May 16, 2009
“He hates us” ND kept saying in the beginning, of our driver. “It's okay, we hate him too- it's mutual.” I've become quite the acidic person since coming to Iraq. I used to care if someone appeared to be angry with me. Now I couldn't give a flying rat's ass, as long as I know it's not my fault. It was a waste of my time, I realized, trying to appease assholes and bitches. Better to just buy them some ice cream and give them time to cool off, and wait for them to come around, if they ever came around. But it was nice to have ND there- she still cared, so her presence brought out the small part of me that still cared and still tried to understand despite all my tough talk. It was important to not let acceptance of asshole-ness tip into actual hatred.
“Get ready,” ND told the driver in Kurdish, “we're about to take you on an amazing tour of your own country.” She was right, and he knew it. Yet, you would think we were dragging him across a bed of nails the entire time. Even when we could tell that he was amazed, he still, like an obstinate child, refused to lighten up and quit his constant bellyaching. I knew instantly what type of personality he was- the happier he was, the more chronically he complained. Sigh. I felt bad for his wife. Especially when he kept trying to find excuses to get close to and touch me and J. I nearly pounced on him and gave him a fistful when he impatiently tapped me three times on the underside of my upper arm (the flabby side, no less!) as I was holding up my camera to take a picture of the amazing aqueduct. Lucky for him, instead of following my deadly jungle cat-like instinct, I merely gave him a dirty look and yelled at him. Asshole.
The driver was making the journey so difficult, that we weren't even sure we would ever make it to the monastery. So when we actually did find it, I was overwhelmed with surprise, relief, and excitement. It actually existed! It was no “Na Koja Abad”, a Persian term meaning “land of No-where”, which I had come across while reading Henry Corbin's Mundus Imaginalis. The monastery did exist in the realm of the real, but when we first spotted it from the road, a tiny structure embedded high up on Mount Maqloub, and of a similar light brown color, I was not so surprised that we had such a hard time finding it. It seemed a part of the mountain itself, a chameleon structure barely visible from hundreds of feet below and beyond. Even the driver betrayed interest, his eyes unbelieving. These crazy foreigners (that would be us) weren't so crazy after all. We crept up the steep and winding road, passed by a pointy M-shaped archway whose ends hung incomplete in mid-air, parked and got out of the cab, cramped and sweaty from the summer's heat.
I balked at the view over the rail. Below me was a sea of brown, vast and desert-like with slender roads weaving through like white ribbons. The sun alighted on the landscape in irregular patterns of light and shade, turning the uniform brown into a colorful canvas of burnt red, pale yellows, beige and grayish-brown. Far in the distance from the valley's relatively flat surface rose rounded brown mounds imprinted with whirly patterns like the imprints on human fingers. If I had been religious, I'd have believed that they were the fingerprints of God, evidence that he had shaped the mounds of the Earth with his own two hands like a potter leaving his mark on the clay.
Of course, I am not religious. My heathen feet climbed the steps to the veranda and eventually entered the monastery. Inside was a golden-brown atrium that was surrounded by arches galore and had the wonderful feel of open air and lightness. Looking back, I could see the imprinted mountains framed by the doorway's dark brown wooden frame. Above the door were glass-less apertures for windows enclosing the bell tower, above that a pumpkin-like round dome topped by an Eastern Orthodox cross, and then the blue sky. It felt like heaven up here, so light and airy.
We spent a long time in there, exploring the atrium, the cellar, the chapel, and the most beautiful crypt I've ever seen (again, not saying much). This was the crypt of Saint Matthew (known as Mor Matti here), an Assyrian monk who'd escaped persecution in Diyarbakir (in eastern Turkey) and came seeking shelter in this secluded mountaintop structure 30 km from Mosul. The crypt was a room within the chapel, a small, square chamber built of a lovely white stone mottled with pale gray, deliciously cool in the summer's heat. Attached to the walls and ceiling were wishing scarves like lacy bridal veils, and in one corner lay a shackle and chain. I put it on for fun, and T looked at me as he always does, as if I've committed a grievous sin. If I had, the shackle would not come undone on its own and my wish would not come true. This was how the wishing shackle worked. Of course, after he got the OK from our unofficial Baghdadi guide, he was eager to get a photo of himself choking on the shackles, to which I, as the stereotypical camera-wielding Asian tourist, happily obliged. Later, our guide showed us her family's temporary room for the duration of their pilgrimage, and I got to meet her fat, golden-haired, peachy-pink cherub-like nephew, George, and cover him with camera kisses as he laughed and squealed with pleasure, my own heart nearly melting like 21st century ice caps affected by global warming. I love happy babies!
Ahem. Anyway, this Syriac Orthodox monastery, founded in AD 363 by Mor Matti, but built even earlier, had housed hundreds of monks since its founding, but now only housed 6. We met one of them, Monk Yusuf, and chatted with him in his study. He was an amiable, peaceful man, who could probably put the most timid person at ease with one look of his kind eyes. I mentioned Mr. Clarry, as he had directed me to in his Clues.
“Do you know him?”
“Sure, I know him. He's my best friend,” he replied with a smile. I didn't realize until later that he was being facetious. Gee, I'm so gullible, even a monk can fool me! I've been bamboozled by a man of God. After checking out the view from the second-story veranda and climbing down steep old steps outside the monastery to explore Mor Matti's prayer chamber and the wishing tree on the way, we said goodbye to our Baghdad tour guides and Monk Yusuf, and I sat in the cab as it rolled down the steep incline, thinking how cool it must be to be able to say, “my best friend is a monk”.
We'd spent a good two hours at least in that monastery, so by the time we left, it was past 4 pm. Despite the late hour, we decided to keep going, on to the next item in Mr. Clarry's instructions- the Arbella Battlefield, where Alexander the Great had defeated the Persian King Darius in 321 BC. It was exactly as Mr. Clarry had described. Just a field where an amazing event had taken place more than 2000 years ago, but which was in essence and totality, just a field. We weren't even sure if it was the right field. No civil war re-enactments here, my friends. We did our best to imagine Alexander dealing the final blow to the great Kind of the East, and moved on quickly to the next item on the list: the Jerwana Aqueduct.
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