Empire Struggles Back : Assyrians Conquered Ancient World, Now Fight to Be Heard

Madlen Zango carries the weight of a nation on her shoulders. Her New Year’s resolution is to increase the exposure of a 7,000-year-old ethnic group that few in Los Angeles realize live among them.

It is an ambitious goal, she knows, about as easy as rebuilding the Tower of Babel.

“People ask me, ‘You Assyrians still exist?”’ said the 39-year-old Granada Hills woman. “I tell them we are the ones left over from the Babylonians.”

Since her inauguration last year as president of the Southern California Assyrian American Assn., Zango’s efforts have earned her the affectionate title “Queen of Assyria,” after the legendary Queen Shamiran who reigned around 800 BC.

She has organized fund-raising efforts to remodel the group’s 32-year-old cultural center and has hosted local and nationally-known Assyrian poets, artists, composers and choirs. She has invited local officials, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, to tour the center and meet members of the Assyrian community.

Yet like many leaders of immigrant groups, Zango seeks a balance between protecting traditions and integrating her community into the mainstream. Her ancestors, fierce conquerors of the ancient world, have left behind only fragments of their past: the sundial, for example, and the carved stone images of the winged lion, a symbol of royalty.

A reminder of their influence can be seen on the walls of the Citadel factory outlet mall in the City of Commerce, a landmark off the Santa Ana Freeway. The former Firestone tire factory site is a replica of the palace of King Sargon II who ruled the Assyrian empire from 721 to 705 BC.

Largely ignored because of their small numbers, Assyrians have been in America since the late 19th century, said Zango. But theirs has remained a fragile community, one with no home country to call their own, and only an ancient language left to define them. Once the most feared nation in the Biblical world--forcing others to adopt their customs--the Assyrians of Southern California now struggle to preserve what is left of their identity.

Many still hold dokhrana, a religious gathering that includes a sacrificial offering of lamb stew. At church-sponsored picnics in the summer, youth perform shekhanni, the dance of their forefathers. Assyrians celebrate their New Year on April 1, the day they say “when nature wears new clothes.”

In her office near the Assyrian Cultural Center on Cahuenga Boulevard, piles of the organization’s newsletter Shotapouta, meaning association, are ready to be mailed. A small wooden plaque that reads “The Boss” rests at the edge of her desk.

The title is unusual, said Zango, the first woman to lead an Assyrian American association in the U.S.

“In the Assyrian community, in the Middle Eastern community, a woman is on the second step,” she said. Yet Zango is quick to add that there was little opposition to her election as president, earned after several years as treasurer for St. Mary’s Apostolic Assyrian Church of the East in North Hollywood. She is an accountant who, like many Assyrians, fled Iran 19 years ago in the wake of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power.

So far, her gender has not been a handicap.

“She has the capabilities, desire, and educational background to maintain a safe and functional center,” said Pierre Toulakany, chairman of the association’s board of directors and its first president in 1964.

He said Zango has been firm in maintaining the center’s goals, which “were, are and always will be to preserve our culture, to keep our language alive, to help needy Assyrians and to teach Assyrians to be good citizens of the United States.”

Toulakany, a former president of the Assyrian National Federation, calls Zango’s appointment a positive step in a culture slow to accept women in leadership positions.

“Without the women’s population, the growth and accomplishments [of the association] would be limited,” he said. “There is so much contributions that women can bring in that men cannot.”

Other members acknowledge her skill in uniting different factions of Assyrians.

Differences in religion and nationality have often divided them in the past. In Los Angeles County, where the 1990 U.S. Census reports that 3,000 of the nation’s 51,765 Assyrians reside, there are three main churches serving the community: Apostolic, Roman Catholic and Church of the East.

Their nomadic lifestyle has produced a community of people with different nationalities, language backgrounds and ideologies, said Zango.

As a result, Zango said, “It’s very hard to please people with different thoughts, religions; the Assyrians from Iran and the Assyrians from Iraq.”

The Assyrian nation, once rulers of the ancient Mesopotamian empire stretching across Iraq, suffered one of its worst attacks in 1933. The Assyrian State, established by the British government after World War I, was destroyed by the Iraqi military in an effort to reclaim land. Hundreds were killed, and Assyrians still hold a memorial day on Aug. 7 to remember the massacre.

Earlier, in 1915, Christian Assyrian villages in Turkey were annihilated in the so-called ethnic cleansing that took the lives of millions of Armenians, who were also persecuted for their Christian beliefs.

Those who survived migrated to Iran, the U.S. and throughout Europe, where they could practice their religion and speak their language freely.

And after dominating the ancient world, Assyrians now face relative anonymity in Western society.

Mehdi Bozorgmehr, a sociology professor at City College, City University of N.Y., who has edited a book titled “Middle Eastern Diaspora Communities in America,” said Assyrians are not as widely known because the population is scattered and small. There remains a confusion in the minds of many between Syrians and Assyrians.

Bozorgmehr said most Westerners don’t distinguish among different Middle Eastern groups, making it “complicated to know who Assyrians are.”

Anthropologist Arian Ishaya, who teaches California history at UC Santa Cruz, said fear of discrimination, as well as a history of persecution, makes Assyrians hesitant to reveal their community to outsiders.

During the Islamic revolution in the late 1970s, for example, Assyrians who came from Iran to the U.S. to escape religious persecution found themselves the target of cultural persecution in the form of racist remarks.

What most Americans do not realize, however, is the 100-year history of Assyrian Americans in the U.S.

During research on her dissertation at UCLA, Ishaya traced the migration patterns of Assyrians throughout Northern California and discovered at least five generations had settled in the U.S. since the late 19th century. During that time, Assyrian families moved to Northern California and bought small farms and vineyards. Others worked in San Francisco hotels.

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Since settling in the U.S. many fear losing their most important cultural distinction, which is their language, Ishaya said. The Assyrian language, derived from Aramaic, was spoken in the time of Christ.

The lack of Assyrian schools is “causing a degeneration among the new generation,” said Ishaya, who is of Assyrian descent. “It creates this poverty of knowledge in our community, especially our language. We are losing our language because it is not studied.”

The prospect is especially chilling, she said: “We’ve lost our country, our nation. Our language is the only thing left that identifies us as Assyrians.”

Zango said she would like to establish a school in the San Fernando Valley for Assyrian children. The cultural center now offers weekly language classes, and youth groups known as Assyrian scouts for boys and girls. The center is also a meeting place for the Cal State Northridge-based Assyrian Student Union, an organization for young adults.

In California, Assyrian communities are thriving in Stanislaus County where about 5,000 reside. The community there has its own local television programs, said Zango.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Assyrian neighborhoods can be found in Michigan and Illinois. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), who is of Assyrian descent, has made several requests to the Clinton Administration for the security of Assyrians still left in Iraq who continue to suffer under Saddam Hussein’s regime, said Zango.

“I hope the young kids learn the good things about America, because there are a lot of good things,” said Zango. “We appreciate the freedom in this country, but there are some rules and customs from our nation that we’d like to keep.”

There are also plans to build an Assyrian library in memory of Paul Alex Youhanian, an 11-year-old Valencia boy who was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting in North Hollywood last October.

After her term ends, Zango hopes more Assyrian women will take an active leadership role in their community.

“A woman president is like a woman in the house,” she said. “When there is a woman in the house, there is a sense of warmth in that house.”