Abracadabra is an Assyrian word
Words by Jenan Younis, edited by Evar Hussayni
“It sounds not quite as phlegm-producing as Arabic and not quite as sinus clearing as Hebrew”...was the description I was met with when a bystander overheard me speaking on the phone. “It’s neither” I replied; “it’s Assyrian”.
I was born and raised in Surrey, but my first language was not English. I grew up speaking Assyrian. Assyrians are an indigenous, distinct ethnic minority group found across the modern states of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. We trace our heritage to the Ancient Assyrians, and are predominantly Christian, being one of the first people to adopt Christianity. There are an estimated 5 million Assyrians worldwide, the largest Diaspora communities being in the United States. Iraq has traditionally been looked upon as the heart of the Assyrian homeland holding the largest population within the Middle East. Before the US-led invasion there were approximately 1.5 million Assyrians; now there are thought to be less than 200,000 with numbers continually declining. Almost 40% of refugees from Iraq are Assyrian despite only constituting 3% of the pre-invasion population. We were not always such a minority, in fact only 100 years ago we were a significantly sized ethnic group in the region to prompt the British and French to draw up borders for a modern Assyrian state¹,² .
Speaking another language other than English in middle class middle England in the 1990s was not exactly viewed in a positive light. One of my earliest memories included a neighbour overhearing my mother speak to me as we walked past her front garden; with a look of disgust distorting into a scowl she interrupted: “Why are you not speaking to your daughter in English? She’s English – you know English fluently, and you’re in England, speak English.”
School environments were no less hostile. Reading out a passage from Anne of Green Gables in class aged 9, I mispronounced the word ‘ingenuous’. The teacher looked up and corrected me promptly and remarked “don’t worry, it’s to be expected, especially when you don’t speak English at home, it must be terribly confusing”. I wondered why excuses weren’t volunteered when monoglots Laura, Sarah and Claire stumbled incoherently with words when it was their turn to read a passage out loud. I felt that speaking another language was interpreted as vulgar, a refusal to integrate, and worst still, employed as a weapon against me.
Assyrian New Year (Akitu), Babel, Iraq, 1970
Naturally I resorted to drifting into speaking more English at home, my mother constantly responding with the same phrase “leh jawabanakh in leh hamzimat surit” (“I won’t answer you if you don’t speak in Assyrian”). That may appear severe, but I only truly understood her strong desire for me to speak Assyrian now. Whilst I associated my skill with exclusion, it certainly did not remain that way.
Most Assyrians have families scattered all over the world; mine is no different. Speaking Assyrian has been the only form of communication I have had with my Non-English speaking relatives. It has allowed us to laugh, converse and connect across borders. Speaking Assyrian was even my momentary salvation the first day of university when I found myself lost in a stuffy lecture theatre of 350 students, knowing no one, muttering a rhetorical lament in Assyrian; the girl sat next me turned and spoke in the same language. It has layered my experiences with idioms and words of which there are no equivalents in English, whether it be an expression of warmth to a friend, an insult or even identifying a herb for a traditional recipe, it has opened up dimensions to music, literature and art I would otherwise have never have known.
Assyrian provides a direct link to my ancient heritage through the roots of the language (did you know Abracadabra is an Assyrian word?). Priceless ancient Assyrian art work stands fragmented and forlorn in draughty museum galleries, in the homes of private collectors, illegally stripped from their birthplace by European archaeologists, admiring onlookers ignorant of the tumultuous journey the lamassu* has made. It is not uncommon to wrongly find statements littered in textbooks stating we died out as a race. I attended a University that taught Assyrian as part of its classics program. It wasn’t called Assyrian though. Academically the language is referred to as Syriac/Neo-Aramaic. A consequence of how words can be corrupted when translated from an original language into another by academics. The implication thus being that we study Syriac. We study Neo-Aramaic. No one speaks Syriac. No one speaks Neo-Aramaic. I walked into ‘Syriac/Neo-Aramaic 101’ once, and on introducing myself to the Professor that had run the class for more than 30 years; she stared at me with a fascination as if I were a figure from an alabaster panel on display at the British Museum that had come to life. Terms such as Syriac/Neo-Aramaic divorce the language from the very people that still speak it. I am here and so are at least 5 million others worldwide, and speaking our language attests to that continuity.
Cast of the Assyrian production of 'School for Scandal', Assyrian National Association of Iraq, Baghdad, 1969
It also serves as a profound symbol of survival against all odds. UNESCO considers Assyrian an endangered language; it has lived through our people for millennia, surviving collapsed empires, Islamic conquests and repeated genocides most recently at the hands of ISIS. It tells me I am a descendent of the brave, who risked their very lives to maintain their identity in the harshest of environments. And it is a reminder of the real-time cultural genocide indigenous Assyrians are subject to in their homeland; the Iraqi constitution does not recognise Assyrian as an official language, the Kurdish ruling body in the North (the KRG; the predominant parties being the KDP and PUK) persecute those that teach it, as well as replace the Assyrian names of towns and villages with Kurdish names. These are merely a handful of examples of the KRG’s methods to eradicate Assyrian presence.³
Speaking Assyrian allows me to claim a history and language that has always been mine, devoid of the racist debate of the East and the academic awe of the West. It is an affirmation of my existence in a world that denies it, and it was given to me effortlessly without textbooks, without classes, without exams, but simply by a mother talking to her child in her native tongue.
Assyrian Christians ‘Most Vulnerable Population in Iraq The Christian Post. 8 December 2012.
https://www.shlama.org/population
Assyrian Policy Institute: An Iraq for All: Improving the Status of Assyrians in the Iraqi Constitution, January 2, 2020
*Lamassu is a protective deity that took the form of a hybrid of a human head, with the body of a lion or bull, and an eagle’s wings. Sculptures of these were erected to flank the entrance to palaces in Mesopotamia.