http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/18/AR2009121801903.html?wpisrc=nl_travel
Maaloula, Syria: Where the language of Jesus lives on
PHOTOS
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A large statue of the Virgin Mary stands over Maaloula, Syria, where the
ancientAramaic language is still spoken. (Christophe Goussard)
Christian steeples and Muslim minarets coexist in Maaloula, which is built on
a steep hill. (Laif/Max Galli/Redux)
By Steven V. Roberts
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 20, 2009
We were standing in the courtyard of St. Sergius, a Greek Catholic monastery in
the Syrian hill town of Maaloula, about an hour northeast of Damascus. It was a
hot day in late summer, and the strong sun bounced off the light-colored
limestone walls. My wife, Cokie, and I sought the shade of a portico as our
guide, Hana, explained the history surrounding us.
The original church, he said, dated from the 4th century but was built on top
of a pagan sanctuary, and some of the wooden beams, made of Lebanese cedar,
were more than 2,000 years old. Also known as Mar Sarkis, the monastery was
named for a Roman officer, a secret Christian whose faith was unmasked when he
refused to participate in a sacrifice to Zeus. Sergius and his friend Bacchus,
a fellow officer and co-religionist, were tortured and executed in the Syrian
city of Resafa, and many churches in this country bear their names.
Maaloula is Hana's home village, and on the drive from the capital he had told
us proudly that this is one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of
Jesus, is still spoken. Now he asked whether we'd like to hear the Lord's
Prayer in his mother tongue, and of course we said yes.
Hana held out his arms and intoned the familiar words in a strange language
that to me sounded a bit like Hebrew. We savored the moment as the prayer
echoed off the ancient stones.
Then a door opened, and in walked about 30 well-dressed people who clearly were
not tourists. (No one wears heels that high to clamber around a steep, stony
village.)
We followed the party into the monastery church, and Hana recognized one of the
women as his wife's school friend. They were there for a baptism, she told him,
and as we waited for the ceremony to begin, he gave us a quick tour. A stone
altar, dating from the church's earliest days, had no rim or drain spout, a
sign that it had never been used for blood sacrifices. The icons on the walls
included one of John the Baptist, particularly appropriate given the ceremony
we were about to witness.
Then the priest arrived, and we stood quietly to the side as the prayers were
said and the baby anointed. Here, for this brief moment, Aramaic was not a dead
relic but a living thing, a flower bursting through a crack in the stones,
greeting a child into a community of Christians that refuses to be swallowed up
by the Muslim world at its doorstep.
Syria is known in the West for its combustible politics: an adversary committed
to the destruction of Israel; a supporter of radical Islamic organizations such
as Hezbollah in Lebanon; a sanctuary for terrorists operating across the border
in Iraq. Many friends who heard that we were vacationing in Syria thought we
were daft, but few realized that the country's extensive Christian heritage --
St. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, after all -- is still here to
be seen and heard and felt.
As a Jew, I never felt unsafe or unwelcome in Syria, but the country's once
vibrant Jewish population has been driven away, and the grand synagogue of
Aleppo lies decaying and desecrated behind iron gates. Syria has taken a
different view of its Christian population, which remains at about 10 percent,
14 centuries after the region's conquest by Arabic-speaking Muslims. The Baath
Party, which has ruled since 1963, is decidedly secular. But one of its
founders, Michel Aflaq, was Greek Orthodox. Christians have traditionally
served in high government posts, and Christian practices and monuments are
widely respected. In the bazaars of Aleppo, the names on the gold and jewelry
stores are still mainly Armenian, reflecting the influx of Armenians who fled
Turkey during World War I. The town has the second-largest Christian population
in the Middle East, after Beirut.
Not far from Maaloula sits the Krak des Chevaliers, a mountain fortress built
by Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. In the old city of Damascus, a
chapel marks the spot where Paul was nursed and taught by a local Christian,
St. Ananias, after his vision. Several of the country's bewildering array of
Christian sects -- from Armenian Orthodox to Syrian Catholic -- maintain
headquarters in Damascus, and we were surprised to see crosses, outlined in
vivid bluish-white neon, shimmering in the evening sky.
As soon as you enter Maaloula, its religious heritage is evident. A large
statue of the Virgin Mary dominates one hillside; many houses are painted in a
pale blue wash, a gesture of respect to the mother of Jesus. Hana pointed out
the mountaintops where every year fires are lighted to celebrate the Festival
of the Holy Cross. (Legend says that after Helena, mother of Constantine, the
first Christian Roman emperor, found the relics of Jesus's cross in Jerusalem
in 325, she ordered her servants to light a series of fires that eventually
carried word of her discovery back to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople.)
