Christmas in Baghdad
BY F. S.
TAMILA, my landlady, and Michell, the shoemaker, 'EY her husband, are Syriac Christians from Diarbekr, and they belong to that part of the sect which Rome has gathered into its fold, though without altering many of the antique customs and ritual. The tradition on Christmas Eve is for every family to read out the Gospel beside its own bonfire in its own courtyard.
When I emerged in evening dress for my dinner party across the Tigris, Jamila and Michail's two little boys —Jusuf and Charles—took me down to the open court where small lanterns hung among red and green paper streamers, with a heap of dry thorns in one corner.
" The youngest should read, but Charles knows only his ABC," said Jamila while she handed us candles, " so it will be Jusuf. May the Holy Words bring you all your heart's desire, my sweet one." She kissed me, and after her the two children came up shyly and lifted their cheeks to be kissed, while Michell, with the tarbush pushed back off his fine old aquiline grizzled face, smiled upon us all.
Then Jusuf, who is ten, read out the Gospel, standing very straight with the lighted candle in his hand, his face full of seriousness, an impressive little figure under the stars. In his childish Arabic, the words had a new and homely grace.
The four walls shut out everything except the still tops of the palm trees in surrounding groves. The outer gate was locked and barred in memory of many perse- cutions. We listened, moved and silent, while the children stood like. living altars, holding our lighted candles.
.Then Michail bent down with a match to the fire, and the children clutched my arm in excitement. " Watch how it burns," said Jamila ; for the luck of the house depends on it. But the match went out.
Michell tried again ; a little flame flickered and hesi- tated ; Jamila, resourceful, denied the tenets of Pre- destination by pouring paraffin on the strategic point, and the fire leaped to a blaze. It lit the children's.oval faces with their long, dark lashes, and Jamila's long plaits with a kerchief tied above them. The four voices joined in same. old native psalm ; and the flame of the fire, rising so straight into the quiet sky, made one think of yet earlier worships, of Abel and Abraham and Isaac ; and older than these, for presently, when the thorns were but red embers, Jamila took my hand and made me leap thrice across them, wishing my wish, as no doubt the Babylonian maidens did to the honour of their gods.
Next morning, at 4.30 a.m., when the minarets across the water scarce showed against the faintness of the dawn, Jamila and I were on our way to Mass in the Syrian Church. The bridge of boats was deserted. The sentry, evidently a Christian also, gave poor Jamila a palpitation by informing us that we should be late. Jamila keeps her high heels and her walking for great occasions only.
We reached the Christian quarter across the early silence of New Street, and entered dark alleys filled with streams of quiet people on their way to the Chaldean, Armenian, Latin, Syriac, or Jacobite churches, which arc all hidden away unobtrusively among the labyrinth of houses. They are modern and ugly when seen in the vacant light of day, but now as we came from the half- light outside, we opened the heavy door on what looked like a bed of tulips brilliantly illuminated, so vivid and rustling and shimmering were the many-coloured silk tzars of the women who filled the nave in the light of lamps and candles.
In the centre of the church, half hidden by the crowd, the Bishop and his clergy were busy over another bonfire, surrounded by men who chanted a wild swift Syriac hymn—the tongue in which legend says that Adam lamented over the death of Abel. The male congregation at the back kept up the humming monotone accompani- ment which takes the place of an organ.
As we entered, the dry wood caught fire and a sheet of flame rose half way to the ceiling. The silken hoods round us rustled like a field of barley in a breeze. The Bishop, in a robe of cream and gold and crimson, his mitre high above the congregation, took in his arms a figure of the Infant Christ on a crimson cushion. Followed by his train, he walked slowly round the church, while a low canticle, wild no longer, but deep and grave and very touching, rose from all sides where the men were standing. The women did not sing.
After this the service continued very like a Roman Catholic High Mass. The warmth, the unknown speech, the murmur of prayer, cast a rich drowsiness over me. The Bishop's gold shoes and crimson stockings : the embroidered crimson kerchief which hung from his wrist to the ground : his long auburn beard : the silk gauntlets; coloured like blood with the stigmata worked upon them in gold : the acolytes who held tall feather fans with tinkling ornaments upon them, all grew blurred in a dream. The Elevation awoke me ; the bell rang, cymbals clashed, acolytes shook their fans till the ornaments rattled like dice boxes, and the rustle of the izars as the women rose to kneel was like a wave breaking softly.
Then the Bishop, bending above the altar rail, gave with his two joined hands the touch of Peace to a member of the congregation, who passed it on to the next, and so on from worshipper to worshipper, row after row, through the whole length of the church.
Soon after that Mass was over. We rushed into the narrow lane, and discovered that little Charles was lost. There was a hectic search, for the sense of danger is so inbred in the Eastern Christian that it enters in a sur- prising way into the least threatening moments of his life. But Charles was merely lost in his.own meditations behind a pillar. He only awoke to the ordinary facts of life when we stopped at the door of the pastrycook.
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