I am part of an international committee to try to preserve those shrines, because, again, when the U.S. army went into Iraq, they were able to salvage a lot of the parchments, the papers, the documents that were confiscated by Saddam. They found them in a basement. They were flooded and damaged to a large extent, but they brought everything to the U.S., and they have them. They're holding them at the state department, so it's a tug of war. The Iraqi government lays claim to them, and we are trying to salvage them because we feel it's part of our heritage. We don't know; the Iraqi government could put pressure and claim them for themselves any day, so we're trying to repair them and at least have an exhibition to be able to see the contents. These are just the documents.
Going back to the shrines, there is in particular the shrine of the Prophet Ezekiel. As in any other religion, whether Christian or Jewish, the Muslim religion came after, and they literally claimed a church. We know the Church of Constantinople used to be a church, but now it's a mosque. They would automatically erect a mosque on top of every temple or shrine that belonged to another religion. The tomb itself, up to two years ago we had some Iraqi friends who were able to take pictures to show the Hebrew writing on the tomb. We put pressure through articles in international newspapers, and then they stopped trying to deface it.
The population itself believes we were rightfully settled in this country. It's funny, because the first government that came after Saddam wanted to meet with us. I travelled to England to meet with the minister, who told us they wanted us to take care of our shrines, because they think that because we left there is a curse on Iraq and the Iraqis. He said that. That's why we started a committee to try to fulfill that, that we should try to at least take care of the remaining shrines in Iraq.