IRAQ: Severed from Land, Life, and Home, Part III, A Diminished Life
July 17th, 2009
in:
CPTnet
17 July 2009
IRAQ: Severed from Land, Life, and Home, Part III, A Diminished Life
by Michele Naar Obed
The CPT Iraq team has been witnessing murder. It is not the murder of individual people, although we have witnessed that too. We are witnessing the murder of a way of life as Turkish and Iranian military attacks displace increasing numbers of Kurdish villagers from their land.
Every time CPT goes to the Zharawa IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp, the elders open up a bit more. Recently, my teammate and I spent a night there. In the morning, as the sun was rising over the mountain and Murwat, the village midwife, was walking her last two cows across the field, her husband gave us an incredible lesson on God and the universe and how that was connected to his family’s way of life.
A man from Shnowa village told us that his land had been in his family for at least five generations. Since 2007, he can sneak back into his village only when there is a lull in the attacks.
Their heritage, knowledge, connection to God is being destroyed. Every time these villagers at the IDP camps open up to us, share some piece of themselves, I feel like I've been given a tremendous responsibility to make the world understand the importance of their way of life, and I can't find a way to live up to it.
The stories in this series were not just about the hardships in IDP camps. They were about the loss of a way of life that is necessary for our collective life as human beings within God's creation. Saddam Hussein saw the significance of their way of life and tried to wipe it out, but it survived. Turkey and Iran have been trying to wipe it out, but until 2007, when the U.S. began assisting Turkey, the villagers had managed to hold on. Now most of them feel hopeless, and see no prospect of returning safely to their villages any time soon.
Murwat, in violation of a camp regulation forbidding animals, manages to find a safe place for her cow. In the early morning, she milks it, makes the cheese and yogurt, warms the fresh creamy milk, and believes by doing so she is relating to God through the cow. Most of us can buy milk from factory-farmed cows in the store. Here in Suleimaniya I put ultra pasteurized milk in my coffee. We’ve had it for well over a week and it hasn't gone bad even though we have long stretches of time without electricity. How can we, and our Kurdish neighbors in the city who buy the same processed foods we eat in the west, experience God through the consumption this sort of product? These foods are devoid of the spirit infused into the food that the villagers used to nurture and harvest, sell, share, and eat together.
If the villagers never return to their homes, life will continue. But it will be a diminished life for all of us.
17 July 2009
IRAQ: Severed from Land, Life, and Home, Part III, A Diminished Life
by Michele Naar Obed
The CPT Iraq team has been witnessing murder. It is not the murder of individual people, although we have witnessed that too. We are witnessing the murder of a way of life as Turkish and Iranian military attacks displace increasing numbers of Kurdish villagers from their land.
Every time CPT goes to the Zharawa IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp, the elders open up a bit more. Recently, my teammate and I spent a night there. In the morning, as the sun was rising over the mountain and Murwat, the village midwife, was walking her last two cows across the field, her husband gave us an incredible lesson on God and the universe and how that was connected to his family’s way of life.
A man from Shnowa village told us that his land had been in his family for at least five generations. Since 2007, he can sneak back into his village only when there is a lull in the attacks.
Their heritage, knowledge, connection to God is being destroyed. Every time these villagers at the IDP camps open up to us, share some piece of themselves, I feel like I've been given a tremendous responsibility to make the world understand the importance of their way of life, and I can't find a way to live up to it.
The stories in this series were not just about the hardships in IDP camps. They were about the loss of a way of life that is necessary for our collective life as human beings within God's creation. Saddam Hussein saw the significance of their way of life and tried to wipe it out, but it survived. Turkey and Iran have been trying to wipe it out, but until 2007, when the U.S. began assisting Turkey, the villagers had managed to hold on. Now most of them feel hopeless, and see no prospect of returning safely to their villages any time soon.
Murwat, in violation of a camp regulation forbidding animals, manages to find a safe place for her cow. In the early morning, she milks it, makes the cheese and yogurt, warms the fresh creamy milk, and believes by doing so she is relating to God through the cow. Most of us can buy milk from factory-farmed cows in the store. Here in Suleimaniya I put ultra pasteurized milk in my coffee. We’ve had it for well over a week and it hasn't gone bad even though we have long stretches of time without electricity. How can we, and our Kurdish neighbors in the city who buy the same processed foods we eat in the west, experience God through the consumption this sort of product? These foods are devoid of the spirit infused into the food that the villagers used to nurture and harvest, sell, share, and eat together.
If the villagers never return to their homes, life will continue. But it will be a diminished life for all of us.
