How rival gardens of Eden in Iraq survived ISIS, dwindling tourists, and each other
One of the commanders was a deacon named Yusef. He preached at the Free Methodist church. “We are always having debates and arguments about Jesus Christ,” he said. The deacon had a gray mustache and dark hair, aviator glasses with a brown tint. We sat on ornate couches in a room with tiled floors. I told him about our visit to Lalish and asked whether he believed it to be the ancient location of the Garden of Eden. He told me the Garden absolutely was not at Lalish. “The Garden of Eden is here,” he told me. He pointed to the ground beneath our feet. “It’s everywhere but Lalish.”
“And the tree of life?” I asked.
“It’s here,” he said. He lifted his arms. “The tree of life. We don’t know where it is exactly but it’s very near here.”
For miles, there was nothing but desert and villages sacked by the Islamic State.
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Is tribal custom above the law?
Mohammed al-Oleimi spent 20 years in prison for murder—the full length of his sentence. But on the day of his release, he was detained again under the direction of the Deputy Governor of Irbid. The reason? Over the previous two decades, Mohammed’s tribe had failed to reach a settlement with the tribe of his victim. Irbid’s Deputy Governor told the al-Oleimi family that—despite Mohammed’s completion of his entire prison sentence as ordered by Jordan’s Criminal Court, Court of Appeals and Court of Cassation—the only thing that would end the case was a tribal settlement, according to what Mohammed and his brother told 7iber.
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Something better
Whatever happened to Ahvaz and Abadan, those cities in the land of the Khuz? Yes, there was 1980 ‘and all that’, and both are still standing proud beneath the Iranian and Brazilian flags alike; what I mean to say is, what happened to the Ahvaz and Abadan of my parents’ childhood? Tucked away beneath my bed are shoeboxes full of old photographs of old ghosts and relatives. I’ve never been to southern Iran, but I can tell the thick polaroids taken in Ahvaz apart from the others; those cream-coloured brick houses and empty expanses are dead giveaways. For my relatives and I, though, they’re little more than miniature visual aids that shine every which way. Our memories are fuzzy to begin with, and as such, they don’t exactly help elucidate things any further. Has our Ahvaz, the only one I’ve ever known, been lost forever? What if there weren’t photographs to smear and play with in the light?
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