Syria: The last Mohicans' of Christ

[Harold Schiffman]

The last Mohicans' of Christ

Conversion to Islam on road to Damascus spells the end for Aramaic,
the native language of Jesus


 Date: 27 April 2008
By Robert F Worth
In Malula, Syria

ELIAS Khoury can still remember the days when old people in the
mountain village of Malula spoke only Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Back then the village, linked to the capital Damascus, only by a long
and bumpy bus ride, was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an
older, more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of
Islam. Now Khoury, 65, grey-haired and bedridden, admits ruefully that
he has largely forgotten the language he spoke with his own mother.
"It's disappearing," he said in Arabic, sitting with his wife on a bed
in the mud-and-straw house where he grew up.ADVERTISEMENT"A lot of the
Aramaic vocabulary I don't use any more, and I've lost it."

Malula, along with two smaller neighbouring villages where Aramaic is
also spoken, is still celebrated in Syria as a unique linguistic
island. In the Convent of St Sergius and Bacchus, on a hill above
town, young girls recite the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic to tourists, and
booklets about the language are on sale at a shop in the town centre.
But the island has grown smaller over the years, and some locals say
they fear it will not last. Once a large population stretching across
Syria, Turkey and Iraq, Aramaic-speaking Christians have slowly
disappeared, some fleeing westward, some converting to Islam. In
recent decades, the process has accelerated, with large numbers of
Iraqi Christians escaping the violence and chaos of their country.

Malula's linguistic heritage stirred some interest after the release
of Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion Of The Christ, with its mix of
Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew dialogue. Virtually everyone in town seems
to have seen the film, but few said they understood it. Yona Sabar, a
professor of Semitic languages at the University of California, Los
Angeles, said that was not their fault as it included different
dialects of Aramaic, and the actors' pronunciation made it hard to
understand anything. Aramaic has also changed over the centuries,
taking on features of Syrian Arabic. But most residents of Malula
believe that their town's ancestral language is still the same one
Jesus spoke, and will speak again when he returns.

"Our parents and grandparents always spoke to us in this language,"
said Suhail Milani, a 50-year-old bus driver. "I hope it will not
disappear."
Sabar said that today, Malula and its neighbouring villages, Jabadeen
and Bakhaa, represent "the last Mohicans" of Western Aramaic. With its
ancient houses clinging to a dramatic gorge in the mountains, Malula
was once remote from Damascus, the Syrian capital, and local people
spent all their lives there. But now there are few jobs, and young
people tend to move to the city for work. Buses to Damascus used to
leave once or twice a day; now they leave every 15 minutes, and with
better roads the journey takes about an hour. Constant exchange with
the big city, not to mention television and the internet, has eroded
Malula's linguistic separateness.

Khoury's 17-year-old granddaughter Katya offered a few samples of the
language: "Awafih" for "hello", "alloy a pelach a feethah" for "God be
with you." She learned Aramaic mostly at a new language school in
Malula, established two years ago in a bid to keep the language alive.
 Khoury smiles at the words, but recalls how in his own childhood 60
years ago, schoolteachers slapped students who reverted to Aramaic in
class, enforcing the government's "Arabisation" policy.

"Now it's reversed," he says. Families speak Arabic at home and are
more likely to learn Aramaic at the language centre, where foreigners
also study.
In the town's centre, a group of young people outside a market seemed
to confirm Khoury's gloomy view. "I speak some Aramaic, but I struggle
to understand it," said Fathi Mualem, 20. Twenty-year-old John Francis
(Western-sounding names are common among Christians in Syria and
Lebanon) said: "My father wrote a book about it, but I barely speak
any."

Malula – Aramaic for "entrance" – derives its name from a legend that
evokes the town's separate religious heritage. St Takla, a beautiful
young woman who had studied with Ste Paul, is said to have fled from
her home in what is now Turkey after her pagan parents persecuted her
for her newfound Christian faith. Arriving in Malula, she found her
path blocked by a mountain. She prayed and the rocks divided in two, a
stream flowing out from under her feet.  Today, tourists walk up and
down the narrow canyon where the saint is said to have fled. Nearby,
two dozen nuns live at the Convent of St Takla, presiding over an
orphanage. "We teach the children the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic," said
one nun, "but everything else is in Arabic."

But even the town's Christian identity is fading. Muslims have begun
replacing the emigrating Christians, and now Malula – once entirely
Christian – is almost half Muslim.

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/39The-last-Mohicans39-of-Christ.4024402.jp



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