"- Sheikh Adi is a dangerous den! – the captain said.
 - Extremely dangerous! – added the lieutenant.
 - People there pray to the Devil!
 - The Devil! May Allah chop them up and crush them!"

Words from the book I read as a kid bounce in my head like pebbles crumbling off from the mountain of memory. The protagonist travels the world mediating between warring tribes, protecting the weak and stamping out tyrants. “Dear God, how precious human life is! – he cries at one point – and yet... yet... yet!”

This sentence he utters in Lalish, the place referred to in the book as Sheikh Adi. The urchin who devoured adventure novels in his primary school days could never imagine that Karl May wrote all those books never setting foot in Kurdistan. Or, for that matter, never having been to America, in which his hero knocks a grizzly bear down with his fist and becomes a blood brother of an Indian chief. However, our final breakup came much before I was able to question the veracity of the said adventures: Winnetou had died, and I no longer wanted to read.

Then other things started pouring into my life, teenage traumas and adolescent soul-searches, and the valley of the Devil’s worshippers was soon forgotten, just like many other, more important questions. And now – here I am, standing in that valley.

All around me are barren hills, covered in sparse forest and dry grass. Gnarly trees are leafless because it is January 3rd. The new year 2012 found us in a shabby motel in Sulaymaniyah, at the eastern end of Iraqi Kurdistan. Outside, the rain was moving streams of garbage, and our room had a broken window pane. Now it is sunny, the sky is perfect blue, and we are standing on a small square of a town where nobody lives. Tall ribbed cones, light beige in color, stick out from between flat-roofed stone houses.

Lalish is eerily quiet and, it seems, completely abandoned. Leaving my travel mates behind, I decide to climb the highest hill, following narrow trails, over boulders, through wintry groves and across steep meadows. First I take off my warm winter jacket, then the sweater, and finally the sweatshirt too as I reach the summit. I sit on a rock under a lonely tree.

Weeks before the trip flew by me like hurled rocks. I hardly had time to realize it, and there we were, sitting on the night train to Dimitrovgrad. I had copied a bunch of articles about the places we were planning to visit to a flash drive, hoping to print them out somewhere along the way, but the pace of the trip was such that there was no time for that. Trains and trucks, hitchhiking on desert roads of south-eastern Turkey under the freezing December sky, crossing the border into Iraq... And so I am here now, sitting on a hill above Lalish, the holiest place of the Yazidi faith, knowing about it even less than what Karl May wrote in the late 19th century.

"The large, wide cauldron of the valley was lit like in daytime. Most light came from two giant bonfires, whose roaring flames danced against the barren rocks on both sides of the temple. I was overcome by that sweet dread, pleasant and burdensome at the same time, that lights up a man’s heart when something divine penetrates his small inner world.”

In his novels, May describes Kurds as cruel highlanders, warriors who respect no power except that of their tribal sheikh, and whose blood vendettas span centuries. That was written more than a hundred years ago, but it might as well have been written yesterday in the rugged mountains of northern Iraq. Rough, hard facial features. Bad teeth, bushy eyebrows, furrowed foreheads. Loose trousers with legs connected at knee-height. Bearded old men with turbans and prayer beads. Guerillas with pubescent moustaches, armed to the teeth, barely able to lug their heavy Kalashnikov rifles, stopping cars and checking everyone’s IDs. Even though Kurds are predominantly Muslim, their women don’t cover their faces, maybe because that is an Arab tradition, and Iraqi Kurds generally dislike Arabs as much as Turkish Kurds dislike Turks.

However, Arabs and Muslim Kurds in the region are united by one thing: ethnic hatred of Yazidis.

Yazidis are Kurds who managed to resist islamization. Their faith is so old that nobody knows when it emerged. It most likely came from India, brought to the Middle East thousands of years before Jesus was born and Mohammad overhauled Christianity. Over time it absorbed fragments of surrounding religious ideas, evolving into a somewhat bizarre cocktail that teaches how in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.

At one point, God sent his seven angels to bow to Adam. Six of them obeyed, but the seventh, Iblis, refused.

- Why didn’t you bow to Adam? – asked God, vexed.
- Because I’m better than him – Iblis replied. – Because you made him of clay, and me of fire.
- Well in that case, you’re not an angel anymore! – God bellowed. – And now, I’m going to...
- Please – Iblis said – could you postpone your punishment? At least until the Judgement Day?
- Deal – said God (merciful as he is) – But FYI, from now on you’ll be known as the Devil.

This, though maybe not exactly verbatim, is written in the Quran. However, Yazidis claim that that is not how it happened.

