Roads to Iraq

I bet before visiting this Blog you already saw Fayrouz’s last post ” Salute To an Iraqi Catholic Nun” if not please go read it, in short it’s about an Iraqi nun “Beninia Shoukwana” a headmistress of a primery school and how she keeping faith in Iraq and this is typical Beninia Shoukwana as I knew her years ago when I was one of her students in the same primary school.

The writer of the article made a mistake with the name of the school, “IBTIKAAR”=”invention” is the good name formally “Mar John the beloved one for the Chaldean nuns”=” مار يوحنا الحبيب لراهبات الكلدان” ( if the translation is not good please Fayrouz correct it. update fayrouz corrected the the name of the school “St. John The Beloved For The Chaldean Nuns.”) one of few schools in Iraq which don’t have the name of Saddam or Baath ( lucky me) it was a private school at my time, the different between private school and public school is, in the private school parents have to pay for the education of their children, in public or government’s schools not, education is free, the level of the education in private schools is much better than public schools. When I was in the fifth grade a law from the government made all the shools public and the name of my school changed to “IBTIKAAR”.

Back to “Masera Beninia” (Masera is Iraqis for nun), in the article she said “I’ve been accused of trying to convert little Muslims to Christianity,” most of the school stuff at my time were nuns and I swear nobody tryed to convert me to anything but I had to sit in the Bible lessons because when I have been asked in first day of school about my religion I answered “I don’t know”, it was really I didn’t knew what is my religion so the nun concluded that I am a Christian from the way I look and (being white skin with light bruin hair made me Christian). My “Bible study”took 2-3 years before they discoverd that I am not a Christian, “Masera Beninia” was very angry and keept asking me “why did I said that I am a Christian?” and keept answering “I didn’t said I am a Christian”, she apologized from my parents for this mistake and my mother told her no need to because actually they don’t care what kind of religion I study.”

God bless you Beninia Shoukwana your are in my visit list next time in Iraq and god bless you Fayrouz for posting a part of life gone forever.