We visited Maaloula and Saydnaya on the same day – two Christian villages only a short drive north of Damascus
Maaloula is one of the few places on earth where Aramaic is still spoken – the language that Jesus spoke – and it’s home to a very ancient church and monastery. Presumably that’s why it was targeted by the rebels.
They came bursting in through a pass in the mountains and captured three men on duty. They ordered the men to convert to Islam. The men refused and were beheaded on the spot. We laid flowers at the place where they fell.
They captured the monastery and used it as a headquarters. Worship areas were desecrated and they took all the icons, defacing those that couldn’t be stolen. No one knows where the icons are now – quite likely in private collections in Europe. A priest there said to me that they were more concerned about the nuns who were kidnapped –“the real icons of Maaloula”.