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Baghdad Church is Bittersweet Sanctuary
Two More Assyrian Children Orphaned
By Moni Basu
Cox News Service
10, 02, 05
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The baby-blue metal gate stays closed most
of the time. The world outside is a vastly different place.
The gate separates the bustling streets of Keradah, one of
Baghdad's livelier neighborhoods, from the oasis of St. Hannah
Church and Orphanage, where large balconies overlook a lush green
lawn and a flower garden of roses and lilies.
Inside the small, simple Chaldean Catholic church, wooden
pews offer serenity to anyone who wants to come in and say a
prayer. Beyond the gate lies a menacing city, where streets can
turn treacherous in an instant, forever changing lives.
A car bomb killed two Iraqi Army soldiers in Keradah just
last week. The neighborhood, with one of Baghdad's busiest shopping
districts, has been targeted by insurgents.
Sister Pauline Hannah Jummah walks to the gate with great
trepidation.
"Every day, I get bad news," she said.
She opened the gate once to a man who looked into her eyes
and said: "I've lost everything." A suicide car bomber
in Mosul had killed his wife and two daughters.
He left Jummah his surviving two daughters, Atra, 13, and
Shamiran, 6. He did not have the means to take care of them.
Jummah accepted the two girls and closed the gate behind her.
Recently, she heard that familiar, desperate knock again.
The rattle of sheet metal travels well through the garden.
It was another man who lost his wife in a bombing incident.
He wanted to leave his 3-year-old child.
"I looked at the baby and told the father, "She's
like the moon but I can't take her in," Jummah said. Her
words went against everything her devotion to God was telling
her to do. "I can't take in such a small baby. We don't
have the facilities here."
Jummah's face is only now starting to show the wear of her
75 years. Until recently, she had been healthy and vigorous.
Now, the doctors have told her she has cancer.
She knows her time is starting to run out. She fears she will
die with her beloved homeland in turmoil.
The gentle woman runs this sanctuary in the middle of Baghdad,
a throwback for many older Baghdadis who fondly recall their
own lives being as peaceful as it is here inside the blue gate.
Here, Jummah houses unwanted children, some whose parents
have been felled by bullets and bombs; others who were simply
abandoned by men and women who could no longer cope in the war-weary
Iraq that lies outside the gate.
"God gave freedom to his people, but the people became
bad," she said. "This is the worst I have seen my Iraq.
Innocent people are paying with blood."
Under Saddam Hussein, she said, Iraqis perished but the culture
of violence did not seep into every crevice of society.
"The violence now is so random. Not like before when
it was politically targeted," she said. "I have never
seen anyone cut off someone's head. Now they show it on videos."
The war, the insurgency, Jummah said, has scarred the nation
forever.
"I saw a video of a suicide bomber blow himself up,"
she said, a tear welling in her eye. "Before he died, he
yelled, 'Allahu Akbar!' [God is great] Which God is he talking
about? The right to kill people is not religion."
Jummah sat quietly in the entrance to the main building of
the church compound. The speckled terrazzo floors cooled the
room; there would be no electricity again for another three hours.
Surrounded by images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, Jummah
spends her days quietly in prayer and taking care of a handful
of Baghdad's abandoned children.
A warm breeze swirled through the sanctuary. The quietness
of midafternoon descended on Jummah's world.
And then, the silence was shattered yet again by that familiar
rat-a-tat on the gate. Jummah rose from her chair slowly, ambling
toward the blue gate one more time, not knowing who would be
waiting on the other side.
By Moni Basu
Cox News Service
Moni Basu writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail:
mbasu@ajc.com
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