- Why didn’t you bow to Adam? – asked God, vexed.
- Because I’m better than him – Iblis replied. – Because you made him of clay, and...
- Atta boy! – bellowed God, giving Iblis a savage slap on the wings – you are the only one who understood that you must not bow to anyone but me! And that makes you the brainiest of all my angels.
- What happens now? – Iblis asked.
- Now I have to go, and you and your big brain are in charge of the world.

Extremist Muslims, of course, know that Yazidis worship the fallen angel, in some religions also known as the Devil. They see it as their holy duty to wipe out the Devil’s worshipers from the face of the Earth, which they have tried to do many times, with some success. Yazidis, on the other hand, passionately hate their Muslim neighbors, and would probably be happy to wipe them out too – if they only could.

In the Yazidi religion, the controversial angel is not called Devil, but Taus, which means – peacock. Melek Taus, or Angel Peacock, is in charge of the world until God returns. Where God has gone, what he is doing there and whether he is coming back at all is not for us to tell. When the Peacock heard that the world was now his responsibility, he spread his wings and flew down to Lalish. And he is still there.

"I know that for you this bird is not a deity, but a sign that you will put on yourself as a mark of our friendship. Every Yazidi to whom you show this Taus will give his property and life to protect you."

I get up from my spot under the crooked tree and slowly walk down towards Lalish. As I try to find the trail between boulders, it occurs to me that this hike wasn’t the most prudent idea. Iraq is boiling over with paranoia, feuding peoples and armed men. Only sixty kilometers from here lies Mosul, a city less known for the fine fabric by the name of mousseline, and more for the killings that go on in its streets, where extreme Sunnis are trying to eradicate Shias, Yazidis and Nestorian Christians. If someone stops me and asks what I am doing on top of this hill... Luckily, there is nobody. Only the wind, bringing the tinkling of sheep’s bells from the distance.

Together with my travel mates I go to the tallest ribbed cone: the tomb of Sheikh Adi, a mysterious Sufi who reformed the Yazidi religion in the 11th century. Adi was Angel Peacock’s reincarnation. At the entrance we are stopped by two men: one has a mustache, while the other one is bearded and wears woolen socks. The mustached one puts his hand out.

- My name is Lohman. And this is the head priest. We will show you the tomb of Sheikh Adi. Walk this way, but first take your shoes off. And be careful not to step on the doorstep.
- Why?
- It is forbidden.

The Yazidi faith is rich in taboos, just like any other faith. Don’t step on the doorstep. Don’t spit on the ground, in the water or fire. Don’t wear blue clothes. Don’t eat lettuce. And so on.

We cross the stone-paved courtyard, past several ancient olive trees. Then we stop in front of a large door. Above them, in bass relief, I can see a peacock, a lion, a sun and a moon. Next to the door frame there is a long carved snake, black in color, getting out of a hole and crawling upwards.

- Why is the snake here? – I ask.
- When Noah’s Arc was about to sink, a snake curled up and blocked the hole in the hull. That is why we respect it.

"In that courtyard there is the building of the tomb temple itself, and above it there are two white towers that beautifully stand out against the dark greenery of the valley. The tips of the towers are gilded and full of sharp edges on which light plays with shadows. Above the main door there are several carved symbols of which I managed to make out a lion, a snake, an axe, a man and a comb. "

Even though Karl May never visited Lalish, writing his book in 1892 from his armchair in Germany, his descriptions of the far periphery of the Ottoman Empire are amazingly accurate (except for the carved comb, which might be down to a mistranslation).

The interior of the temple is dark, empty and freezing. The cold goes right through my thin socks, numbing my feet. In the spacious hall there is a spring with a tiny pool of water, and a sarcophagus covered with a big cloth.

"The interior of the building is divided, as I noticed later, into three main rooms: one large and two smaller ones. The largest nave’s ceiling rests on columns and arches. In it there is a spring whose water is considered holy by Yazidis. In one of the smaller naves is the tomb of the saint, and above it a large rectangular tower built of clay and covered with plaster. Above it, as the only decoration, lies a large green woven cloth."

- If you have any kind of problem – Lohman says – just tie a knot on this cloth. You can also try to untie some of the existing knots. If you succeed, the problem of the person who tied that knot will be solved. In that way one person helps solve another one’s problems.

Instead of exploring the spiritual implications of the knot system, I am painfully focused on the fact that I’ve been taking antibiotics since the beginning of the trip, my throat is so sore that I can hardly talk, and I will probably not get well by standing barefoot in a basement.

