One of the facts that stands out most about the plight of Middle East Christians is their plummeting numbers. Take Iraq, for example. Before the first Gulf War, there were approximately 1.3 million Christians living in the country, with flourishing communities in places like Mosul, Erbil, the Nineveh Plain, and even Baghdad.
But with each successive conflict and struggle – the UN sanctions, the post-9/11 operation to find weapons of mass destruction, and the Islamic State invasion of 2014 – more and more Christians felt that their future in Iraq was too bleak to try to remain.
Today, it’s estimated there are fewer than 250,000 Christians remaining in the land of “Mesopotamia,” the “Cradle of Civilization.”
While all that has been well documented, what’s harder for Westerners to grasp is how important the ancient faith of the Apostles is to Iraq's Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs, whose land was evangelized in the early centuries of Christianity.
Author Paul T. Mascia attempts to make up for that lack with his first novel, Nazar’s Journey.
Mascia writes about a Christian boy of 13 named Nazar whose family and community on Iraq’s Nineveh Plain are uprooted by Islamic fundamentalists sweeping across their ancestral land. The publication of the historical novel is timely, as the world marked the 10th anniversary this summer of the major displacement of Christians and Yazidis due to the invasion of “Daesh,” as ISIS also was known.
The book features nine expressionist paintings by Iraqi-American artist Qais Al-Sindy In addition, proceeds from sales of the book are being donated to Aid to the Church in Need to support its work of assisting persecuted Christians worldwide.
What's in a name
Nowhere in his book of 141 pages is the name Islamic State or ISIS mentioned – except for the Introduction by author Joseph Pearce and the Afterword by Stephen M. Rasche, an American Catholic who serves as Vice Chancellor of the Catholic University in Erbil. It’s almost as though the author is making a statement, as one of his characters did when referring to Saddam Hussein and his invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The character, a kind Christian woman named Amira, tells of her husband being killed “when the oil wells were torched by — by that infamous, and now deceased dictator — our Trona [tyrant] — thank God he is gone. I will not honor his name by bringing it to my lips.”
But while ISIS is not named, the names of the Christian characters are what’s important. Mascia sets his story in the village of Karamles, because it’s close to a major road. Nazar, Amira, and Amira’s father, Yousif, sneak out of their native town, trying not to be spotted by roving militants. They pray that a “good Samaritan” comes along who can drive them to the Christian city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, because Yousif is injured. On the way, they encounter hordes of others streaming toward Erbil, fearing the onslaught of Daesh.
Nazar, whose name suggests “Nazarene,” the word used by the jihadists to indicate Christians, was injured by a blast that took the lives of two people close to him. He is also distraught because he cannot find his own father in the midst of the great evacuation.
Universal elements
It was the Arabic abbreviation for that word, “Nazarene” -- the infamous "n" -- that the jihadists painted on the homes of Christians, giving followers of Daesh the right to occupy those houses. That's what really caught Mascia’s attention in 2014. Transitioning at the time from a career in long-term care and disability insurance, Mascia felt the need to do more than simply read about Iraq and shake his head. There was much in his background that he felt he could offer as a way to help others.
The son of a physician, he was at Yale in the early 1970s, studying literature, drama and religious studies. The conflict consuming people’s attention at the time was the war in Vietnam, and Mascia penned a story of a boy there who had lost his father.
In 2014, he recalled that foray into novel-writing. “Suddenly, the idea came that maybe I could write about this specific story in Iraq and bring it to life and make it personal, make it real for people,” he told Aleteia. Elements of the Vietnam story were universal enough to be applicable to Iraq.
Through his writing, Mascia hopes that people will come to appreciate the reality of persecution and genocide, and “this whole notion of having to flee your homeland abruptly and never know if you’ll be able to come back again, with this terrible notion in the background that if you don’t leave you could be killed.”
“This is something real, and we as Christians are connected with this reality: these are our brothers and sisters in Christ,” he said.
He also felt that fictionalizing the story could provide healing for those who had to leave their homeland and “show them that perhaps there was a hidden blessing in all the suffering, that God was with them.”
Which view of Paradise?
It was important for Mascia to convey the symbolism of various characters and elements of the story. Nazar is wounded, so his condition “sort of symbolizes the brokenness of humanity. He’s an everyman. He looks weak but he still has spunk. So there’s the theme of strength emerging from weakness.”
A skylark makes repeated appearances throughout the story, serving as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, “the ongoing presence of God guiding Nazar,” said Mascia.
But the bird is also a symbol of beauty and the perfection of paradise, he points out.
“Every human wishes to touch the beauty of paradise and experience it. But we can’t draw it to ourselves; it’s a gift of God,” the author said.
Even those who attempted to establish a Caliphate – ISIS – wanted to touch the beauty of paradise. They sought to bring about their own idea of a heaven on earth – but they did so through forceful means. And therein is another lesson of Nazar’s Journey.
As Stephen Rasche, who has also written about Christianity in Iraq, notes in the Afterword to Mascia's book:
“A final important lesson of Nazar’s Journey is that genuine religious conversion cannot take place in an environment of fear or violence. As I reflect on Nazar’s search for his father, which is such a prominent theme of the story, one is reminded that the search for the mercy, beauty, and transcendence of God is always a search for an encounter with divine love. Thus, if one seeks to promote authentic conversion, it cannot be done without also respecting the freedom and dignity of the individual. Conversion occurs in an environment of peace, dialogue, openness, intellectual inquiry, and, above all, mercy and charity.”
ISIS was defeated on the battlefield. Today, a remnant of Christians struggles mightily to remain and rebuild. It is the hope of Paul T. Mascia and others who believe Christians are in the best position to represent God’s mercy to their fellow Iraqis that they succeed.
