet, and my socks immediately became soaked and icy. I could hear water plashing somewhere to my right, while straight ahead were five pillars draped with red and green cloths. Dirty chandeliers hung from the ceilings and crooked prayer rugs from the walls.
We headed to the sound of the water—a deep cistern whose source was the holy White Spring. All Yezidi temples must be built over a spring, Dr. Khairy said, as a portly faqir, or pious man, with a wandering eye arrived. Dressed in elegant black pajama-like garments edged with red and a black-and-red head cloth, he took care of the temple, living out back. He pointed out several sticky charred spots. On every Tuesday night, 366 fires were lit all over Lalish, he said. The fires marked the eve of the Yezidis’ holy day, Wednesday, and were fueled by olive oil and wool wicks spun by the faqriyat. As he spoke, I longed to return to see these lights—flicking, licking up all over, like fireflies, like tongues.
Passing from the main room, we entered a large chamber containing the chest-high tomb of Shaikh Adi, draped with more red and green cloths. A marble facade covered the lower part of the room, while higher up were broken pieces of mirrored mosaic and a conical dome—the interior of a fluted cone I’d seen outside.
Near Shaikh Adi’s chamber began the “caves,” a series of natural underground rooms with rounded stone walls and flagstone floors. Some contained dozens of waist-high clay urns once filled with olive oil, others contained more tombs. We had to duck our heads lower and lower as we passed between the rooms until, finally, we dropped almost to our knees to crawl through the last doorway and descend a short stairway into a cavern housing the Yezidis’ sacred Zamzam Spring.
“This is our holiest area, we don’t let Muslims visit,” Dr. Khairy said as I looked around the small enclosed space, water gushing out of the wall and into a stone channel. The water is said to cure all ailments.
“You are Christian, and so you are our friend,” the faqir said.
“You are only here because you are our guest,” Mr. Fadhil added pointedly.
Historically, the Yezidis have maintained the utmost secrecy regarding their faith, believing that secrets protected them. Only in the last few years have some come to the realization that exposure can help rather than harm them, by providing outsiders with a better understanding of their religion and culture.
As we left the main shrine to tour various smaller ones nearby, Dr. Khairy and Mr. Fadhil told me more about the customs and beliefs of the Yezidis. We pray three times a day, and when we pray we face the sun, they said. Mecca has no significance for us, but we respect it because it is Abraham’s house, and Abraham came before every religion. We do not get married in April—it is the month of the angels. Traditional Yezidis do not eat lettuce—they say it is the hiding place of evil—or wear the color blue. It is the color of Islam. We prefer to wear white.
“What about the mustache?” I said.
“Why do Yezidi men have such big mustaches?”
“It makes us better listeners,” Dr. Khairy said.
“It keeps secrets in,” Mr. Fadhil said with a grin.
WHEN I ARRIVED in Baadri, the historic home of the Yezidi princes, about two weeks later, I was surprised to find myself in what looked like any other northern Iraqi town, swollen with refugees and squat concrete buildings. The Baadri that I’d read about had been small, dominated by an elite class of Yezidis, some living in castles. I’d also expected Baadri to be in the mountains, like Lalish, but it sat exposed in a shallow valley, surrounded by rolling brown fields.
Kamerin Khairy Beg and a clutch of armed guards waited for me outside his home, near a front gate adorned with peacocks. The Yezidi leader was again dressed all in white, but today his robes were of simple muslin. From atop his sprawling, single-story house fluttered the yellow flag of the KDP.
Solicitously ushering me into his home, my host seated me in a long reception room and promptly disappeared. I breathed in deeply, luxuriating. The room was unremarkably furnished with heavy armchairs, couches, and coffee tables, with a pastel mural of Lalish covering the entire far wall. Nonetheless, the place had a magical, out-of-time feel. I could easily imagine Yezidi tribal chiefs meeting here.
Kamerin Beg reappeared, now dressed in a tawny, finely woven shal u shapik with very thin, widely spaced, red and green stripes.
“I am very, very happy you have come,” he said. “Thank you for visiting me.”
I returned the compliment, honored that he had changed on my behalf, as a servant glided in with steaming glasses of tea.
Kamerin Beg’s English was basic, but we could communicate. Despite his bushy white beard, with its wide streak of dark gray, he was also younger than I’d previously thought—early fifties rather than mid-sixties.
Kamerin Beg’s father had been the leading Yezidi prince in Iraqi Kurdistan and a member of the Kurdish Parliament until his death in 1997, my host said. He himself was the oldest son and had studied law in Egypt, graduating in 1979, before working as a lawyer in Mosul for seventeen years. After his father’s death, he’d returned to Baadri to take his father’s place and help his people.
A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts Page 16