- Come on – Lohman says, pointing at a small door – this way. Bow down to avoid hitting your head. And be careful not to step on the doorstep.

We walk through the door, followed by the taciturn priest with a lantern. The first room we enter leads to another one, then another, each one narrower and lower. The floor is covered in thick sediments of olive oil crust, accumulated there over the centuries. Along the wall there are dozens of clay pots with oil, whose thick fragrance grates against my throat.

- This is for the lanterns – Lohman explains – for our greatest holiday. That is when Yazidis come here, to Lalish, for the festivities that last for seven days.
- How many Yazidis are there in total?
- Around 300,000 in Iraq. There are some in other countries too, but not that many.
- What happens at the festivities?
- Yazidis gather here in Lalish. All of the houses you saw outside are there for accommodation. Normally nobody lives here except the head priest, but during the festival the whole Lalish is full of people. That is when we sacrifice a bull, which is slaughtered on the main square.

Yazidis have a Hell, but they have no Heaven. There used to be one until Angel Peacock closed it down because it was always empty. When you die, the soul moves on to the next body, then to the next, and so on. Consecutive reincarnations continue until the soul reaches the level of spiritual purity necessary for entering the Heaven.

Apart from the reincarnations, Yazidis have kept another memory of their distant Indian motherland: the caste system. The society is divided into castes, and there are strict rules about what one can and can’t do. For example, you can’t get married to someone from a different caste. And whatever you do, you must never ever marry a Muslim. Lohman points that out at least ten times.

A large portion of Yazidis were killed off in the Ottoman days, when Belgrade and Baghdad were in the same country. They were killed by Kurds (because faith is stronger than ethnicity), Turks and Arabs. Their Islamic neighbors have never forgiven them their bowing to the Devil. After the collapse of Saddam’s regime, the local sheikhs became powerful and well-armed, and these rugged mountains slowly started sliding back towards the Middle Ages. People are killed for blood vendettas or religious hatred, women burned alive for alleged adultery, and complicated written laws are gradually being replaced with unwritten, but much easier to understand and follow, law of the jungle.

Off the temple courtyard there is a vast hall covered with thick carpeting, where we are served tea in round-bellied cups that Turks compare to the body of a perfect woman. I ask Lohman how much we should pay for the tour, but he just shakes his head, saying that it is his job to talk about Yazidis to anyone willing to listen. Then he interviews us for a Yazidi newspaper, which will publish a short article about our visit.

It crosses my mind that this is the perfect opportunity to ask some more questions about Yazidis, and I am angry with myself for coming on this trip so unprepared. I promise to myself to make up for that as soon as I get home. Several weeks later I was to discover more questions – when it was too late to ask them.

On the Internet I find an article about a Yazidi girl from the nearby village of Badri. Her name was Du’a Khalil Aswad, and she was 17 when she fell in love with a Muslim boy. After days of reading and following links, I realize that it is impossible to find out how exactly the events unfolded in that April of 2007. The girl ran away from home. According to some sources, the police offered her protection. In other sources, the sheikh of Badri himself offered protection. Some say that her parents forgave her and invited her to come back home. But this whole Rashomon effect actually bears little importance to what ensued.

When she returned, the girl was pulled out of her home and stoned to death. She was then tied to a car, dragged down the streets and finally buried with a dead dog. Of course, we read about such things all the time. In Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia... When we hear about it, it sounds almost unreal, distant and abstract. We slightly raise our eyebrows, and then forget. Those countries were not on our travel list anyway, and even if they were there is little chance that we will see anyone killing children with rocks.

However, in Du’a Khalil Aswad’s case, the stoning party made sure that everyone learn about it, probably not contemplating the horrible consequences that was to have for the Yazidi community. They recorded the stoning with their cell phones: rock in one hand, smartphone in other. Half an hour of brutal, sadistic murder. The recording quickly made it to YouTube. I will not describe the details of it here, and I don’t recommend checking.

"Even if they kill me – what of it? Doesn’t each drop of water have to rise towards the Sun? Doesn’t the shining Sun itself die every single day, only to be reborn tomorrow? Isn’t death a gate to a brighter, purer world? Have you ever heard a Yazidi say of another Yazidi that they have died? We only say they have transformed, because there is neither death nor grave, but only life and nothing but life."

The concept of the noble savage, a romantic ideal of living in harmony with nature, far from the demands of the industrialized society, could only ever have existed because the European authors of the time – Karl May among them – rarely bothered to take a closer look at those simple, honorable highlanders who talk straight, look in the eyes and honor their word as the highest sacrament. In his essay from 1853, Charles Dickens gave his opinion on this matter.

