By Baghdadhope
Wednesday afternoon, March 26, 2008. A Katiusha rocket falls on a house in Baghdad. Fortunately there are no victims but only material damages. How many houses in Baghdad have been hit in these last years? No one counted them and no one will do in the future.
The piece of news, therefore, would not be special. Only one of the many. Yet it is special. Because to be hit was not a normal house or a government building, a base of terrorists or that of a militia. It is "Beyt ‘Ania House".
In the city of the daily horrors and of the factions fighting each other it was hit one of the few places where there is room for only one thing: love. Love for the neighbour that knows no differences if not the one that makes all those who live there "special". The first time I visited Beyt ‘Ania it was thanks to a Baghdadi priest who occasionally celebrated mass in a small chapel in one of its rooms. I remember an iron gate and the name “Beit 'Ania” written in Arabic with red paint, the volunteer who let us in after making sure of our identity, the small garden, some wooden chairs in front of the statue of the Virgin, the smell. The pervasive, terrible, sour smell of illness and pain that I stopped perceiving when I met the first guests of Beit 'Ania, three women sitting at the foot of a staircase who were playing cards and who greeted me with a loud "Good afternoon," three of the ten women who were lodged there by then. Ten women that infirmity, or only the ailments of the old age, had made a burden for families suffering from the material and moral poverty that the embargo had imposed on the country, and, as one of them told me "were born again the day when they joined the family of Beyt ‘Ania. "
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Beyt Ania is a house where assistance is granted to disabled and homeless people and that was founded in 2000 by the iron will of its director, Alhan, a young Christian girl who decided to devote his life to God through the care of the most unfortunate. "Our interest is the human being and his dignity, regardless of his situation, his nationality and his religion." That is the motto that in the years of embargo and war guided those who followed Alhan in his mission. In fact the story of Beyt Ania began in 1994 when Alhan decided to give moral comfort to sick peoples in hospitals and homes. Other young people joined her and that experience showed them a reality of disease but also, and above all, of abandonment. Soon they realized the need of giving a concrete answer to the problem and began to seek an accommodation for those unfortunate brethren of them. "With God's help" as Alhan told me during that first visit, and more materially with the help of Mr. Karim Al Rayyes, a benefactor who took upon himself the rent of a house, and the help of the volunteers who worked to its restructuring, on the first of May 2000, in the presence of Archbishop Matti Shaba Mattoka, the Syriac Catholic Bishop of Baghdad, and of the apostolic nuncio in Iraq, Mgr. Giuseppe Lazzarotto, priests, nuns and lay friends "Beyt ‘Ania House " welcomed its first four guests.
But Divine Providence looked to the initiative with favour and in the autumn of the same year the family of Mr. Michael Lazare who lived abroad granted to the "Servants of ‘Anya" the free of charge use of the ground floor of their house in the district of Karrada Al Sharqiya that with an official ceremony became the permanent seat on the first of May 2001. The terrible situation Iraq was already living because of the embargo soon made the house the only and last resort for those who did not seem to have other hope. So the guests, only women in the beginning, increased, but it was soon clear that the abandonment concerned men also. Thus, after having obtained the permission by the owners of the house, in 2003 a second, smaller, unit was built in the garden. Despite this, however, premises soon proved inadequate and it was decided to rent another house in the same district to accommodate older patients. This new house, opened in November 2006 was then replaced for the non-renewal of the lease, by the now operating unit since last year.
Currently Beyt ‘Anya House is constituted by a central body that can accommodate 34 women with 30 guests currently living in, a second body intended to accommodate 5 people and currently fully occupied, and the detached house that, against a capacity of 25 patients houses 23 elderly patients. In recent years, despite the dangers and sufferings that the embargo and the war added to those to cure patients who neither society nor the families can take care of, the "Servants of Anya" thought not only of taking care of their "guests", as they called the members of their new family, from a medical point of view, but also from the spiritual one. So in the house still exists then small chapel, a room for small manual tasks and one for the computer.
Some of the guests spend their time in different activities because - this is the belief that stimulates those who move them to do so - they need to act to recognize their value and the importance of the integration between their life with those of the others. One of them, for example, translated from English some short stories of religious argument that have been published to be used as a text of catechism, another sews or darns clothes, another helps in the kitchen, another assists the other guests.
The guests of the house, and those that the "Servants of ‘Ania" assist at home, are also involved in meetings with priests and therapists and in cultural conferences held by speakers specialists in different fields. So no birthday is forgotten and all holidays are celebrated, Christmas and Easter, but also, of course, Eid Al Fitr, the feast that announces the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan, and Eid Al Adha, that celebrates the obedience of Abraham to the Divine will to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isaac in the Judeo-Christian tradition). Christmas and Aid Al Fitr? Right, I realize now I didn’t write it before: the guests of Beyt ‘Ania are Christians and Muslims, but above all they are brothers and sisters in the sorrow they felt and in the love that surrounds them. Was it not clear? Didn’t I write that they are "special"?
“It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” (Mark 4:31-32)
The guests of the house, and those that the "Servants of ‘Ania" assist at home, are also involved in meetings with priests and therapists and in cultural conferences held by speakers specialists in different fields. So no birthday is forgotten and all holidays are celebrated, Christmas and Easter, but also, of course, Eid Al Fitr, the feast that announces the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan, and Eid Al Adha, that celebrates the obedience of Abraham to the Divine will to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isaac in the Judeo-Christian tradition). Christmas and Aid Al Fitr? Right, I realize now I didn’t write it before: the guests of Beyt ‘Ania are Christians and Muslims, but above all they are brothers and sisters in the sorrow they felt and in the love that surrounds them. Was it not clear? Didn’t I write that they are "special"?
“It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” (Mark 4:31-32)
In the city of hatred and violence we can, we "have to" hope that that tree can still grow, that his shadow will expand, that more and more birds can find rest on its branches, and that faith, in the shadow of those leaves, will never become a problem but, as it should be, a resource, a joy.
We can, and "have to" hope that the appeal the Servants of ‘Ania’s made using Matthew’s words "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" will be listened to.