Aya Adara ran her finger over the course white sheet of her new bed. Orange light streamed in through the window bringing with it the sound of roosters crowing. What should she do now? I guess find Layah and make some of the rich coffee she had brought with her to France from Turkey.
She half got up, hesitated and then laid back down, taking in a deep breath of the French mountain air through her nose. It was crisp, chilling and energizing.
She felt the weight of the moment. Three years. Three years she had worked and waited to come here. To leave Turkey, her temporary home she had lived in as a refugee from Iraq. Her mother used to speak of ‘God’s dark sense of humor,’ referring to how her family had settled in Mosul, Iraq after escaping the massacre of her people during the Sayfo in Turkey two generations before. Only to return later to where they had barely escaped with their lives. She would say “Northern Iraq is our ancestral homeland. Our family thought that when they migrated there from Turkey we would be the seeds of a new nation, but now I fear God has made us leaves that blow around until they fall to the ground and disappear.”
Aya breathed in again just as her cell door opened. Layah poked her head in the door and the scent of coffee breezed past her and into Aya’s nostrils. “Oh, you made my coffee!” she said smiling. “I was hoping someone would do that, it’s chilly here!”
“You’ll get used to it. I prefer it now to the desert. But you will need to dress warm for the first time in your life” Layah said as she crossed the shiny wooden floor and handed Aya a red ceramic cup. Aya grasped its warmth and watched as translucent filaments rose from the mouth like waves or blades of fire, mixing with the orange light and disappearing.
“Stay in bed for a while and rest if you feel like it,” her friend said. “Ashur and I are going to take all of you newbies out to the farm in an hour, but there’s no rush to get up” she said smiling as she closed the old wooden door.
Aya put a thick pillow behind her back so she could see out the window and took a sip of coffee. It was rich, just like home. Thank God Layah knows how to make it right, Aya thought, as her eyes scanned the farms of the French countryside.
“Is this real?” she thought to herself. She imagined working in her father’s garden as a young girl, filling up a clay jar to the brim, then carrying it to the plants to water them. “Us and the plants, we both come from the land, Aya, and we depend on each other. We give the plants water, and they give us food in return.” She probably hadn’t touched a living plant since those days, but it looks like that was about to change.
As she examined the postcard-like perfection of the scene, a feeling of disembodiment descended on her. She saw Mosul in flames. Her mother crying, screaming. Her brother holding her arm over his shoulders and supporting all of her weight as they half walked, half ran down the dirt road headed North and East, toward the Nineveh plains and away from the ISIL fighters who had descended on the city in the night. Aya was 12. Gripping her mothers limp hand she felt her stomach contract so hard she thought she might vomit. Her father, a policeman, had stayed behind to fight. Running into the darkness, she was unsure where they were going, but sure they would not go back. She just prayed to God she would see him again.
They settled with her aunt in a suburb of Ankara, Turkey. The fighting in Mosul would continue for years and hundreds of thousands of her people, Assyrian Christians, would flee Northern Iraq. Up until very recently, Mosul carried its biblical name of Nineveh and it was written about in the Old Testament. It’s where Jonah was trying to avoid going when he got eaten by the whale. She didn’t know how bad Nineveh was in biblical times, but it couldn’t have been much worse than 2014.
The outskirts of Ankara, where she now lived, felt strange to her. She was used to living in a Muslim country, but here there were barely any other Christians, and even fewer Assyrians, whereas in Mosul they had been the majority. “We now share in the plight of our people” her mother said. The Assyrians lived in dozens of countries around the world, but everywhere they were a tiny minority. Aya learned that there was nowhere under heaven she could go where her people ruled themselves.
But she grew there outside of Ankara, and graduated high school. She loved to draw and to sing (but only to herself). She waited tables at a Lebanese restaurant walking distance from the house. She was content living at her aunt’s house with her mother and cousin Yav. But she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, and had been out of high school now for two years. Some of her friends wanted to go to America. But she had no desire to go to the place that bombed her country, starting the bands of Islamic extremists to roving around like the lawless raiders of ancient times. She held no hatred for America (like some others she knew), but it just seemed to her like another experiment on the way out, another civilization past its prime, lost, flailing. The Muslim world felt the same way.
One day as she was coming into the house from work she heard her cousin Yav talking on his computer in the living room. Normally he was considerate enough to use his headphones but right now the speakers were blaring voices on some kind of conference call. Aya walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water and leaned against the tile counter, pondering her evening. A cute boy had given her his number at the cafe today but she didn’t know if she should call him. Boys always seem friendly at the beginning, but in the end they’re always after the same thing, she thought to herself, shaking her head.
But her attention kept getting drawn to the call in the other room. Everyone had a different accent. So many accents. Who could he be talking to? They were discussing something called Project Chadash.
“We’re going to do it. We’re going to make a deal with some of the failing abbeys here in France and we’re going to start an Assyrian Network State.”
“Why would France let you do that? Why would any country?”
