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The First Hidden Church

June 29, 2008 6:22 PM

An archaeologist in Jordan claims to have found the earliest-known Christian church anywhere in the world. I read this online in the Jordan Times while I am next door in Iraq. What is any self-respecting journalist with a persistent sense of curiosity about the world going to do?

So I soon found myself on the road from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to the northern town of Rihab, to meet Abdul Qader al-Housan, one of the country's top archaeologists. He has been working in the Rihab area for eight years now, and has found 30 churches there, mostly from the Byzantine period that stretches from the fourth to the seventh century. After that, Islam swept through the region.

Abdul Qader is a charming and highly educated man -- he studied in Istanbul and in addition to Arabic, Turkish and English he also speaks or reads Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Nabbatean. Tall, bearded and rangy, he speaks with a great rush of words as if he cannot contain the excitement of all his discoveries.

He takes me to a site ringed by a wire fence with a guard. There are some remains of a brick building with Roman columns and mosaics on the floor.

"This is the church of St. Georgeous (St. George)" he says. "Third century A.D."

Very beautiful, but this is not what we have come to see.

About a year ago while he was working on St. Georgeous, his workmen found a hollow-sounding spot. They dug down about two feet and found an old air shaft, which opened out into a subterranean compartment. They excavated further and uncovered a series of rooms hollowed out from a cave, one of which appeared to have an altar.

Abdul Qader knew that many early Christians had fled Jerusalem to what is now northern Jordan to escape Roman persecution in the first century. Could this underground dwelling and worship space be from that time?

He started carefully collecting and studying debris from the floor of the cave. There were pottery shards and copper coins -- he was getting more and more excited. It appeared that some of the artifacts indeed came from Jerusalem. And he was able to date some of the coins to A.D. 70, when Herod Antippus, son of the Herod who ruled at the time of Jesus, was around.

I listened to all this spellbound, sitting in the semi-darkness of this underground church. And then Abdul Qader pulled a small bag of coins out of his pocket and showed them to me. Some were Jewish, from Jerusalem, worth half a shekel, he said. The others were Nabbatean from Petra, further south in Jordan.

I am no archaeologist, and I am sure there are others who will want to peer-review Abdul Qader's findings, which is as it should be. But I am a journalist, and I know what makes a good story. Sitting in a church built in a cave holding money that was used 2,000 years ago -- now that is pretty amazing.

But Abdul Qader wasn't finished. He said he has a theory that after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, he and his mother Mary may well have passed through Rihab on their way back to Galillee. It is highly plausible -- Rihab lies along the old Roman road that once ran all the way from Yemen through Saudi and Jordan to Damascus, and was the main thoroughfare east of the Jordan river. It might also explain why there were so many early Christian churches built in Rihab.

He cannot prove that theory -- not yet. But his stories and historical knowledge brought this ancient part of the world alive to me. I cannot wait to hear what he digs up next!

June 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Mosul Memories

June 25, 2008 9:51 PM

I have fond memories of playing dominoes at a tea shop overlooking the Tigris River in the northern city of Mosul. It is right at the end of the iron bridge that connects the old part of the town with the western suburbs, next to a huge market area. A charming open lawn shaded by willow trees, it was a place where men would gather to escape the heat of the sun, chat, and play endless games of dominoes, tiles clacking on the small tables at furious speeds.

I am not bad at dominoes -- but the locals there were better. I paid for the tea…

That was in 2004, and since then Mosul has been too dangerous to visit, a city taken over by al Qaeda with only a small U.S. presence around the airport and a general population who lived in constant terror.

Now much has changed in Mosul, as a combined U.S.-Iraqi force of 27,000 men marched into the city in May and managed to detain, kill or force out most of the al Qaeda fighters. This week we visited Mosul, and it was pretty quiet -- too quiet, in some places.

We drove up what the Iraqis had come to call "the road of death" in the west of the city, known to the U.S. military as Route Tampa -- seven miles of bullet-scarred, bomb-damaged, deserted buildings that until recently had been home to snipers and roadside bomb emplacers, waiting for army or police patrols they could attack. They have gone now, leaving behind rubble, burnt wiring, cartridge cases and scorch marks on the tarmac -- ugly abrasions of war.

Our tour guide was General Riyadh Tawfeeq, the Iraqi army commander in the city, and quite a character. He was keen to tell us that he is a big fan of U.S. westerns, and particularly likes movies with Kirk Douglas as the star. He said he saw himself playing the role of sheriff in Mosul -- just like the sheriff in Kirk Douglas movies, the general often has difficulties with outlaws who won't respect the law -- "But in the end," he said smiling, "the sheriff always wins."

Then we crossed the city to where the iron bridge spans the river -- and much to my delight the tea shop was still there. The soldiers who were taking us around didn't feel confident letting us cross the bridge on our own, and their big vehicles couldn't drive across, so the tea shop remained tantalizingly out of reach. But we met a man selling watermelons at the end of the bridge who told us cheerfully, "If we had been standing here six months ago, we would be dead."

