A Visit to Manal's Village

A man stands at a gravesite. The little girl by his side sheds tears in the early morning fog of the Iraqi countryside. He has just revealed to her the harsh reality that 10 of the freshly covered graves house her mother, her father, and 8 siblings. The other 9 contain her neighbors, friends that were like family, violently silenced in one split second just after midnight on September 10, 2009.

Manal’s father heard a large truck and walked out the front door of his house to investigate. Why would such a large truck come to their mud-brick village, miles from the nearest city, at such an hour?

In their curiosity, the whole family followed, with Manal lagging behind. An instant later the truck lit up in a ball of fire blowing a 10 foot crater into the ground. Shards of metal spread in every direction, the engine itself landing over 200 yards away.

The suicide bomber from nearby Mosul along with his explosive counterpart took 19 lives in the Kurdish village and wounded another 30. They leveled 34 homes and damaged another 100.

I visited the village yesterday to see for myself this somber sight and to check on Manal.

It’s been nearly 2 months since the bombing. The crater is now filled with water from early autumn rains.
What is left of the homes can be easily mistaken for junk piles with hardly one brick found on top of another. Walking where Manal’s house once stood, I spy a large crankshaft.
The villagers tell me that the bomber had loaded tons of scrap metal on top of the explosives to enhance the explosion.

Demonic minds with demonic wills.

Manal’s great uncle is a prominent man in the community with a large family of his own, an aging man who recently had a heart attack. I enter his home. He sits me down next to him and asks, “Why has God created good men and bad men?”

Philosophy and religion seem to be the main trade of this isolated village. As in some bygone era, the elders spend their days talking about their faith as the world passes them by.

Twenty men wait with narrowed eyes to hear what this spiffy, young American in his western attire had to say.

When I answer the first question, there are nods and shakes of the head, some saying, “Good answer, good answer.” Then the next question came.

“There was a man who was perfect in keeping all the laws of his religion, yet his behavior towards others was wrong and demeaning. Was he a righteous man?”

For the first time, it dawns on me why Jesus told so many parables and stories. These men fill their days discussing “fine points of their “law,” desiring answers to life’s deepest questions. To enter into their deductive reasoning debates would take endless hours and would seem, unlikely to cause them to think in any way other than their forefathers.

Stories, like pictures, have the potential to strike to the heart, to create doctrine rather than just hedge it in, and to force us to come to grips with truths that bypass our minds and settle themselves on our very souls. No wonder Jesus spoke to them thus:

There were once two men who went up to the place of prayer. One was a religious leader in the community and the other a tax collector. The ‘pious’ one prayed: “Father, thank you that you have made me a righteous man, not like the heathen, robbers, evildoers, or like this tax collector. I fast, give alms to the poor, and pray 5 times a day. Thank you, Father, that I am a good man.”

The tax collector hearing the man’s prayer felt ashamed knowing that he was not good, he beat his breast not daring to so much as look up to heaven and declared, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted,” Jesus said. Luke 18:14

While we talk, I keep looking at two pictures that hang on their wall behind the aged man. One of Jesus, crucified on the cross. The other is of Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, the father of Shia Islam.

Manal’s great uncle must see my perplexed look. He motions with his hands, pointing first at Ali, making a slashing motion across his throat. Then he points at Jesus, slapping his cheek on one side then turning and striking the other.

A glaring juxtaposition, yet they didn’t seem to observe any contradiction in revering both.

As the conversation continues, Manal’s uncle now speaks. “You know, we believe in Jesus. We believe that He died to save the world of its sin, but we also believe in the Koran and that Mohammed was a Prophet. Islam is good and right. It’s just that the people that follow it are not good.”

It seems as if the conversation has come to an end, leaving me wondering if I should finally ask the question that beckons. The pause lengthens. I ask, “Why doesn’t your faith produce good people?”

Perhaps in the days to come there’ll be more opportunities to ‘open up the book’ with him and share more stories that have shaped the lives of millions and millions throughout history, bringing sense to this fallen world in which we live, where idle philosophizing has fallen short.

Manal seems to be doing well. However, shrapnel still makes it way to the surface of her skin, like bad memories not to be forgotten. But it doesn’t seem to affect her countenance. She looks much better than she did 6 weeks ago when I saw her in the hospital, shell-shocked, with bandages all over her body.

We will follow Manal’s life and her new family with great interest and with prayer. Why don’t you say a prayer for her too: that God would silence the nightmares that haunt her; that God would grant her joyful thoughts of her lost family; that He would protect her and encourage her heart with hope for the future. Amen.

For more on the Wardek Village bombing click here.

Comments

[Kate Borders]

Praying for open doors for you, that the Lord will grant dreams and visions, and that many will be drawn to Him...

[Alan]

Praising God for your sensitivity to a complex belief system that must be bathed in prayer and the Holy Spirit to achieve spiritual break through.