“You will see. We have a plan which is very persuasive to them. The monks are getting old and they can’t even work the thousands of acres they have here. They don’t want to sell it all so it leaves the church’s hands forever. They’ve tended these lands for over a thousand years! We can steward these monasteries and give them a new purpose. Regarding starting our own state, we will make progress over time and persuade governments to give us sovereignty over small pieces of land. It may take a generation, but this is the best path that we Assyrians have to founding own country again. This century we will stop running, stop blowing around the globe like leaves and start becoming seeds of a new Assyrian nation.” After that they all said their goodbyes and quickly got off the call.
“Who was that?” Aya asked Yav as she walked into the living room.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, “My headphones were busted so I unplugged them.”
“That’s okay” Aya said, “why were there so many different accents? What was that?”
“Oh,” Yav perked up, “We call that Project Chadash. It’s a group of Assyrians from all over the world working to start what’s called a Network State. You wouldn’t like it. It’s all geeks like me.” he said grinning, taking the opportunity to tease her since he had her attention, which was rare.
“Okay then king geek, will you please condescend to your normie cousin about what this global geek squad is up to?”
“Why are you curious? You never ask me about this stuff.”
“That man, the last one to speak, said something about us not being leaves blowing around anymore, but seeds of a new country. My Mom used to say something like that.”
“Oh, Ashur? Yeah he has a way with words. Okay, well if you really want to know I’ll tell you. The goal of Project Chadash is to found a new Assyrian country even though it will take many years. We’re starting now by organizing online. Soon we will buy land in the real world. Eventually we will make deals with host nations to let us govern ourselves.”
“So a country that starts from the internet?” Aya asked.
“Exactly.”
“Oh my God, you guys play way too many video games!” she said laughing, widening her eyes in a mocking, incredulous look.
“See? I told you it was too interesting for you shaqi. Why don’t you go watch k-pop music videos or whatever the masses do these days,” he said shutting his laptop. He wasn’t annoyed, but a bit exasperated that he and his cousin could never really connect. Ever since she showed up from Iraq almost ten years ago she’d maintained a cool, impersonal distance. Not just with him but with everyone. He got up to leave.
“Wait. I want to know more about this. It seems ridiculous, but there’s something about it. Everywhere we go we’re minorities. If you guys are trying to do something to gather the Assyrian people and give us hope that we could start a new life as a nation, I want to know how you think you could do it. I’m a little embarrassed to be curious, because it’s probably stupid. But I am curious.”
“Well, if you want to learn more you’ll probably have to learn to turn on a computer,” Yav joked, trying to conceal his gratitude that Aya was taking an interest in his nerd pursuits for once.
“I can’t use my phone? Isn’t it the same?”
“I guess you can get started that way. You would have to do everything the most normie way possible. I’ll send you some web pages and documents to read. Our next meeting is a week from today. If you like what you read you should join the meeting. Just let me know and I’ll send you an invite.”
Invites, lame, Aya thought to herself. If they ever had plans he would send her those and expect her to respond as if she ran around at the beck and call of some calendar app on her phone. But she choked back the desire to groan and instead looked at him and said “Okay, please send them to me.”
A few days later he emailed her some documents and webpages. They were predictably far fetched, but Aya went over them with a furrowed brow, trying to concentrate. What she gathered was that indeed this group of nerds thought they were going to start a country for the Assyrian people. Well, sort of a country. More like a bunch of little territories around the world that shared an economy, legal framework and citizenship . But why would countries allow these little Assyrian enclaves to break away? As she read she seemed to end up with more questions than answers. But she was intrigued. And besides work, her life was somewhat uneventful, and it wouldn’t hurt to see what people outside her neighborhood were thinking and talking about. She told Yav to send her an invite to that meeting.
“Okay, but you’ll have to use a real computer, not your phone. We use a chat system on the calls and in order to participate fully you need to have a keyboard and a full screen,” her cousin said.
“Umm, but I don’t have one anymore. I sort of gave mine to Shahen. She was heading to University and I never used it anyway.”
“What!? The computer uncle got you for graduating highschool? That was nice! I helped pick it out. It cost like 60,000 lira. I should have known you’d find a piece of sophisticated electronics repulsive.”
“Ha. Ha.” Aya deadpanned, “just let me sit in with you this time. I doubt I’ll make it a regular thing.”
Aya sat next to her cousin on a small, two cushioned couch sipping tea. His nerdy gamers laptop covered with red lights and sigils sat open on a table in front of them, facing him. She watched as little squares popped up on the screen and people greeted each other. Some of the squares had video of real people, some were blank and only had anonymous handles like madhatter and LUm1N0u5 written in them, and some had what looked like computer generated faces that moved and spoke like real people. Must be some new technology that allows people to conceal their identity, she thought. She was trying to decide if it was creepy when someone named Ashur1011 called the meeting to begin.
