Sami Jajouhana is the keeper of Nahum's tomb. The last of the
Jews to leave al-Qosh in 1948 handed him the keys to the
synagogue and a leather ledger, which he has used to this day to
record visitors who come to peek at the site where they say the
ancient prophet of Nineveh is buried. When I met Jajouhana
almost a year ago on travels through Iraq's Nineveh province, he
asked me to sign the ledger as he produced a key to open the
padlock of the door into the synagogue. Most of the recent
visitors, I noticed, have been U.S. soldiers. They are Jewish,
said Jajouhana, and traveled from Camp Freedom, their base
outside Mosul, about 25 miles south. Nahum's tomb lies under a
sheltered area of a synagogue that is otherwise falling down.
Most of its roof and some stone walls have crumbled. Hebrew
scripture is plainly visible on the interior walls-blocky,
precisely carved, unobtrusive, in contrast to loopy, flowing
Arabic script that dominates most religious structures, even
Christian ones, in the Middle East. But ther