"If we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense (...) The world will be all the better when his place knows him no more."

When they saw the video of the stoning, radical Muslims from Iraq only confirmed their long-standing conviction: that Yazidis are the Devil’s servants. Two weeks later, unidentified people stopped a bus on the way to Mosul. They checked the IDs of the passengers: Muslims and Christians were allowed to leave. The Yazidis, 23 of them (in some sources 24) were taken off the bus, made to lie face down, and shot in the back of the head.

Several months later, in August 2007, a series of bombing attacks shook the Yazidi villages around Lalish. The total death toll is estimated to 500, with 1,562 wounded. It was the bloodiest attack of suicide bombers in Iraq to date, and the second bloodiest terrorist attack in history, second only to the 9/11 in New York.

In a bizarre attempt to untangle this knot, the government of Iraqi Kurdistan ordered the exhumation of the girl’s body, which was then sent to Mosul for a post mortem. It was determined that she had died a virgin.

⁂

I tear myself away from the computer and suddenly realize that it is already dawn. I hear first morning sounds coming in from the street, suddenly become aware of the pulsating pain in my backbone, followed by a new wave of guilt for not having prepared for the trip, which made me unable to ask that very important question at the temple.

However, the more I think about it, the less I am sure what that question is.

"Dear God, how precious human life is! And yet... yet... yet!"

In Mandaean legends, as well as in those of India and Persia, one finds perpetual reference to wandering dervishes, the wanderers who set out in search of intellectual and spiritual peace.

*

In the following pages an attempt is made to relate what the author has seen, heard, and observed of the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran. of Iraq and Iran. Observations were made over a number of years and furnish a considerable body of new evidence as to their customs, beliefs, cults, and magic. This evidence, we submit, is useful, not only to the student of anthropology, folk-lore, and ethnology, but to students of the history of religions, for the Mandaeans are what the doctor calls a case of arrested development. Their cults, which are regarded by them as more sacred than their books, and older, have been tenaciously retained; their ritual, in all its detail, most carefully preserved by a priesthood who regard a slip in procedure as a deadly sin. Segregated since the coming of Islam from those amongst whom they dwell by peculiarities of cult, custom, language, and religion, they have kept intact and inviolate the heritage which they had from their fathers.

Mandaeans do not adore the heavenly bodies, but they believe that stars and planets contain animating principles, spirits subservient and obedient to Melka d Nhura (the King of Light), and that the lives of men are governed by their influences. With these controlling spirits are their doubles of darkness. In the sun-boat stands the beneficent Shamish with symbols of fertility and vegetation, but with him is his baleful aspect, Adona, as well as guardian spirits of light. The Mandaeans invoke spirits of light only, not those of darkness. All Mandaean priests are at the same time astrologers.

In the sun-boat stands the beneficent Shamish with symbols of fertility and vegetation, but with him is his baleful aspect, Adona, as well as guardian spirits of light.

The great alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates lie between the Far East and Near East and in constant contact with both. From earliest times, highroads have run from the uplands of Iran, from the steppes of Asia, from the deserts of Arabia, from the plains of India, through what is now modern Iraq, to the Mediterranean seaboard. From the first its inhabitants have been subject to influences from all quarters of the civilized globe and ruled by race after race. There could be no better forcing ground for syncretistic thought. Babylonia and the kingdoms of Persia and Media offered natural conditions favourable to the growth of religious conceptions compromising between ancient traditions and cults, and ideas which had travelled from the old civilization of China by way of the Vedic philosophers of India ideas whichspiritualized, revived, and inspired man's belief in the immortality of the soul, its origin in the Divine Being, and the existence of beneficent ancestral spirits. Moreover, in the five centuries before Christ, there was a steady infiltration of Jewish, Egyptian, Phoenician, and Greeki nfluences into Babylonia. Before the Captivities, Jewish communities of traders and bankers established themselves in the land of the two rivers, while mercenaries and merchants passed to and fro between the Far East and the seaboards of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece.

Speculation in the West is mostly conducted from a chair: the adventurer into the realms of thought goes no farther than the laboratory or the study. In the East, seekers after truth were peripatetic : their intellectual vagabondage was physical as well.

