Marius Kociejowski - The Pigeon Wars of Damascus

THE PIGEON WARS OF DAMASCUS

Marius Kociejowski

The Pigeon Wars
of Damascus

BIBLIOASIS

BIBLIOASIS
EMERYVILLE DETROIT LONDON

Copyright Marius Kociejowski, 2010
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

FIRST EDITION

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kociejowski, Marius
The pigeon wars of Damascus / Marius Kociejowski.

ISBN 978-1-897231-97-5 (bound).ISBN 978-1-926845-02-9 (pbk.)

1. Kociejowski, MariusTravelSyriaDamascus.
2. Damascus (Syria)Description and travel. 3. Damascus (Syria)Social life and customs21st century.
4. PigeonsSyriaDamascus. I. Title.

DS99.D3K63 2010 956.9144042 C2010-904593-9

Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP); and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

to Arcangelo Riffis

The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
Percy Bysshe Shelley From the Arabic: An Imitation

And many are mad with the love of these birds; they build towers for them on the tops of their roof, and will relate the high breeding and ancestry of each, after the ancient fashion.

Pliny Anecdotes of Animals, Book III. 15

Contents

Allahs Proclaimers
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (1)

A Demon Chasing a Demoness
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (2)

A Golden Platter of Cherries
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (3)

War Doves
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (4)

Three Sultans
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (5)

The Caliph Ardour
A Short History of Pigeons in the Islamic World (6)

A pigeon fancier said to me, If you want to understand the Middle East, just look at my birds. It was approaching evening and on a rooftop in Damascus, several miles from its ancient centre, amid minarets and satellite dishes, the cooing of Waseems pigeons, sixty or seventy of them, mingled oddly with the electronically amplified cry of a muezzin in the near distance. Waseem scowled the scowl of one who feigns to despise what he loves.

They are brutes, he said, just like the Americans are brutes.

Waseem eyed me sharply, maybe in order to get a measure of my political allegiances. The war in neighbouring Iraq was tearing at everyones nerves.

Do you not love your pigeons more?

Yes, but they are brutes all the same.

It didnt seem Id get terribly far with him, and I felt too that Waseem looked upon me as a guest come from the house of the friend of his foe. Already he had asked me why ingiltir, with all her experience of the Arabic world, was following the lead of a country that had none. Such questions contain their own answers, of course, and so I made no response. I had heard enough, though, of pigeon fanciers and of the crazy disputes between them, some of which ended in murder, to suspect that what he said to me was true, and there really was an analogy here for all that was happening in this part of the world. It was one that might reach back through time, to whoever it was, over 5,000 years ago, at al-Ubaid near Ur, felt it important enough to carve three pigeons in stone.

After all, a dove, a trained one at that, brought news to Noah, which also suggests that its recipient is the earliest named example we have of a pigeon fancier. (What is a dove but a pigeon made respectable?) This particular female dove had to have been domesticated because when she returned, Noah put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. The Muslims, wanting, perhaps, to outpoeticise the Old Testament, say the reason pigeons have red feet is because of the reddish mud Noah found on them, which provided him with proof of the worlds drying state. Its just as well his dove didnt alight on Lord Byrons longboat, or, rather, Don Juans:

And had it been the dove from Noahs ark,
Returning there from her successful search,
Which in their way that moment chanced to fall,
They would have eat her, olive-branch and all.

Ornithologists will tell you Noahs was probably a rock dove, which is the ancestor of all pigeons, including the ones that were evicted not so long ago from Trafalgar Square.

Noah, then: pigeon fancier.

The ancient Syrians considered pigeons and doves sacred to the goddess Ishtar, whose Phoenician counterpart was Astarte, whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. Virgins consecrated to Ishtar were called doves (hu), a euphemism for prostitutes. The hu sound invites one to think of whore. One must beware, though, of slinky analogies. Whole belief systems have been founded on a thing misheard or on what one may think is a favourable breeze. Amazingly, though, the notion of a feathered demi-monde seems to have survived through onto the streets of nineteenth-century London, where prostitutes were often referred to as soiled doves or columbines, a carrier pigeon being one who did her soliciting on the trains. Again, what appears to be cultural transference may be only coincidence. Why dove, though, when it is known to be a monogamous creature and has been traditionally looked upon as a symbol of faithfulness? Why hu when the very sound came to signify the godhead? When it drifted from ancient belief to become part of the Muslim chant, Allh hu? Whores, doves. Sacred and profane are the two wings of the same bird flying through many cultures. What creature has been made to carry more contrarieties? A brute, then, the highest of all speechless creatures the Holy Spirit, a dove.

The British Admiralty ought never to have abandoned its pigeon service.

Maybe the thematic weight Im putting on pigeons is more than they are able to bear. Still, there can be no denying the potency of bird symbolism. The idea of the soul as a winged creature is ancient, and I myself have had sufficient cause to be able to make a connection between the newly dead and a certain bird vying for my attention. Sometimes Ishtar herself took on the form of a dove. She still looks fondly upon Syria, considers it her special province, and wears plenty of kohl about the eyes. The old deities of any place, after being melted down, tend to leave their stain somewhere. What were these birds to this man? Surely they were more than brutes.

Whatever the case, Waseem couldnt tell me, which is not to say he did not have thoughts on the matter but that these might not have been easy, or even desirable, for him to want to articulate. After all, we do not ask of stamp collectors that they be philosophers as well, although one might see, in both philatelist and fancier, somewhere between the insistence on a stamps cleanly perforated edge and the high score that comes of a prized pigeons accumulated points, a shoring up against our own demise. Wherever obsession is, Death watches from some place near.