Black Flags and the Secret of Ishtar
12 min readAug 29, 2021
Standing atop the castle wall, young Balian saw the ominous signs of black flags rapidly approaching from the distance. Recently, his vivid dreams had foreshadowed the sight of the black flags. Balian did not know that the black flags represented barbaric evil and extinction for him and the people of Tal’Afar, an ancient Northern Iraqi city of Tal’Afar that laid 60 miles east of Mosul. The black flags in the distance belong…