The soldier and the merchant, though they contributed as intermediaries in the exchange of ideas, could never, however, have been more than passive 'carriers' of religious thought. In Mandaean legends, as well as in those of India and Persia, one finds perpetual reference to wandering dervishes, the wanderers who, like Hirmiz Shah in the Mandaean story, like Gautama the Buddha in India, or, in medieval times, Guru Nanak, set out in search of intellectual and spiritual peace. Speculation in the West is mostly conducted from a chair: the adventurer into the realms of thought goes no farther than the laboratory or the study. In the East, seekers after truth were peripatetic : their intellectual vagabondage was physical as well. It is certain that where the merchant penetrated, religious wanderers followed; travelling philosophers, ranging from China to India, Baluchistan, and Persia, and from Persia and Iraq to the Mediterranean, using the passes of Kurdistan and the waterways of Iraq.

The Oriental loves metaphysical argument and seeks it: the higher his type, the more addicted he is to this form of mental exercise, and the readier to listen to the opinions of a guest. The result, a leaven of unorthodoxy amongst the intellectual, eventually spread to the masses, first, possibly, as secret heresies, and then as new forms of religion. Here lies the importance of the Mandaeans. Extremely tenacious, while adopting the new at some far distant syncretistic period, they also conserved the old so religiously and faithfully that one can disentangle the threads here and there, and point to this as Babylonian, to that as Mazdean, to this as belonging to a time when animal flesh was forbidden, to that as suggesting a phase when zealous reformers endeavoured to purge out some ancient and inherent beliefs. At such a period as the last-named, the scattered religious writings of the Mandaeans were gathered together and edited. One may surmise that the editors and collectors were refugees, sophisticated priests who, returning to peaceful communities in Lower Iraq, were scandalized at their incorrigible paganism. The emended writings breathe reform and denunciation.

The core or nucleus, of the Mandaean religion, through all vicissitudes and changes, is the ancient worship of the principles of life and fertility. The Great Life is a personification of the creative and sustaining force of the universe, but the personification is slight, and spoken of always in the impersonal plural, it remains mystery and abstraction. The symbol of the Great Life is 'living water', that is flowing water, or yardna. This is entirely natural in a land where all life, human, animal, and vegetable, clings to the banks of the two great rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It follows that one of the central rites is immersion in flowing water.

The second great vivifying power is light, which is repres ented by personifications of light (Melka d Nhura and the battalions of melki or light spirits), who bestow such light-gifts as health, strength, virtue, and justice. In the ethical system of the Mandaeans, as in that of the Zoroastrians, cleanliness, health of body, and ritual obedience must be accompanied by purity of mind, health of conscience, and obedience to moral laws. This dual application was characteristic of the cults of Anu and Eain Sumerian times and Bel and Ea in Babylonian times, so that, if Mandaean thought originated or ripened under Iranian and Far Eastern influences, it had roots in a soil where similar ideals were already familiar and where ablution cults and fertility rites had long been in practice.

The third great essential of the religion is the belief in the immortality of the soul, and its close relationship with the souls of its ancestors, immediate and divine. Ritual meals are eaten in proxy for the dead ; and the souls of the dead, strengthened and helped, give assistance and comfort to the souls of the living.

The appellation 'Subba' (singular Subbi) is a colloquial form which this people accept as referring to their principal cult, immersion; but the more formal name of their race and religion, used by themselves, is Mandai, or Mandaeans. Arab authors have sometimes confounded the Mandaeans with the Majus, or Magians, and not without reason, since

the cults are similar. Travellers in the East were wont to refer to them as 'Christians of St. John', and Europeans who have come to Iraq since the Great War know them as 'the Amarah silverworkers'. As the community is small and peace-loving, with no political aspirations, it has no place in history beyond the occasional mention of its existence, and the record that some of the most brilliant scholars of the early Moslem Caliphate were of its way of thought.

Today, the principal centres of the Subba are in Southern Iraq, in the The Mandaeans (or Subba) of Iraq and Iran marsh districts and on the lower reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris ; in the towns of Amarah, Nasoriyah, Basrah, at the junction of the two rivers at Qurnah, at Qal'at Salih, Halfayah, and Suq-ash-Shuyukh. Groups of them are found in the more northerly towns of Iraq: Kut, Baghdad, Diwaniyah, Kirkuk, and Mosul all have Subbi communities of varying size. The skill of the Subba as craftsmen takes them far afield, and Subbi silver-shops exist in Beyrut, Damascus, and Alexandria. In Persia the Mandaeans were once numerous in the province of Khuzistan, but their numbers have diminished, and the settlements in Muhammerah and Ahwaz along the banks of the Karun river are not so prosperous or so healthy as those in Iraq.

