A Language Spoken Above a Whisper - How Syriac made its comeback in the Kurdistan Region

Father Philip Khoury taught the Syriac dialect of Aramaic clandestinely after evening prayers for many years by lantern light to avoid attracting attention outside church walls. That was the whole of Syriac education in Iraqi Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein’s rule- a whispered curriculum taught out of the monastery’s interior rooms at a time when the state marked the language and the faith behind it as a threat. Khoury recalls the other priests he operated alongside by name and by town; Father Odisho in Sarsang, Father Daniel in Duhok, Father Sargis in Barwari, each running the same underground education in his own parish.