The Priests You Were Never Told About
They wore no crowns.
No statues were raised.
Their names whispered like dust
through forgotten valleys.
But they were there.
David of Kartaw,
writing saints in Syriac,
while Kurdish tribes listened
to heaven in a language
they barely knew.
Zakare and Ivane—
swords at their side,
stone in their hands,
raising monasteries
in the highlands of Georgia,
where even the icons
shivered in awe.
Madai,
who walked from the edges of belief,
took off his sandals
and stepped into fire.
Not to burn—
but to speak
God’s name in Kurdish.
And Ahmed Barzani,
the rebel mystic,
who crossed borders
not of land,
but of faith.
Who said:
“Maybe Christ walks here, too—
beneath these mountains.”
They were not welcome.
Not in churches.
Not in mosques.
Not in history books.
But they stood.
They prayed.
They translated the holy
into syllables
that once cried from cradle songs
in Malatya, Mardin, Urmia, Hakkari.
You were never told
about Kurdish priests—
because their truth
didn’t serve an empire.
But I remember them.
And now,
so do you.