Like the followers of other secret religions, the Mandaeans, when talking to people of another faith, accentuate small points of resemblance between their beliefs and those of their hearers. To inquirers they will say, 'John is our prophet like Jesus' (or 'Muhammad', as the case may be) 'is yours'. I soon found that John the Baptist (Yuhana, or Yahya Yuhana) could not with accuracy be described as 'their prophet' ; indeed, at one time I was tempted to believe that he was an importation from the Christians. I became gradually convinced, however, that he was not a mere accretion, and that he had real connexion with the original Nasurai, which was an early name given to the sect. Mandaeans do not pretend that either their religion or baptismal cult originated with John; the most that is claimed for him is that he was a great teacher, performing baptisms in the exercise of his function as priest, and that certain changes, such as the diminution of prayer-times from five to three a day, were due tohim. According to Mandaean teaching, he was a Nasurai; that is, an adept in the faith, skilled in the white magic of the priests and concerned largely with the healing of men's bodies as well as their souls. By virtue of his nasirutha, iron could not cut him, nor fire burn him, nor water drown him, claims made to-day by the Rifa'i darawish.

Jesus too, according to Mandaean theologians, was a Nasurai, but he was a rebel, a heretic, who led men astray, betrayed secret doctrines, and made religion easier (i.e. flouted the difficult and elaborate rules about purification). The references to Christ (Yshu Mshiha) are, in fact, entirely polemical, and for the most part refer to the practices of Byzantine Christianity which awake horror in Mandaeans, such as the use of 'cut-off' (i.e. not flowing) water for baptism, and the celibacy of monks and nuns. The Haran Gawaitha (D.C. 9) mentions the establishment of Christian communities on Mount Sinai. In the cults, Jesus and John are both unmentioned.

Jesus too, according to Mandaean theologians, was a Nasurai, but he was a rebel, a heretic, who led men astray, betrayed secret doctrines, and made religion easier

During the British occupation and the early days of the mandate, as one walked between the Subbi silver-shops in River Street, Baghdad, one sometimes saw a board announcing the proprietor to be a 'St. John Christian', but these, now that Iraq has a national government, have disappeared.

*

The religious writings of the Mandaeans have never been printed. Down through the centuries, priestly scribes who derived part of their income from such labours copied them by hand for pious Mandaeans who believed the possession of holy books ensured for them protection from evil in this world and the next. Few laymen could, or can, read or write Mandaean ; literacy is mostly confined tothe priestly class. Laymen have complained to me, 'The priests will not teach us to read or write (Mandaean)'. The reason is a practical one : if laymen knew these arts, the priest's prestige would suffer; moreover, writing of talismans and charms would cease to be a priestly monopoly. Mandaeans have nothing to compare with the Gospels which, in their claim to recount the life and teachings of Jesus, have a certain unity, or of Manichaean books containing the actual doctrines of Mani. The Mandaean religion has no 'founder', indeed, from the critical standpoint, few religions can be said to have 'founders' or to be 'new'.

*

In the year 1622, a Carmelite father, R. P. Ignatius, was despatched by the propaganda in Rome to the Nestorians of Mesopotamia. Whilst in Basrah, he met with members of a sect who, as is their custom when dealing with Christians, told him that their prophet was St. John the Baptist. From them he obtained a roll illustrated by curious drawings of beings which they described as angels or demons. On his return to Rome, Ignatius published a treaatise in Latin about this interesting group of "heretics" whose ceremonies were at once like and unlike those of Oriental Christians, and whose creed was so "strangely perverted and pagan".

The roll found its way into the Museo Borgiano in Rome, where Julius Euting was it in 1879. Euting was deeply interested and persuaded a friend, Dr. B. Pfortner, to photograph the manuscript. This photograph was published in Strasbourg in 1904, under the title "Mandaischer Diwan nach photographischer Aufnahme, von Dr. B. Pfoertner mitgeteilt von Julius Euting". It was not translated.

Early in my dealings with Mandalean priests in the marhes of Lower Iraq, I was shown a copy of Diwan Abatur and after long negotiations, it was arranged that I should have the roll that I had seen after its owner had copied it for himself. The copy was made with skill and care, and the original sent to me. Judging by the paper and other indications, my roll, D.C. 8 of my collection, is about the same date as the manuscript taken to Rome by Ignatius. Neither the Borgian manuscript nor mine is dated, although each has a long list of copyists, showing that the text was an ancient one. A considerable part of the beginning is missing from the Roman roll, but I have been able to compare the remainder of the Borgian manuscript with my own. I discovered no other copy of the text in Iraq, although, of course, other priests may have concealed possession of a copy since, in spide of the inferior and childish quality of the composition and mistakes due to constant recopying, it is looked upon as a precious and holy book.

