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=> Re: You're right.

Re: You're right.
Posted by parhad (Guest) - Sunday, August 1 2004, 1:37:31 (CEST)
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Paul Younan wrote:
>Hi Farid,
>
>I don't know for a fact that I'm in any way, shape or form an Assyrian. There is nothing Assyrian about me. The language certainly means nothing - every middle eastern group spoke it at one time or another.
>
>What you said about former Jews turning Christian - it's possible, I suppose. I suppose we may well be descended from captive Israelites or Jews that the Kings of Assyria brought to Nineveh.
>
>How can I possibly know for sure? How can YOU possibly know for sure that you aren't descended from the tribe of, say, Manasseh or Naphtali which were taken captive and placed in Adiebene and Urmia?
>
>You're right - we don't know.
>
>I am Assyrian in the sense that I come from the land of Assyria. Whether or not I'm actually descended from those people who built the empire 3 thousand years ago - I have no way of proving that. I think I am. My parents thought they were. But that's not scientific.
>
>Who knows?
>
>The only thing I know for sure is that I'm an Aramaic-speaking Christian from the land of Assyria.
>
>Shlame,
>Paul Younan



...I am humbled. But not for long. This statement rings true and solid with intellectual honesty...something far too seldom seen these days when everyone is hiding a knife behind a god`s back.

I came at this from the opposite end...I never believed I was Assyrian...in no way at all. The whole thing made no sense...I punched a thousand holes through it and then left it as an embarrassment...and indeed every living example I saw of a fervent Assyrian turned my stomach and made me want to hide.


...and it stayed that way till I moved to New York and ran to the Metropolitan Museum to see my beloved French Impressionists...I`ve told the story enough times...any way I found myself confronted with the artwork of BetNahrain for the first time in my life and I was literally shaken to my very soul.

...I don`t know if anyone ever received permission before to bring clay into the Metropolitan but I did...and for weeks after work and in the evenings and on weekends I went there to copy my first piece of sculpture...the Lion of Ishtar from Babylon.

...That year on a visit to my family in California I sat bolt upright one early morning at around three and found myself speaking Assyrian for the first time since I was five. My command of the language was poor...but damn me if I didn`t INSIST on it...still half asleep. I wish I could remember what I said.

...A few weeks later I had a talk with my mother in which I lambasted all the Aprims from hell who have ever plagued us....mother`s, being who they are, mine brought me up short by saying whatever limitations these illiterate oafs had...they were at least TRYING...stuck far away from their homelands, they took the time after work and on weekends to gather together in addmittedly shabby surroundings to relive a little of what they had in hopes of keeping alive a memory of what they called their Heritage...that it wasn`t their fault bright young studs such as me were running madly after Western culture...trying to make it there while wiping out whatever vestiges of the old world were left in us.

...For her sake more than mine, I promise you, I went to my first convention in Los Angeles that year it was...1978. I...ME...stood there in the lobby of the Bonnaventure hotel and hawked my one Assyrian sculpture. I was humiliated to my marrow...rather that white part of me was...I stuck it through for three nights and was thrilled that three Assyrians were willing to spend anything at all on Assyrian art to decorate their homes.

My sense of being Assyrian was forced upon me as an undeniable sensation...something that came from I don`t know where and would not take "No" for an answer. I have NEVER been Christian in the slightest degree, nor would I accept what any human tells me a god must be...I have to hear it from her or him myself...and I did...or rather it was a physical sensation of being grabbed by the nape of the neck and shaken till the teeth in my soul rattled...there was no denying it any longer.

I think you`ve never been more Assyrian than when you expressed this honest doubt...we could NOT have been the types of egregious horse`s asses who talk so much yet act so poorly...no way.

It doesn`t bother me at all that I might be descended from a Hebrew captive...a street sweeper in old Nineveh...or that my family moved to BetNahrain from somewhere else....what matters is that for whatever reason...Ashur spoke to me...I felt his presence...I could not deny his magnificence.

I will NEVER go down on my knee to anyone...never bend my neck in abject humility...to lift my head and take aim at an enemy "for god". Ashur will leave it up to me how to honor him...and I do. I honor the obvious impact he made on us...as he shook me...I honor the people who were so moved by their feelings for him..for the principle he represented...beyond male or female, or Kurd or Turk...a Life Force devoid of cant, ritual, sins, fears, Evil or Good.

Anyone who pretends to speak in his name and wants to tell ME what Ashur told HIM to say to me..is a scoundrel who belongs in your church...I`m not a child to be played with by pious fools.

Paul...OBVIOUSLY I respect my Assyrian Heritage...but to me it is a heritage that has nothing to do with any Jew-based religion. I will accept them all...as I would the shingles on a roof...but they are NOT the foundation of the structure...and Ashur built his foundation strong and sure within each of us who wishes to do down to BASICS...to the bedrock of what it means to be Assyrian in the modern era.

Thank you for this..it was an unlooked for gift.



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