There could scarcely be a better person than Janine di Giovanni to write about the disappearing Christians of the Middle East. An award-winning war correspondent, she brings compassion, experience, and expertise to the subject.
Di Giovanni grew up in an Italian-American family on the east coast of the US. Under lockdown with her teenage son and the family of her former husband in the French Alps in 2020, she makes a crown of wildflowers for a statue of the Virgin, lights a candle, and prays for those struck down by Covid-19. “Ordinarily, I am not a prayerful person. I am a proud sinner, in fact,” she writes. “But faith is coming back to me in these dark times.”
In fact, di Giovanni’s faith never left her. Throughout her career, in former Yugoslavia, Africa, and especially the Middle East, she has sought solace in churches and in the company of fellow Christians. Her low-key profession of faith may inspire admiration, even envy, among those who know no such sense of belonging.
By chance, this reviewer covered many of the same conflicts that di Giovanni did, though we never worked together. Reading her book, I sometimes had the impression that we had interviewed the same people. Passages about the sleaze and terror of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the dread that permeated Baghdad in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, describe exactly what I experienced.
Shortly after the fall of the so-called Islamic State group or Isis in 2017, di Giovanni travels to northern Iraq, from which the jihadists have “ethnically cleansed” tens of thousands of Christians. The Chaldean monastery she visits in Nineveh is empty, save for a few flickering candles. Her description reads like a haunting allegory of the region’s dwindling Christian presence.
“We faintly heard otherworldly singing, chanting . . . Far in the back, in an almost hidden room, we found the source of the singing. A man and a woman had their backs to me. The woman had long, flowing hair that fell below her waist and was wearing a simple dress. The man, a priest, was wearing robes. The woman turned, saw me, and smiled widely. They continued singing in Aramaic in front of an altar with a single lit candle.”
Di Giovanni admits to feeling uneasy about western double standards. The Trump administration encouraged eastern Christians to emigrate to the US, while imposing a ban on the entry of Muslims. Though the Christians are Arabs too, their identification with the West has heightened the dangers that threaten them. They have often supported Arab dictators, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein, the Assads and a succession of Egyptian rulers posed less of a threat than Islamic fundamentalism. History is, alas, proving them right.
Tariq Aziz, a Chaldean Catholic, was Hussein’s foreign minister and vice-president. In Egypt, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a Coptic Christian, served as foreign minister and later became secretary general of the United Nations. The Assads surrounded themselves with loyal Christians.
The governments of Israel and Egypt, though allied with the West, have nonetheless persecuted Christians. Palestinian Christians “are prevented from accessing some of the most sacred sites in Christianity”, di Giovanni writes, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Dolorosa, and the garden of Gethsemane.
The rise of Isis, a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, led to the worst atrocities against Christians, in Iraq and Syria
In Egypt, which has the largest population of Christians in the Middle East, Christians still make up close to 10 per cent of the population. Though they fare better than elsewhere in the region, their homes and churches are frequently attacked. They are taunted as “Romans” and pelted with stones. Women are beaten for showing their hair.
Di Giovanni is scathing about the “reign of terror” of Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian dictator who staged a coup in 2013. “Given his thuggish policies, it is staggering that Sisi has managed to garner such support from western and Arab allies,” she writes.
Sisi’s regime does little to protect Egypt’s Christians. In 2016, Suad Thabet, age 70, the mother of a Christian man rumoured to have had an affair with a Muslim woman, was taken from her house in upper Egypt, stripped naked by a mob and dragged through the streets to cries of “Allahu Akbar”. Though Sisi apologised for the attack, the alleged perpetrators were acquitted, and no one was held responsible.
The rise of Isis, a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, led to the worst atrocities against Christians, in Iraq and Syria. Isis fighters marked the doors of Christian homes with the letter N, referring to Nazaria, or Jesus of Nazareth. Christians were ordered to convert to Islam, pay a tax called the jizya, or leave. Isis made crucifixion its favoured method of execution. The group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, promised to march to Rome, break the crosses of Christendom and “trade and sell their women”. Weeping Christian women and girls were filmed being sold as slaves to bearded, gun-toting Isis fighters in the bazaar at Hassake, northeastern Syria.
Priests in the Middle East have long attempted to persuade parishioners to remain in the land of the Prophets and Jesus Christ, where they face discrimination at best, extermination at worst, as well as the same poverty and violence as other inhabitants of the region. Di Giovanni provides estimates for the mass emigration of Christians from Iraq, Gaza, Syria and Egypt. One wishes she had included Lebanon. The fate of Christians there could comprise an entire book on its own.
Di Giovanni’s title is taken from a quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who said that as a photographer, he dealt in things that were “continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on Earth which can make them come back again”.
No one has any illusions that the Christians of the Middle East will return to their blighted homeland. Di Giovanni’s book has the merit of recording the little that remains of two millennia of Christian presence.