The illustrations, archaic and suggestive of a Cubist form of art, are identical in both manuscripts. The Subba are clever artists and craftsmen, but tradition dictates that representation of celestial and infernal beings must follow a certain pattern. Drawings like these in the Diwan Abatur are found in the ritual rolls, so that we have here no childish inability to portray a subject, but deliberate convention of a very individual order. A Subbi smith who drew naturalistic pictures for engraving on his silverwork, when asked by me to draw pictures of some celestial beings, produced similar odd geometrical-looking designs.

NI: What's The War You Don't See about?

JP: The film asks: 'What is the role of the media in rapacious wars like Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do so many journalists beat the drums of war and not challenge the spin and lies of governments? And how are the crimes of war reported and justified when they are our crimes?' It's a film about truth and justice. In the opening sequence, I refer to David Lloyd George, Britain's prime minister during much of the First World War, who had a private chat with the editor of The Guardian, CP Scott, at the height of the carnage. 'If people really knew the truth,' said Lloyd George, 'the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know.' My film is about people's right to know. It has always seemed odd to me that as journalists we examine people's professional lives, but not our own. We treasure our myths. Edmund Burke called the press a 'fourth estate' that would check the other great institutions of democracy. It was a quintessentially liberal view. It was also romantic nonsense – honourable exceptions aside. Up till the arrival of the corporate press at the turn of the 20th century, newspapers were often fiercely independent and saw themselves as voices of ordinary people. The media – press and broadcasting – has long since become an extension of the established order, and frequently its mouthpiece and valet. These days, we surely owe it to the public to come clean about the pressures and seductions, crude and subliminal, that subvert our independence. War – the industrial killing of people and the destruction of their society – is the ultimate test. One of my favourite quotations is Claud Cockburn's: 'Never believe anything until it's officially denied.' I suggest some of us might engrave that on our bathroom mirrors.

What led you to do a film on this theme? Was there a specific trigger for it?

The first trigger was the sight of children burned almost to death by Napalm B – which keeps on burning beneath the skin – then finding out that such an atrocity was not an aberration. It was realizing the racism in colonial warfare, and how apologetic reporting perpetuates this.

You've said 'the media is not covering war. It is promoting war.' Are there any media outlets whose activities have especially shocked or outraged you?

Well, you get crude examples of war promotion on Fox television in the United States. However, Fox has the virtue of leaving us in no doubt where it stands; and that's true of most of the Murdoch empire. Murdoch himself has said that war is OK. Too bad about the innocents; war is necessary, says the great baron. Certainly, it is necessary for the arms corporations which are a pillar of the US war economy. The more insidious and perhaps more powerful war promoters are in the respectable media, such as the New York Times and the BBC. Two important studies following the invasion of Iraq received little media attention. Cardiff University found that the BBC overwhelmingly promoted the Blair government's war agenda; and Media Tenor, based in Berlin, found that of the world's principal broadcasters, the BBC gave just three per cent of its pre-invasion coverage to anti-war voices. Only CBS in the United States was worse. Censorship by omission is, in my view, the most virulent form of warmongering. 'When the truth is replaced by silence,' said the Soviet dissident poet Yevtushenko, 'the silence is a lie.'

Do you think the reporting of war is actually worse now than it was at the beginning of your career? Is the modern 'embedding' of journalists a major factor?

It's not worse, it's just better organized – though in many respects it's far less successful. The last British war completely free of state censorship was the Crimea, which produced some of the greatest war reporting of all time: William Howard Russell's exposé of the disaster of the charge of the Light Brigade. He and his editor at The Times, John Delane, were almost charged with treason for telling the truth. This changed completely during the First World War, when journalists saw their job, wrote Philip Gibbs of the Daily Chronicle, as telling 'only tales of gallantry'. The modern idea of 'embedding' is similar. More than 700 journalists were embedded with US and British forces during the invasion of Iraq. They told good action stories and showed us a little of the obligatory 'bang-bang' but they managed to pass over or obscure the truth that the brutal conquest and plunder of a defenceless country was under way. That said, the reporting on the worldwide web was an important antidote; look at Dahr Jamail's powerful, independent reporting from Fallujah and the independent filmmaking that gave civilians a voice. We show some remarkable examples in The War You Don't See.

You have talked about 'wars of perception' in which the news media plays a major role. What do you mean by this?