Maybe in another six months I will be able to get back to that tea shop. And maybe I will get my domino revenge. Maybe.

June 25, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | User Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

The Soccer War

June 20, 2008 5:57 PM

We went to an unusual soccer game this week in the small village of Multaka, 130 miles north of Baghdad.  It pitted the local soccer stars against a team drawn from the 87th Infantry, the U.S. military unit that is responsible for the area.  Their commander, Lt Colonel Chris Vanek, has been fielding a team for the past month against various villages in his area in an attempt to win hearts and minds and humanize the Americans in the eyes of the locals.

For many of the villagers it is the first time they have seen an American who is not wearing body armor and helmet and carrying a gun.  (They wore blue t-shirts with their unit’s logo, “Freedom isn’t free …Never was”)

It was pretty funny to watch.  Soccer does not come naturally to most American soldiers.  They are “still Nascar and football,” says Vanek.  He himself is a baseball and basketball fan.

But Iraqis are passionate about one sport, and one sport only: soccer.  Last year when they won the Asian Cup, the celebratory gunfire went on all night.  At the moment, they are in the qualifying stages for the next World Cup, and whenever there is a game on the streets are empty.

In Multaka, the local team went ahead in the first two minutes, and then scored again a couple of minutes later, much to the glee of the spectators.  Vanek and his men took it all in good humor. They knew that even while losing, they were winning in the bigger picture.

Vanek is an interesting man –- part of the new generation of counter-insurgency-savvy officers so valued by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

Vanek is a former special forces officer. In fact he was the operations officer for the Jessica Lynch rescue back in 2003 in the early days of the war.  He has spent 48 months “in theater,” as they say here, and he has a good sense of Iraqi atmospherics. 

When he arrived in Hawijah, his current base, last fall, his men were getting attacked three times a day.  After some heavy fighting and also a lot of tea-drinking with local sheikhs to win over their loyalty, he has reduced violence now to about two or three attacks a month.

He knows his area of operations is not completely risk-free. On June 4, he lost three men in a firefight with some al Qaeda operatives they were tracking.  But by and large, he thinks he has pacified his area. Hence the soccer games.

He knows full well that some of the players in the teams they confront were actually shooting at his men not too long ago.  Now they get to shoot at the Americans’ goal -– and this time, they don’t get any return fire.

The game ended 8-0 against the Americans.  The local mayor, dressed in a suit and tie, duly presented a cup to the winners and a smaller cup to the losers, and everyone went off for a huge feast prepared by a local sheikh.  Mission accomplished.  And not a shot fired.

Now maybe they should consider putting soccer training on the curriculum at West Point. …

June 20, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Anger in Basra

June 16, 2008 4:29 PM

Kadhim Twari Sa’adoon emerged from a mosque in Hiyaniyah, one of the poorest slums in Basra, wearing his best white dishdash and tribal headdress, and saw me and my cameraman waiting, microphone at the ready.  Suddenly he started shouting with much anger, and a crowd started to push forward.  Hiyaniyah was, until three months ago, completely under control of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.  People were killed in the streets, women didn’t go outside unless they were covered from head to toe in black and “coalition forces” – the British soldiers stationed at Basra airport - classed it as a non-permissive environment.  In other words a no-go area.

Since Iraqi troops moved in to Basra in March they have managed to drive the militias out or underground.  Now people walk freely around the city, there is no curfew, restaurants and coffee shops are open until late, and some women are again venturing out without wearing the veil.

It was not this that Kadhim was shouting about, however.  Nor were we the targets.  It was the sewage.  He took my arm and led me 50 yards down the newly-paved road to the edge of a pool of green water with a nauseating smell that I had been trying to suppress for the past hour.  “This,” he shouted.  “This is what they give us.”

Two days previously a private Iraqi contractor had come to fix the street which had a burst sewage line and a long row of potholes.  Despite the protests of the locals, the contractor merely dumped a truckload of gravel onto the broken pipes, covered up the whole street with tarmac, and left.  The following day the sewage started welling up and pooling on top of the new tarmac. 

“It is smelly, it is getting the children sick, there is typhoid…”  Kadhim was furious.  And he was right to be angry.  The militias may have been forced out for the time being.  But if the Iraqi government cannot provide a minimal level of services it will quickly lose the support of the locals, and the militias will filter back into the neighborhoods.

Basra has always had problems with water and sewage.  Like New Orleans, parts of the city lie below the level of the salt water in the Shatt al Arab waterway, so keeping fresh water flowing in and waste water flowing out requires an elaborate system of pumps which keep failing because of the unreliable electricity supplies.  Basra is a microcosm of much that is wrong with Iraq – no potable water, no working sewage system, a shortage of electricity and a local government that is doing little to improve peoples’ lives.

