I was born the daughter of an Iraqi Mandaean goldsmith. My father has been working with the precious metal since he was a young boy and claims he can identify real gold simply by weighing it in the palm of his hand.
He learned the trade from his father, who learned it from his father — and so on. Our entire lineage consists of men whose hands could tame gold into sophisticated jewelry that husbands would gift their wives as a means of asking forgiveness for various indiscretions.
Mandaeans, also known as Sabaeans, consider working with the precious metal a spiritual endeavor. One of the world’s oldest religious groups, they adhere to ancient precepts of Gnosticism and worship John the Baptist. We belong to this ancient faith that dates back to Mesopotamia’s golden era, when our ancestors settled along the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun rivers in what is now known as Iraq and Iran.
The rivers are not merely geographical landmarks; they are considered vital sources of the Mandaean spiritual life. Our faith tells us that only running water can sanctify our rituals, making it imperative that our sacred ceremonies occur in clean, flowing streams. The religion has a profound connection to water, viewing it as essential for spiritual purification. Baptism embodies the religion’s dualistic belief system — an ongoing struggle between light and darkness. Life is perceived as an arena where knowledge and salvation stand in contrast with the material world, which is governed by darkness.
The gold trade and the presence of Mandaeans were vital parts of Mesopotamian society for many hundreds of years. The gold market ensured that our community played a significant role in its cultural life, largely due to the tradition of extravagant weddings where expensive jewelry was a staple gift for newlyweds. It could also be offered by the groom as insurance for the bride — hers to keep in case of a divorce. The Mandaean community is considered to have produced many of Iraq’s best goldsmiths.
But Mandaeans have also been violently persecuted for their faith. According to estimates, there are only about 100,000 Mandaeans left in the world today. The majority used to live in Iraq, but the 2003 U.S.-led invasion precipitated their mass departure.
Various human rights reports contain testimonies of abductions, kidnappings and forceful conversions to Islam following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Over 200 Mandaeans were killed in the years following the invasion, while many others were targeted for ransom because they were goldsmiths. Other reports claim that Mandaean religious sites, places of worship and baptism, were also attacked, threatening the safety of the community. These attacks included shootings, bombings and even social ostracism as neighbors refused to sell goods to Mandaeans, fearing retribution.
It was this violence and isolation that catalyzed a mass exodus of Mandaeans from Iraq. As many as 70,000 have left their homeland since 2003, leaving behind the Tigris River, an essential religious landmark, to settle in countries like Jordan, Germany, Australia and Sweden, where I was raised. Today, only 5,000 are left in the country; for their safety, they must practice their religion secretly.
My family and I fled before the violence against Mandaeans. We left Iraq in 1997 for neighboring Jordan to escape the poverty and privation caused by U.N.-imposed sanctions, which limited the supply of medicine and basic foodstuffs. My father packed some of his tools into his backpack, his hands still stained with soot from plying his trade in the workshop with his brothers that same morning. He had no intention of leaving his profession behind; we just wanted to find a new home, somewhere safe.
Unfortunately, time would force my father to abandon his traditional vocation. He tried to open a business in Sweden during our first years in exile but didn’t manage to make a long-term go of it. Because the demand for gold jewelry in Sweden was almost nonexistent, he could not carve out a place in the new country’s economy with his old trade.
By 2005, all of our 36 immediate relatives had also fled our homeland, scattering across the globe. During our time in Amman, my mother used to teach my brother and me how to respond when somebody asked what religion we belonged to. I was four years old when I learned to explain to my friends in our neighborhood that the reason I didn’t go to the mosque and my mother did not wear a hijab was because we were Iraqi Mandaeans and that my family worshipped water. As a child, I did not understand what any of this meant, but I memorized it.
When we moved to Sweden three years later, I learned it all again but in another language. And I still didn’t understand what it meant. We were among 10,000 other Mandaeans who ended up in northern Europe. Several relatives had settled there, describing it as a safe haven and a paradise. While there are no official records detailing exactly where all the Mandaeans have gone, several sheikhs have claimed that the majority of our people in exile sought refuge in Sweden, making it the single largest home for our community today, with some 20,000 Mandaeans.
Surrounded by Swedish culture, I found myself grappling with questions of belonging and faith. Most of my classmates celebrated Christmas and Midsummer; others had Ramadan and Eid. And while I clung to the sentences my mother had taught me, I still couldn’t make sense of what any of it meant. Confused, I questioned my parents constantly.
My memories of our religion are few and concentrated in my childhood. During the summers in Sweden, we celebrated Karsa, also known as the Mandaean New Year, typically beginning at dusk in mid-July. This observance lasts for 36 hours and symbolizes the time it took for the “spiritual soul” to create the world and Adam, the first man. During this time, Mandaeans believe that the spirits of light, which usually protect them from evil, leave to visit God. This makes them more vulnerable to harm, prompting everyone to stay indoors and refrain from activities that could lead to injury or bleeding — or so my mother explained when I complained about the fact that we needed to stay indoors for the entire period.
In Iraq, the eve of Karsa is often spent near flowing, living rivers where Mandaeans participate in baptism rituals, symbolizing purification as they enter the new year. But confronted with the reality of cold, damp Scandinavian summers in exile, many would clean their houses instead.
Other memories involve attending baptisms along the banks of Lake Alby, south of Stockholm, the day before Karsa began. We would sit in the lush grass surrounded by hundreds of other families, often in awe at the mass of people who had come from all over Sweden. Some traveled from Norway, Denmark or Germany. The baptism itself would take place right in front of us. All around, people draped in white robes were immersed in the water by a sheikh three times before they were considered purified.
