Having lived in Gailani Camp for three years in the mid-1940s, I found Mr. Solomon's last article entitled "Notes on Gailani Camp Assyrians" of special interest. But in addition to Mar Qardagh Church, Rev. Goriel Suleiman and the camp Mukhtars there were a few other features deserving of attention, namely the Greek Orthodox Church, Mar Gora Church, St. Mary's Immaculate Conception Assyrian Chaldean Catholic church, and Chaldean Sisters' School. All of these were built on Ismaiel Chorbachi's leased land in Gailani Camp and have rendered, over the years, considerable services to the "Campa" community.
I don't have much information on the Greek Orthodox Church, except that it was nicknamed "The Blue Church" because of its painted color, and that it was originally headed by the late Aboona Mooshi, popularly called Maamu, serving the spiritual needs of "Campa's" Orthodox community.
Mar Gora Church, however, was built in the late 1940s by the late Qaasha Iskhaq of Anhar, a Church of the East dissident married priest who alleged that he was consecrated an Orthodox bishop. The church was built mostly by funds raised by the priest, assisted by his two sons, Theodoris and Eliya, through donations from near and far.
Qaasha Iskhaq, who died at the turn of the 1960s, was a charitable person who gave his second shirt to the poor, attended to the burial of Assyrian homeless dead and visited derelict sick, some in isolation hospital, offering them packages of food along with spiritual salvation. He also often traveled to some outposts in Iraq, rendering church services to small Assyrian communities.
Qaasha Iskhaq had consecrated his eldest son Theodoris a priest. So after Qaasha Iskhaq's death, Theodoris took over the church, but as suspect Iranian subjects, both he and his brother were exiled from Iraq some years later. The church, I understand, has been in use by the Greek Orthodox community. This scanty information is based on my own knowledge and that of a longtime Gailani Camp resident. I contacted the late Qaasha Iskhaq's daughter, Yolity Essa of San Jose, for more information. Unfortunately, she declined an interview with the excuse, "I cannot remember anything!"
The Catholic church and school in Gailani Camp, on the other hand, were both built in the mid-1940s. According to Raabi Roza Daniel of Turlock, a former pupil and, later, teacher at the Sisters' school, the school dispensed elementary education in Arabic, and language classes in English and in Assyrian, including catechism. Two illustrious boy pupils of the Chaldean Sisters' school were, in Gailani Camp, the Assyrian Church of the East current Bishop of Western Diocese in U.S., Mar Bawai Soro, and, in Kirkuk school, Bishop Mar Yosip Sargis of Baghdad. Both bishops met last year, in a surprise happy reunion at Turlock's St. Thomas Catholic parish; Sister Verjin Yousif Asmar, one of their former teachers, now serving at St. Thomas Retirement Home in Turlock.
Before the Iraqi Government took over all private schools in Iraq in 1973, the Sisters decided to close down the school in "Campa." But they offered the building, free of charge, as dwelling quarters for a few needy families, for which charitable purpose it is still being used. The church building, however, is still in use for religious services by the small Catholic community remaining.
Ando (Andrious) Youkhanna Eshaya of Pacific Grove, California - who left Gailani Camp
some two years ago - says that before the orderly baked-brick houses began to replace, in the late 1930s, the
helter-skelter mud-brick "Campa" dwellings, the Gailani Assyrian Catholics had a mud-brick church, headed by the
late Qaasha Odisho Yosip, successor of Rev. Shimon Yosip
D'Shamshajiyan.
But the church building was torn down in the early forties by the landlord, a Moslem named Ahmed. So, for three years the community's Catholics attended church services out of a tiny chapel in the Chaldean Cemetery, just off the Camp. But in 1945 a devoted group decided to build a new church for their congregation.
According to Ando -- the youngest member of the group -- the late Qaasha Sada Yonan was the community pastor then and Shamasha Youel Sargis spearheaded the action committee. Other members of the group were Shamasha Mishael Khnania of Turlock, Faraj Shamasha Yousif of Baghdad, and the late Mum Jibrael D'Ardishai, Shamasha Anton (an Assyrio -Armenian) and Raabi Iskhaq Dawid Sa'or, among others.
The group appealed to the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, the late Mar Yousif Ghanima, for financial assistance, but he alleged that the Church had no funds to spare. So the group launched a campaign to collect donations, simultaneously beginning the construction of the church building. But they soon ran out of funds!
A man of letters, Shamasha Youel Sargis translated from Arabic into Assyrian a drama called Treh Shahzadeh Yakhsireh (Two Captive Princes). The play was staged in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Habbaniya by Catholic and a few non-Catholic Gailani Camp youth. It was well received and generated a substantial -- though inadequate -- return.
Encouraged, Shamasha Youel next translated from French another play called Genevieve. Although a better play, Ando says, it was unfortunately due to certain Assyrian prejudices, not well attended, and was therefore a financial flop. Borrowing some money from Mum jibrael, however, the group finally managed to complete the church building in 1946.
In 1973, the Iraqi Baath Government forced the Chorbachi family to deed every plot of land, for a specific price , to each and every house owner, including the schools and churches. This of course boosted the price of property in "Campa." Ando says some Assyrians have been selling their houses for handsome prices and either emigrating or moving to better areas of Baghdad. He also alleges that not many Assyrian families remain in "Camp" today and predicts that before long the name Assyrian and Gailani Camp might even become history to the area.
Two or three decades ago, the construction of a house in Gailani Camp cost less than one thousand Iraqi Dinars. With today's sky-rocketing inflation in Iraq, Ando says an average house today sells for almost a million Dinars, with bigger ones on prime locations worth as much as two or three million and still going up with leaps and bounds! The houses are usually purchased by land developers, torn down and replaced with industrial or commercial premises.
The original price of "less than one thousand Dinars" a house was, at that time, equivalent to
about U.S. $3,000.00. Nowadays, a million Iraqi Dinars would fetch less than $2,000.00 on the
open Iraqi market. Not a good deal for Assyrians who intend to pull up stakes and emigrate, is it?
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