“Okay guys, I hope you’ve had a good week. As you remember from last week, we’re planning our first local meetups and so I want to go around the room and hear how that’s going for everyone.” Let’s start with Daniel in Buenos Aires, then Daniel will call the next one, and so on.
“Hi guys. So I have 6 people confirmed to come next week. It’s Summer here in the Southern hemisphere and the parks are amazing so we were planning on just doing a picnic. I put the agenda in the group folder. … I’ll call on Yav to go next. How are you doing my brother?”
Her cousin smiled hugely and greeted the team. The camera was focused on him, with Aya sitting to the right of the frame. “Hi everyone, hi everyone, Yav here representing Ankara, Turkey, neighbors of the homeland. As I mentioned to you in the chat, my cousin wanted to join us to learn more about Project Chadash. So I’ll introduce her, this is Aya,” he said as he pivoted the laptop so that the camera now captured both of them. Seeing her image on the screen, she realized that she hadn’t been on a Zoom call since high school during the covid lockdowns a few years ago.
“Hi everyone,” she ventured, lifting her hand up off her knee offering a little wave, not knowing what to say. The faces on the screen just stared back at her. She started to wonder if this male-heavy group interacted with women very often.
“Hi Aya, we’re very glad to have you,” Ashur1011 said. “Can you maybe tell us a little about yourself and what you find interesting about Project Chadash?”
“Sure, so I’m Aya, as you already know.. I, um..” she paused. What did she want to reveal about herself to these strangers? Who were these people behind the computer animated faces, and who was behind the dark square that just said Admiral_of_Crunch? She felt herself starting to freeze. I’m not going to let myself be intimidated by this conference of international LARPers, she thought to herself.
“I’m interested in the idea of a homeland. I’m tired of Assyrians always running. My family barely escaped from Tur Abdin during the Sayfo. We fled genocide to Mosul to start over. Then ten years ago we had to return back here from Mosul during the Northern Iraq Offensive. Everything we had was destroyed by ISIL.” She almost said “and my father was killed,” but she held it back. She still didn’t know these people. “I don’t like the solutions I see. Separatism won’t work, violence won’t work. We don’t have the numbers and anyway it’s not our way.” She was surprised listening to herself. Was this even her talking? Where was this coming from? “Anyway, I can’t tell if this is a game or not..” She thought about taking a jab at her cousin for always gaming, but she looked at him and he was beaming. These were his people and she wouldn’t embarrass him in front of them. “Thank you..” she trailed off.
In the silence she studied the faces on the screen. They were smiling and nodding, and heart-shaped emojis and applause emojis started popping up all over the screen. She must have said something they liked? What would it have been? She thought.
“Wow, Aya!” Ashur chimed back in “You have the fire! That’s excellent, we need more of that around here. A few too many of us just like goofing around on Discord. Who goes next?”
“Oh yeah, umm, squirtgunsinspace” she read off the screen at random.
As soon as she said it the back square possessing that name flipped to a camera and a girl about her age sat on the other side. She had short cropped brown hair and sat in what looked like a modern open-floor office building. There were computer screens and people milling about on the other side of the glass wall behind her. “Hey everyone, this is Noj calling in from the endless Summer of San Diego, California..”
Aya sat quietly and watched the rest of the call as they went over plans and logistics and laughed and joked. But she thought mostly of herself. Where did these feelings come from? Interested in a homeland? Was she? Her mind jumped back to being on a bus when she was 12 doing the border crossing from to Turkey from Iraq. She sat next to her brother on the springy school bus bench seat. Each had a bag on their laps possessing everything in the world that they owned. Her mom sat across the aisle. The school bus had been commandeered by some relief effort trying to ferry Assyrians and other Northern Iraqis into other countries as fast as they possibly could, acting as a release valve to the swelling refugee camps cropping up all over the border region. Aya’s family were lucky enough to have somewhere to go, Aunt Khawa’s house outside of Ankara, wherever that was.
She looked at the strong faces of the men around her on the bus. Men like her father and uncles, all of whom stayed behind to fight in Mosul. How can such strong men be forced to run away? How can all of us together not be enough to stop these barbaric terrorists in their dusty old jeeps?
Now as a young adult what she realized is that they weren’t together. They’re all over the world trying to live their lives as a scattered people. And once they left Iraq, they had left the ancestral homeland that they’d worked and cherished since Genesis. Six thousand years on the banks of the Euphrates they tended to one of the cradles of civilization. Once a city of ancient monuments. Now a pile of rubble.
Did she want a home? Could these nerds actually create one, as crazy as it sounds? She felt stirrings of feelings she’d suppressed since first coming to Turkey. Thoughts, hopes and fears that she’d imagined could vanish with time, but here they were, rising up to the brim like water in the jar she used in her father’s garden.
Come back for Part 2: Aya joins the server
Matt Harder runs the public engagement firm Civic Trust, where he helps cities strengthen their civic environment by helping residents, civic organizations, and local government work together to create public projects. Follow him on Twitter.
What a compelling story! I look forward to seeing what happens next!