According to tradition, Mandaeans can be baptized multiple times throughout their lives. The ritual must occur in running water and is performed by senior religious figures. This is why the Tigris river is considered a holy landmark. Mandaeans view baptism as an essential rite for spiritual purification and redemption. They believe that whenever a believer commits a sin or seeks relief from life’s burdens, they should undergo baptism again to cleanse their soul. It is also through baptism that two individuals — if both are Mandaean — can marry before the eyes of God.
The first time I was baptized, I was a moody 15-year-old. My cousin and I, both dressed in white, sat in a group with the other women by Lake Alby, shivering as we awaited our turn. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a freezing river, swaddled in a damp robe, waiting to be released from my sins.
In popular discourse, Mandaeans have been enveloped in folklore and mystical secrets. From within, the religion is so hidden and esoteric — like that of the Druze, the Alawites or the Gnostics of early Christianity — that even its members sometimes struggle to find clarity or understanding. Even our sacred book, the Ginza Rabba, is written in a language that most of us do not speak — a dialect of eastern Aramaic. The word “sabaeans” means “to dip” or “to baptize.”
According to the Ginza Rabba, Mandaeans descend from a group of people who followed the Pharaoh during the Exodus and were subsequently drowned in the Red Sea. But this backstory is not often retold within practicing families. The story of the Mandaeans is a story buried in silence, even among ourselves.
Over the years I stopped calling myself a Mandaean and became a distant observer of my own religion. I stopped celebrating Karsa with my family and instead traveled to sunny places during that time, only exchanging text messages with my father to wish him a happy new year in mid-July. For 15 years, I did not participate in any ritual or ceremony. I grew increasingly frustrated with our life in Sweden as the country underwent a dramatic political shift to the right. It seemed to become less tolerant of people like my parents. After establishing myself as a professional journalist, I left Sweden and found a different life in Rome, throwing myself headfirst into a new culture.
But this past summer I revisited Lake Alby, the place where I was baptized for the first time, trying to gather the remnants of our Mandaean traditions — rituals and stories that feel both familiar and distant. Despite my efforts to gather information about the time and exact location of the baptism ritual, details were scarce. I arrived at the familiar shore the day before Karsa, hoping I had come to the right place. It took only a few minutes before two Mandaean siblings offered to take me to the actual site of the baptism — just 10 minutes away by car. As I arrived in the parking lot, one of the participants handed me a plastic cup of black coffee, a simple gesture that welcomed me back into the community, no questions asked.
In a lush green area by the edge of the same lake in southern Stockholm, I stepped back into a reality that I had kept distant throughout my entire adult life. This time, I was neither dressed in white nor ready for a baptism; instead, I was armed with a camera to capture the unlikely setting where this ritual was taking place.
In front of me, the preparations for the ceremony unfolded. A few hundred women and men in white garments fluttered about, waiting for the priests to be ready. One man helped three teenage boys tie their clothing. Others were standing at the edge of the shore, plunging their feet in the water to prepare for the coldness they were about to be immersed in.
Everybody seemed to know each other. My camera and I were the strangers in the mix, which meant that we were the subject of a hundred questions — not all of them welcome. “How old are you? Are you married? Why not, you are almost 30 years old?”
While I was speaking to some of the women, I understood that the baptism also serves as a gathering place to introduce Mandaean men and women to one another, with hopes of romance blossoming — with the aim of continuing to uphold the religion through the next generation. Those who marry a non-Mandaean can never have Mandaean children, which makes these gatherings crucial for the religion’s survival. One of the young women, wearing a gold chain with a Mandaean cross around her neck, told me that she would “rather stay single” for the rest of her life than marry someone outside of the religion.
While many families view this as an unshakeable tradition that ensures the continued existence of the Mandaean community, others have chosen to diverge from it. Living according to the same practices we upheld in Iraq simply doesn’t work in a place where our numbers are so small. Even one of the sheikhs I took aside for a brief interview appeared to concede this. “We don’t expect anybody to stay — those who want to leave, they are free to do so. And whoever wants to come back, we welcome with open arms,” he explained.
The baptism itself took several hours. I stood on the sidelines, seeking shade under a tree and occasionally waving at three teenage girls I had befriended. The men were lowered into the water one by one, and the women after them. The two priests performing the rituals held each head, pushed it gently below the surface and recited a prayer over each one in a language I did not comprehend. By noon, the ritual was coming to an end, and my notebook was full of answers to questions I had previously been unsure how to tackle.
As I made my way back to the subway, I sent my father a picture from the baptism, showing the serene lake and the community gathered in their white garments. His response was immediate: a simple heart emoji. It made me smile; the distance between us, between the old world and the new, seemed to shrink.
The practice of goldsmithing, like many of our Mandaean rituals, is fading into history. My father tried to pass down his gold-weighing skill to my oldest brother, but life in our new home — far from the rivers and traditions that nurtured us — made this impossible. The craft that had once flowed through the veins of our family like a confluence of streams, canals and waterways is now about to dry up.
Yet in his quiet way, my father has never fully let go. In our family apartment in southern Stockholm, he still collects sapphires, rubies and other precious stones that he plans to use in different designs. Whenever I visit, he pulls out boxes of emeralds and gold links in different sizes, and places them in my palm. “Feel this,” he says, his voice tinged with the same pride as when I was a child, watching him in his workshop. He explains the subtle differences in weight, texture and brilliance, trying to pass down the knowledge that has been in our family for generations. He shows me how the sunlight catches each stone, casting flashes of color across my skin.
Time has forced him to leave behind the bustling markets of Iraq, but in these moments of reminiscence it’s as if he’s right back there, surrounded by the scent of metal and earth — a time when the weight of gold was more than just a measure of value, but rather a symbol of survival, faith and belonging.
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