An Assyrian Archaeologist's Journey

From Baghdad to New York: an Assyrian Archaeologist's Journey
Posted GMT 1-16-2007 0:28:18

Donny George, man of history, had vowed never to leave Baghdad,
where he was the keeper of the keys to the looted Iraqi National
Museum. Then his teenage son opened a letter with a bullet inside
and a threat to cut off his head because his father "worked for the
Americans." An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis have fled their country
since the U.S. invasion, but George, an archaeologist, along with
his wife, Najat, and 17-year-old son, Martin, are some of the very
few--only 500 a year--who've been granted a visa to live in the
U.S. Which is how the short, stout 56-year-old ended up in Long
Island, driving a Mitsubishi Galant, listening to Shania Twain, and
preparing to teach Mesopotamian archaeology at suny--Stony Brook
this spring semester. His older children, Marian, 21, a medical
student, and Steven, 23, a computer scientist, couldn't get papers.
They remain in Damascus.

In the month or so he's been here, George has learned his way
around the campus, but he hasn't yet reckoned with the modern
ziggurat of the multilevel parking garage. Apologizing, he drives
against one-way traffic up the ramp. They've been searching the
suburban groceries for familiar foods and spices, while explaining
to curious clerks and furniture movers that they are Assyrian
Christians, neither Sunni nor Shiite.

During the past two decades, George oversaw fieldwork at some of
the most significant excavations in the world. In 1987, he was head
of a field expedition in Babylon when Saddam Hussein paid a visit.
"I met him and took him around. He was very calm. He was just
listening. In one of the museums there, we had some inscriptions
translated. In one, Nebuchadnezzar was saying that one of the gods
had sent him to protect 'the black-headed people.' Saddam said,
'You should change that.' And I said, 'No, sir, it's scientific, we
can't change it, this is exactly as it was said. It doesn't mean
that people are black, it means "all the people." Because if you
have a crowd of Iraqis, all you see are their black heads.' He
wanted to change it to 'all the people.' And I said no."

Later, "one of his bodyguards took me aside and said, 'How can you
say no to the leader?' And I said, 'It's science.' And he said,
'Well, good. God bless you. Otherwise, you would have vanished.'"

In early 2003, as the invasion became imminent, George urged his
bosses at the museum to protect the collection by sealing it up in
the basement. "I begged them, 'Please, for God's sake, for the
Prophet's sake, we have to do this, it will be stolen.' And all I
heard was, 'No, you are exaggerating. Saddam is here. Nobody will
dare to come to Baghdad.'

George estimates that the museum lost 15,000 pieces and that Iraq's
archaeological digs lost much more. "From the site looting, we have
retrieved about 17,000 objects, but if 17,000 came back, how much
went out?" He's heard that many of the objects have made it into
growing private cuneiform collections in New York. "It's very sad.
There is one solution for this: If the American government will
stop the tax deduction for people who donate it, the museums don't
buy it. But they encourage rich people to buy and then donate."

George is politically cautious; he wants visas for his other kids
too. He wouldn't comment on the president's plan for a troop
increase. In the end, though, he says, "The solution is entirely
political. And it involves Syria and Iran." In his worst
imaginings, he says, he never predicted that Iraq would descend
into a religious civil war. "Even during Saddam's time, all these
differences were dissolving. I never asked my neighbor or friend if
he was a Sunni or Shiite, and Muslims would not ask each other
either. It was a shameful thing to ask." Meanwhile, the Iranians,
he says, have already penetrated Iraq. He heard that Farsi is heard
in the markets of Basra as often as Arabic. Before he left, there
were rumors he was going to be replaced by a Muslim at the museum.
The church where he and his wife were married has been blown up.
Still, he is convinced they'll go home someday. "Listen, we know
history. We are the people of archaeology. We know it is impossible
for it to stay like this."

He plans to give a few seminars on the American occupation at Stony
Brook Manhattan this winter. The primary lesson he wants to impart
is that Iraq has a heterogeneous past. "I would love Americans to
know this is a country with multiple, different kinds of
people--Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmen, Kurds, Yazidis--people of
different religions. These people have lived together for hundreds
of years."

By Nina Burleigh
www.nymag.com