Starting over

ERBIL, IRAQ—The lights went out in Shahan City just as we arrived. The moon was rising, but in the canyon of new high-rise apartment buildings on the outskirts of Erbil suddenly things went dark.

Brownouts are a revived feature of life in Iraq, as more than a million new people have wedged themselves into the cities of Iraqi Kurdistan—an autonomous region in Iraq’s north that’s smaller than West Virginia. Their overnight flight last year from ISIS out of Mosul and elsewhere—plus the present threat of ISIS just 30 miles away—has tested every Kurdish city.

Still, it’s an area pulsing with activity, not hunkered down as we might think. In Erbil they’re opening a T.G.I. Friday’s, and coffee shops hum with business, even as Kurdish forces not far away man a 640-mile front against Islamic State fighters (see “Battle ready” in this issue).

We climbed stairs to the fifth floor, using cell phones for light. An open doorway and a glow from a kerosene heater greeted us inside a two-bedroom apartment where about 25 people were waiting to begin Bible study with pastor Malath Baythoon. “You want to meet without lights?” he asked in Arabic. “Naam,” came a round of replies. Yes, of course.

What they have in common is a terrifying night flight from militant jihadists with guns, leaving all that they knew and owned behind, and moving for days uncertain, sometimes circling back, not sure where they could go.

Like most, the unit houses two displaced families—12 people—in two bedrooms, one bath, and a modest kitchen. It’s the only way most of them can afford to live since they escaped ISIS with nothing. Everyone is starting over. The large room is kept cleared, with mattresses against the wall and stacking plastic chairs pulled out for a gathering like this one. Quickly one of the women came with a tray of coffee, then later sandwiches and sweets. Everyone settles in and opens their Bibles, the younger children playing in a corner.

“What does it mean to be humble?” Baythoon asks. He leads the group through readings in the book of Romans, and someone says, “Sin is the thing that leads us to be humble.”

Baythoon’s church is only two years old, and now about 70 percent of his congregation are displaced survivors of the ISIS onslaught. They live everywhere from tents to shopping centers to apartments, some scattered to the outskirts of the city like this. His church gets funds from a church in Indiana to help cover six months’ rent for 41 units—and Baythoon hopes to double that number before summer. That, along with a local grocery store giving vouchers and aid groups donating clothing and other necessities, is helping some families rebound.

The Bible study covers basic teaching and the group is earnest, unrushed, and everyone contributes. It’s remarkable, considering that some of the families have evangelical backgrounds, while others are from Chaldean or Orthodox churches; some are from the city of Mosul, others from small villages. Some know their Bibles, and some are just learning. What they have in common is a terrifying night flight from militant jihadists with guns, leaving all that they knew and owned behind, and moving for days uncertain, sometimes circling back, not sure where to go. One in their number has tried to commit suicide since, twice. Now they feel safe—and laugh—in this circle of light.

Baythoon ends with Hebrews 2 and a reminder to run the race with endurance. He asks for prayer requests. A woman asks for courage to pray aloud. A man asks for prayer for a Muslim girl down the hall who is sick.

Baythoon asks if they are learning in the midst of their suffering and everyone nods, yes. “This thing has made me know God more. I am praying three hours a day,” says one.

“I have time to read my Bible I never had before. It is new to me,” says another.

“I am learning that church is not just a building. You can bomb the walls but not really destroy the church,” says a third.

It’s discouraging for a journalist like me who’s covered Iraq up close over a decade of war to see wave after wave of hardship for Iraq’s Christians, each one harder than the last. That’s because I look to the headlines men are writing and forget the story God is writing.

The Passover began also with “a night of watching” to bring God’s people out of Egypt, out of their bondage, all moving toward another night of watching, in the Garden of Gethsamane. And always God’s people were scared, weak, and falling away. And always God worked anyway, patiently laying a better, lasting plan of escape.

Email mbelz@wng.org