We went first to St. Sergius, the highest point in town, and though not every
traveler gets to see a baptism in Aramaic, there are usually guides or
schoolgirls present to recite the Lord's Prayer in the language. These guides
report that visitors often burst into tears while they are chanting. Before
leaving, we stopped at the souvenir shop, which dispenses local wine, honey and
crafts. My wife, who is Catholic, bought a pair of fish-shaped lace
antimacassars that now adorn a chair in our bedroom.
We had lunch at a restaurant named for St. Thekla, the patron saint of
Maaloula, where we were shown to a pleasant terrace surrounded by leafy trees.
There we talked about the town's linguistic heritage. Aramaic actually is not
one language but a variety of local dialects, shaped by time and place, and the
one spoken in Maaloula is officially Western Neo-Aramaic. Large portions of the
Talmud, a compilation of Jewish teachings and commentaries, were written in
Aramaic; so were the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Biblical books of Ezra and
Daniel. Gradually Greek and then Arabic replaced Aramaic across the Levant, but
remote mountain villages such as Maaloula, untouched and unoccupied, were able
to retain their traditions. That started changing in the 1920s, when French
colonials built a road through the mountains. Bus service to Damascus, radio
and television, and the lure of better work in bigger cities drained the pool
of Aramaic speakers. It is a common story: The language seemed old-fashioned,
even embarrassing, and younger people disdained it.
Then, about 20 years ago, a group of German scholars came to Maaloula to study
Aramaic, and villagers started realizing that their precious heritage was worth
preserving. In 2000, the iron-fisted ruler of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, was
replaced by his son Bashar, a slightly more progressive leader. Under Bashar's
patronage, the University of Damascus opened an institute in Maaloula teaching
Aramaic, where Hana's two daughters studied last summer. One of the teachers,
Imad Rihan, told the Catholic News Service: "Twenty years ago people started
giving up on Aramaic. Then 10 years ago, they realized how important it was, so
they started teaching it in church. The Germans opened our eyes and showed us
we had something special."
The language got another boost in 2004 when Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of
the Christ" depicted Jesus speaking Aramaic, providing English subtitles. But
few villagers could follow the dialogue. A shepherd told a visiting filmmaker
from London that the movie language sounded "broken" to his ear. Maaloula's
vernacular is "faster and stronger," he said.
Faster and stronger applies to St. Thekla as well. Born in what's now the
Turkish city of Konya at the time of Christ, she was forbidden to hear St. Paul
when he came to preach the gospel. Sitting at her open window, she miraculously
heard his voice and was instantly converted. After she broke her engagement and
vowed to remain a "bride of Christ," she was sentenced to death by fire. But a
sudden storm doused the flames. When she spurned the advances of a nobleman in
the city of Antioch, she was thrown into a pit with wild beasts, which refused
to attack her. Eventually, Paul blessed her decision to live as an ascetic
virgin here in the hills of Maaloula, but she faced one more trial: A local
peasant vowed to plunder her virtue. She fled his advances, and the mountain
opened before her, offering a narrow path of escape.
That path exists today, and after lunch we followed the footsteps of St. Thekla
through the cleft in the rock for perhaps a half-mile. Many caves pocked the
cliffs above us, some used for tombs in antiquity, others for dwellings. The
walk was a bit treacherous, and I was starting to worry about turning an ankle
when we suddenly found ourselves at a monastery dedicated to St. Thekla. The
sanctuary is built on the spot where she lived in a cave until her death at age
90.
A series of steps mounts the hill to her tomb, separated by pleasing terraces
with bubbling fountains, Syria's all-purpose climate-control system. I did not
make it to the top, but Cokie, always eager to recognize uppity women, did. The
climb reaches a cool, calming place where pilgrims rest and pray. Many have
left tokens of their petitions: holy cards, medals, small gifts of thanks for
healed limbs and spirits. I can only imagine what women pray for at the shrine
of St. Thekla, but I'm pretty sure it is not the gift of obedience.
That is the spirit of Maaloula. It is not a walled city or a garrison town, but
it is fighting a battle today, a culture war to preserve its language, its
religion, its history. Perhaps the child we saw baptized was one of St.
Thekla's miracles.
Roberts teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University and is
the author of the recently published "From Every End of This Earth."
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