It was nice to walk around Basra and not hear any gunfire.  The last time I felt unthreatened on the streets in Basra was 2004.  But the angry shouts of Kadhim were warning enough that the city’s problems – like those of Iraq at large - are far from over.

June 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Coming to America

June 10, 2008 6:35 PM

A little bit of Ted Kennedy came to roost in the ABC Baghdad bureau this past week. The bureau chief, Mike Gudgell, assembled all our Iraqi staff -- reporters, drivers, cooks, translators, electricians, cleaners, guards -- to explain to them they are now all eligible to apply for a visa to resettle in the United States -- along with their families -- courtesy of Ted Kennedy (whom few of them had even heard of).

Last year Sen. Kennedy was the driving force behind new legislation that expands the number of visas -- with resettlement support from the federal government -- on offer for Iraqis to move to the United States. Now any Iraqi who has worked for a U.S. company -- including U.S. news organizations -- can apply to emigrate, provided he or she can prove a fear of persecution. As he campaigned for the law, Kennedy said Iraqis who worked for U.S. companies or the U.S. government in Iraq have “a bull’s eye on their back.”

It was a moving event -- not only to see many members of our staff suddenly envisaging life in the mythical United States, but also to reflect on the large number of Iraqis -- including an ABC camera crew last year -- who have indeed been killed while working for U.S. employers. The U.S. has been slow to accept Iraqis during this war. Now the government finally appears to be doing the honorable thing.

It won’t be easy for many of the Iraqis who apply. Life in the United States is very different from life in Iraq, where the government is one of the biggest employers and also provides about 70 percent of basic foodstuffs in the form of rations. One of our bureau members asked, “Will the government give me a job?” and another asked “Do they give you your food in the U.S.?” He had to be told gently not to expect the regular consignments of oil, rice, sugar and flour that are distributed by the Iraqi government here.

At a more subtle level, one colleague was wrestling with the idea that his daughters -- now young -- would grow up as American teenagers, wanting to date and lead lifestyles that would be unimaginable in the more conservative social scene in Iraq.

Some, but not all, of our staff speak English. For the others, all they will get from the U.S. government is six months of language training. Then they will be on their own.

But no matter. America is primarily a glittering dream for most Iraqis -- and indeed for most Arabs across the Middle East, despite the minority of anti-U.S. militants who rail against the Great Satan. The reality of life in the United States will come later, with all the economic, social, linguistic and cultural challenges that will present themselves. Some will thrive, others will have difficulties, and some may well end up coming back to Iraq. Sen. Kennedy is not guaranteeing Iraqi emigrants a good life -- just the chance at a good life. That, as the Iraqis will discover, is what America is all about.

June 10, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | User Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Baghdad Real Estate

June 04, 2008 4:36 PM

So you want to buy a house, maybe do a little interior design work on it and flip it for a profit?  The property market may not be looking too good for that in the United States these days, but in Baghdad real estate is –- amazingly –- red hot.

House prices are shooting up like Florida condos and southern California McMansions did two years ago -– with one major difference.  There is no brewing sub-prime mortgage crisis in Baghdad.  There is no mortgage market here at all.  People buy and sell houses for cash.  Quite a lot of cash.

Today, Haji Ramsi, an infectiously good-humored man who has been buying and selling houses in Baghdad for 38 years, took me to see a spacious seven bedroom, four bathroom property in Jadriyah, one of the best neighborhoods in the center of Baghdad, quite close to the Tigris River.  Six months ago the house was worth $900,000.  It is now on the market for $1.5 million -- and he already has two bidders.  Want a regular three-bedroom property in a good, relatively safe area?  Prices start at $400,000. 

Did anybody notice there is still a war going on here?

Well, yes, but as the level of violence comes down and Iraqis slowly regain some hope for the future, people are starting to invest in property again.  Since the 2003 invasion, Haji Ramsi had not been too busy -– until last year. 

Then, people with money, many of them living overseas, began approaching him for houses.  Companies have started looking for land to build new hotels, as Baghdad is woefully under-supplied with hotel rooms.  And there are no shopping centers here at all -– in a city of 6 million people.

Not only is there pent-up demand that is just waiting for enough security to begin major development, but there is also virtually no new construction going on, so supply of properties is limited.  And with oil at $130 a barrel, compared to $50 a barrel last year, Iraq is not short of money.

Haji Ramsi says the deals are coming fast these days. Typically a contract is drawn up by lawyers in Baghdad, but the financial transaction is done between banks overseas, usually in Amman or Dubai.  And the purchase price is delivered in full, so foreclosure is not a possibility. One of his friends just bought a house for $900,000, did some cosmetic work on it and sold it a month later for $1,100,000 –- a smooth $200,000 profit minus labor costs. 

When I told him U.S. realtors would weep to hear about such deals these days, he chuckled and said, “Just give them my number. I can help them out here.”

June 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)