Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 9 the weariness of a doctor or a firefighter who rations his energy when the emergency becomes overwhelming. And Father Jacques was indeed a doctor and a firefighter in the midst of the war, not only for the souls of those living in fear, but also for the bodies of the needy to whom he offered food, protection, clothes, accommodation, and, above all, compassion in his church, regardless of their religion. Many hundreds if not thousands of refugees, the vast majority of them Muslims, were given shelter at the monastery and provided for by the community of Mar Musa. And not only that: Father Jacques managed to maintain peace, including peace between the religions, at least in Qaryatain. It is chiefly thanks to him – the quiet, serious Father Jacques – that the different groups and militias, some allied with the government and others with the opposition, agreed to ban all heavy weapons from the town. And he, the priest who was critical of the official Syrian church, suc- ceeded in persuading almost all the Christians in his parish to stay. “We Christians are a part of this country, even if the fundamentalists here and in Europe don’t like to hear it,” Father Jacques told me. “Arab culture is our culture!” He reacted with some bitterness to the calls of certain Western politicians to take in only Christian Arabs. The same West that had failed to lift a finger for the millions of Syrians of all faiths who had demonstrated peacefully for democracy and human rights, the same West that had devastated Iraq and supplied Assad with his poison gas, the same West that remained an ally of Saudi Arabia, the main sponsor of jihadism – this same West was now concerned about the Arab Christians? The very idea made him laugh, said Father Jacques, Jacques Mourad unsmilingly. He continued with his eyes closed: “With such irresponsible statements, these politicians add fuel to the religious hatred that threatens us Christians.” Father Jacques’s responsibilities grew con- stantly, and he bore them without complaint. The monastic community’s foreign members had to leave Syria and take refuge in northern Iraq. The seven Syrian monks and nuns who remained divided themselves between the two monasteries of Mar Musa and Mar Elian. Since the battlefronts were constantly shifting, Qaryatain was sometimes ruled by the Syrian government and sometimes by opposition militias. The monks and nuns had to come to terms with both sides and, like their fellow citizens, endure government bombing attacks whenever the town was in the hands of the opposition. Things changed, however, as ISIS advanced ever deeper into the Syrian heartland. “The threat from ISIS, this cult of terrorists who present a ghastly image of Islam, has arrived in our region,” Father Jacques wrote to a French friend a few days before his abduction. “It is difficult to decide what we should do. Should we leave our homes? To us that seems very hard. The realization that we have been abandoned is dreadful – abandoned especially by the Christian world, which has decided to keep its distance so that the danger will stay far away. We mean nothing to them.” Image from Dina Demrdash / BBC