Sat April 30: Mardin-Deyrulzafaran


‘Old’ Kafro

Queens Day, but not in Turkey. today Demet showed us different Suryoye villages, monasteries and churches in the area.
As we already noticed in Diyarbakır the area is still highly militarized, although the civil war is formally ended; the recent history is still present in every inch of the area.
In the first village, Kelith, one of the few existing Suryoye villages in the area, we were welcomed by some girls that showed us the churches in the village; also missionaries did their job in the origins of Christian civilization, one church was Suryoye Protestant.



    
Kelith

So on our way to Mor Malke (Mor Malki, different spelling, different names) we had our first military control. Not everybody had his passport with him, but having Demet with us made the talking a lot shorter.
We also visited New Kafro, a village being rebuilt by the Suryoye diaspora. It looks very weird to see those houses that look like castles in ‘the middle of nowhere’.




‘New’ Kafro

Most of the ancient inhabitants of Kafro are living in Germany and Switzerland and 35 families planned to come back to live on their ancestral ground. The building material is imported from Germany because they do not trust the local materials.
In Mor Malke the monks (two are living there) offered us tea, and while drinking tea and talking with the monks, another minibus arrived, with Naurres Atto, we knew her from the lectures in Enschede. Small world.
With a lot of the places there is a name problem. The Turkish government changed the names to Turkish names, but most of the people keep on using the old names.

 
Church of Hah

The last place we visited was the church of Hah, again here we were offered a drink (Nescafe) and sweets.
And again we would be late in the monastery so we had a quick and simple meal in a restaurant in Midyat, where most of us ate the day before.
On arrival in the monastery brother Johannes did not looked to happy, we thought because we were ten minutes late. Later he was asking for the responsible of the group and told Alite that it was not possible for us to go to Mor Gabriel because of overbooking. We had to leave next day for Mor Yakup, also in the Midyat area. Because of the small staff in Mor Yakup it was impossible for them to prepare meals for us, and there were no facilities to cook ourselves. The group was disappointed. Alite asked if we could stay longer in Deyrulzafaran. Unfortunaly this was not possible. During Easter a lot of Suryoye from the diaspora are staying in the monasteries to celebrate Easter and/or to baptise their children.