HEIRS TO FORGOTTEN KINGDOMS
Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
Gerard Russell
Simon & Schuster UK;
367 pages; Rs 499
A Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Mr Russell has served for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul and Jeddah, often during the height of violence. But unlike many of his colleagues who choose to serve their terms secluded from the local population, in the safety of green zones and diplomatic enclaves, Mr Russell took on the challenge of travelling through these war-torn countries and tracking down, what he describes in the sub-title of his book, as "disappearing religions". To add to the challenge, these religions have survived the chequered history of West Asia by being esoteric and clinging on to rituals of concealment.
The difficulty of writing about cultures that have made a virtue of secrecy is described by British Member of Parliament Rory Stewart in the Foreword to the book: "the subject is almost impossible. These religions are formidably difficult to access, understand, or describe. They survived partly because they are located in some of the most remote, mountainous, and dangerous regions of the Middle East. ...They rarely can or will speak to outsiders." Mr Stewart, the author of The Places in Between on his 2002 walk across Afghanistan, would know.
In almost an evocation of Gaiman's Baghdad, Russell begins his book by describing his posting in the Iraqi capital's Green Zone, "a five-square mile twenty-first-century dystopia... (where) a private zoo had been evacuated to make room for an ever-expanding legion of Western bureaucrats." Stuck in this insular existence, the diplomat cannot help but reflect on the escalating violence that seems to be engulfing the "place where civilisation began more than seven thousand years ago". Then he gets a call from the high priest of the Mandaeans, "one of the world's most mysterious religions".
For Russell, it is an almost mythical meeting - "it was like being summoned to meet one of the Knights of the Round Table". But what Sheikh Sattar, the high priest, tells him is tragic. Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the reclusive community has encountered more and more discrimination and violence. One of the priest's entourage tells Russell how all men in his family had been killed; the priest had sought the interview with Mr Russell to find asylum for his community in Britain. "There are only a few hundred of us left in Iraq and we all want to leave," he said. Helplessly, Russell witnesses the passing away of cultures that have survived since almost the beginning of civilisation.
Describing the emotional turmoil of converting to Anglicanism from Puritanism in his poem "Journey of the Magi", TS Eliot writes: "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods." The poem aims to describe the loss of faith of a Magi - wise men who brought gifts to infant Jesus - after seeing the birth of Christ. The real Magi, or Magus, too, are no longer at ease. Not because they have found a new religion, but the priests of the ancient Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, who pray in Iron Age language Astevan, have seen their flock dwindle over the years. (A recent advertisement by the Indian Health Ministry to encourage Parsees, as they are called here, reproduce reflects the concern over the dwindling numbers of the community that created one of the greatest industrial houses - the Tatas.) And in Iran, their ancient home, they are a minority community, facing discriminatory laws.
The fate of all the other communities - Yazidis, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha - profiled in this book are similar tales of woe. Often thought of as devil worshippers by their Christian and Muslim neighbours because of their adoration of peacocks, the Yazidis keep a list of "seventy-two persecutions over the centuries". They could add a 73rd: ever since the Iraq-Syria border came under the dominion of the Islamic State last year, they have been massacred in thousands and many more have fled the lands they have lived in since the time of the Assyrian empire. In May this year, there was widespread outrage in the international media after the Islamic State bulldozed and looted the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city Nimrud, on the banks of Tigris. While the loss of archaeological sites is irredeemable, so is the loss of the more or less liberal culture that had allowed these religions to survive since Antiquity.
For his deep understanding of almost-inaccessible cultures, Mr Stewart describes Mr Russell as "in the direct tradition of British scholars/imperial officers such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, Macauly or even T.E. Lawrence [sic]." In our postcolonial world, this is not really a compliment to anyone except a Conservative politician. Elphinstone, Macaulay and Lawrence are often justifiable targets of postcolonial scholars, for whom they represent the worst of cultural colonisation that such an important part of the colonial project. Mr Russell, though, never attempts to appropriate the cultures he encounters though reductive interpretation.
Like its beginning, his narrative ends in a dystopia - of the post-industrial wasteland of Detroit. Here, Mr Russell is delighted to hear Aramaic - the language Jesus spoke - at a shopping mall. Like so many others before them, for many emigrants from West Asia, the US has proven to be the Promised Land, or at least a welcome home. The book ends on a hopeful note of Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans building strong communities in their new homes. "I would think that this book, by celebrating their traditions and history, might encourage them to do that," Mr Russell signs off . He succeeds many times over.
Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
Gerard Russell
Simon & Schuster UK;
367 pages; Rs 499
Also Read
Neil Gaiman depicts Baghdad as a magical city ruled by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the legendary protagonist of One Thousand and One Nights, in his graphic short story "Ramadan". Troubled by the inevitable impermanence of the splendour of his beloved Baghdad, al-Rashid offers it to the dream god Morpheus, to preserve it forever. The story ends, abruptly, with an old man in the modern, war-ravaged Iraq capital, telling the tale to boys for cigarettes and money. Gerard Russell's Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms evokes a similar nostalgia, not just for Baghdad or Iraq but for all of West Asia, steadily spiralling into an endless conflict.
A Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Mr Russell has served for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul and Jeddah, often during the height of violence. But unlike many of his colleagues who choose to serve their terms secluded from the local population, in the safety of green zones and diplomatic enclaves, Mr Russell took on the challenge of travelling through these war-torn countries and tracking down, what he describes in the sub-title of his book, as "disappearing religions". To add to the challenge, these religions have survived the chequered history of West Asia by being esoteric and clinging on to rituals of concealment.
The difficulty of writing about cultures that have made a virtue of secrecy is described by British Member of Parliament Rory Stewart in the Foreword to the book: "the subject is almost impossible. These religions are formidably difficult to access, understand, or describe. They survived partly because they are located in some of the most remote, mountainous, and dangerous regions of the Middle East. ...They rarely can or will speak to outsiders." Mr Stewart, the author of The Places in Between on his 2002 walk across Afghanistan, would know.
In almost an evocation of Gaiman's Baghdad, Russell begins his book by describing his posting in the Iraqi capital's Green Zone, "a five-square mile twenty-first-century dystopia... (where) a private zoo had been evacuated to make room for an ever-expanding legion of Western bureaucrats." Stuck in this insular existence, the diplomat cannot help but reflect on the escalating violence that seems to be engulfing the "place where civilisation began more than seven thousand years ago". Then he gets a call from the high priest of the Mandaeans, "one of the world's most mysterious religions".
For Russell, it is an almost mythical meeting - "it was like being summoned to meet one of the Knights of the Round Table". But what Sheikh Sattar, the high priest, tells him is tragic. Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the reclusive community has encountered more and more discrimination and violence. One of the priest's entourage tells Russell how all men in his family had been killed; the priest had sought the interview with Mr Russell to find asylum for his community in Britain. "There are only a few hundred of us left in Iraq and we all want to leave," he said. Helplessly, Russell witnesses the passing away of cultures that have survived since almost the beginning of civilisation.
Describing the emotional turmoil of converting to Anglicanism from Puritanism in his poem "Journey of the Magi", TS Eliot writes: "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods." The poem aims to describe the loss of faith of a Magi - wise men who brought gifts to infant Jesus - after seeing the birth of Christ. The real Magi, or Magus, too, are no longer at ease. Not because they have found a new religion, but the priests of the ancient Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, who pray in Iron Age language Astevan, have seen their flock dwindle over the years. (A recent advertisement by the Indian Health Ministry to encourage Parsees, as they are called here, reproduce reflects the concern over the dwindling numbers of the community that created one of the greatest industrial houses - the Tatas.) And in Iran, their ancient home, they are a minority community, facing discriminatory laws.
The fate of all the other communities - Yazidis, Druze, Samaritans, Copts and Kalasha - profiled in this book are similar tales of woe. Often thought of as devil worshippers by their Christian and Muslim neighbours because of their adoration of peacocks, the Yazidis keep a list of "seventy-two persecutions over the centuries". They could add a 73rd: ever since the Iraq-Syria border came under the dominion of the Islamic State last year, they have been massacred in thousands and many more have fled the lands they have lived in since the time of the Assyrian empire. In May this year, there was widespread outrage in the international media after the Islamic State bulldozed and looted the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city Nimrud, on the banks of Tigris. While the loss of archaeological sites is irredeemable, so is the loss of the more or less liberal culture that had allowed these religions to survive since Antiquity.
For his deep understanding of almost-inaccessible cultures, Mr Stewart describes Mr Russell as "in the direct tradition of British scholars/imperial officers such as Mountstuart Elphinstone, Macauly or even T.E. Lawrence [sic]." In our postcolonial world, this is not really a compliment to anyone except a Conservative politician. Elphinstone, Macaulay and Lawrence are often justifiable targets of postcolonial scholars, for whom they represent the worst of cultural colonisation that such an important part of the colonial project. Mr Russell, though, never attempts to appropriate the cultures he encounters though reductive interpretation.
Like its beginning, his narrative ends in a dystopia - of the post-industrial wasteland of Detroit. Here, Mr Russell is delighted to hear Aramaic - the language Jesus spoke - at a shopping mall. Like so many others before them, for many emigrants from West Asia, the US has proven to be the Promised Land, or at least a welcome home. The book ends on a hopeful note of Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans building strong communities in their new homes. "I would think that this book, by celebrating their traditions and history, might encourage them to do that," Mr Russell signs off . He succeeds many times over.