The term belongs to General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Afghanistan, who wrote in the 2006 US Counterinsurgency Manual that what mattered was not so much military superiority as persuading the public at home that you were winning, regardless of the reality. In other words, the public is the true enemy of governments that pursue unpopular colonial wars which can only be 'won' if the public is successfully deceived. This owes much to Edward Bernays, who is said to have invented the term 'public relations' soon after the First World War. Bernays' dictum was that the facts didn't matter as much as the success of 'false reality', and that the manipulators of public thinking belonged to an 'invisible government that is the true ruling power in our country'. Of course, none of this can succeed without the media as its transmitter and amplifier. And these days it hasn't really succeeded. Some 77 per cent of the British public is opposed to the colonial adventure in Afghanistan, and most were against the invasion of Iraq.

What do you think can be done to improve the coverage of war, so that the public gets a picture of what is really going on?

The answer is: tell the obvious truth; and the truth of war is the grotesque. It is trees hanging with the body parts of children. It is people going insane before your eyes. It is terrified soldiers with their trousers full of shit. It is human damage that runs through countless families: civilians and soldiers. That's war. The coverage of war should be this eyewitness but it should also try to tell us the why. That means journalists not colluding but investigating. One of the most revealing documents released by Wikileaks was a 2,000-page Ministry of Defence document that equated investigative journalists with terrorists. That reflects the lethal stupidity that runs like a current through the war-making industry. It says they are afraid of the truth.

Should we be giving more space to local reporters who are from the regions where the wars are being fought?

Only if they try to tell the why of a war, not dispense sentimentalized tales about soldiers from local families – which the military relish.

You have also talked about 'a war against journalism'. What do you mean by this?

Journalism ought to be about telling as much of the truth as possible in the circumstances. And governments can be expected to wage a constant war on truth-tellers, be they whistleblowers or fearless reporters. That's why the Pentagon recently set up a department to fight 'cyberwar'. To the military propagandists, cyberspace is unconquered and, worse, populated by mavericks they can't control. This is only partly true, of course, but there are enough good journalists writing exclusively for the web to justify the war-makers' alarm.

Do you draw a distinction between the corporate media world of Murdoch, CNN and the BBC and independent media in terms of which stories are told and the ways in which they are told?

Yes, but mostly in style. Look at Andrew Marr's recent interview with Tony Blair to mark, or celebrate, Blair's self-serving memoirs. Marr didn't ask a single probing question about Blair's record on Iraq and allowed Blair to promote an attack on Iran. That's not much different from an interview conducted in the Murdoch media, which I doubt would be as compliant. Look at the BBC's coverage of the day of the invasion of Iraq; it's an echo chamber: the message is that Blair is vindicated. Fox did the same in America for Bush.

Do you see any glimmers of hope in the way important issues are being discussed in the mass media?

There are some superb reporters in the mainstream – Patrick Cockburn in The Independent has been a most honourable exception in Iraq. Ian Cobain of The Guardian has brilliantly exposed the torture and injustice of the so-called War on Terror. On the web, there is some exciting new journalism – not to be confused with top-of-the-head blogging. Look at some of the work posted on Tom Feeley's excellent Information Clearing House and on ZNet. In Britain, Media Lens has broken new ground with the first informed and literate analysis and criticism of the liberal media. This is the new fifth estate.

Is there another issue on which you think the public is currently being massively deceived?

The major deception in Britain today is the political/media consensus that there is an economic crisis requiring a devastation of public finances and people's lives. If you look back on the coverage of the 'crash' in the autumn two years ago, the shock of it forced the media to tell the truth: corrupt banks and an unregulated financial sector were rightly identified as the source of the problem, and that was the news. Within a year, journalists were back 'on message' and the assumptions of the media echoed the nonsense of the political élite that 'we are all in this together': a deception so gross it insults the nation's intelligence. Britain is not on the edge of bankruptcy: this is one of the world's wealthiest economies; the richest 10 per cent control $6,300 billion with an average per household of $6.3 million. An equitable rate of tax would see off the so-called deficit in no time. In any case, the 'deficit' is ideological: the product of an almost cultish obsession of central banks and financiers with shifting the wealth of nations to the very top and keeping it there. At the end of the Second World War, Britain was officially bankrupt yet the Labour government created some of the country's greatest public institutions, such as the National Health Service. None of this would be a mystery to a media that saw itself as an agency of people, not power.

What is the good news?

The good news is that much of direct and indirect propaganda is not working. As I say, most people oppose colonial wars. There is a critical public intelligence that runs counter to the authority of the media in all its wondrous digital forms. Perhaps people sense the historical moment: that their social democracy is being appropriated by insatiable corporatism, regardless of which party is in power. In many countries – Greece, France, Spain – this is well understood and is being translated into direct action. In Britain, it is still a seed beneath the snow. But that will change; it has to.