One Woman's Time in Kurdistan

In an impulsive move that terrified everyone I knew, I, an American woman, traveled to Da’esh-occupied Iraqi Kurdistan to expand my ongoing volunteer work with Yazidi survivors of genocide.

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In the community with whom I worked not one person had been left unscathed. There was nowhere to hide when Da’esh came: it was death, slavery, or fleeing to the mountains already considered sacred and long an area used to hide those fleeing persecution: Shingal Mountain.

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There was little time to flee, just mere hours before Da’esh arrived did the warnings from nearby villages come: this was happening, this was coming, Da’esh was on its way, there was no time for the Yazidi. The peshmerga had abandoned them in the night.  They had to flee. By sundown, Da’esh had control of Shingal.  Between 3,000 and 5,000 Yazidi were killed and 6,000 were captured.  Hundreds more died as they huddled on Shingal Mountain. There wasn’t enough food or water. They were surrounded by Da’esh.  The U.S. airdropped supplies for approximately one week before declaring the siege over, despite hundreds still on the mountain. They remained there for two weeks, young and old dying from exposure and starvation, until a path was opened on the Syrian side of the mountain that led them back into another part of Iraq to spend the next years of their lives in overcrowded IDP camps. Many still live there.

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Da’esh attacked August 3rd, 2014; on August 4th, 2014 my friend, Fras, took it upon himself to distract the children stranded on Shingal Mountain through teaching, using what little supplies people had been able to carry. He didn’t know it then, but that was the birth of Yuva. In the IDP camps, Firas did not stop teaching. When the minority who survived were able to return to Duhola Village, they found the school decimated by Da’esh, so he took to whatever buildings that remained somewhat intact. He found volunteers and they grew in number; until the school was rebuilt, Firas made it his responsibility to educate. He would not let these children’s lives be completely ruined.

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Early on in my time in Iraqi Kurdistan, Fras invited me to stay in his family home. We drove from Dohuk, where we lived, along the Syrian border with its sporadic plumes of smoke I tried not to think about too hard, because it was safer to be near their civil war than it was to be on the other, shorter route, closer to Mosul, where Da’esh was still in control. We were joined on the way by a member of the peshmerga neither of us knew, just giving him a ride from an IDP camp to Sinjar.

We passed through maybe a dozen checkpoints on those drives. They were armed by men in black with guns slung altogether too casually over a single shoulder, masks covering everything but their eyes. And those men tried time and again to pull me into a small, windowless building; to take my passport somewhere else; to draw very, very close to me. And every time Fras and this complete stranger pulled me away, retrieved my passport, placed themselves in front of me, between me and the threat. They waved away my gratitude each time we drove away as if I were the one being ridiculous by thanking them. I never even saw the peshmerga again after that day.

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When we arrived, Fras’ family welcomed me into their home without question or hesitation, treating me like another relative. Which ought to have been especially difficult when a fair number of the residents spoke no English, yet it felt easy trading words and phrases back and forth in a pidgin language made up largely of charades when Fras was not there to act as translator. I didn’t feel like an imposition who had only taught herself a bit of Kurdish in the hurried weeks before her departure (and in the Sorani dialect, unfortunately, for most of that time, before realizing that the Yazidi in the region where I would be living to speak the Kurmanji dialect, which is much harder to learn, because sometimes I’m an idiot). I felt invited.

I started meeting with the universally middle-aged and fantastically-mustachioed uncles (everyone was an uncle or cousin) my very first night. Most were men who helped protect the village, some forced to become peshmerga themselves in exchange for weapons, and I began hearing their stories. And was promised that I was safe with them; that they would protect me. I didn’t understand, not yet, just how much that meant, what a target someone like me was. And just like Fras and the hitchhiking peshmerga, this was obvious to them. It was only said to reassure me, not because it was ever in question.

The Yazidi have nothing left to give, and still, somehow, down to a one, they provide for others.

On my final day in Duhola, the village elders asked me directly to bring the attention of the international community to their plight with all the pride and dignity and honor they possessed, hoping the only girl in the room, decades younger, never been in a fight, with nothing particularly special about her other than her cleverness, could effect change for an entire people. Because she was American. My heart fucking broke in a way it never had before when I had to tell them the only thing I could provide was my voice, and not many people were listening.

Of course, I said yes regardless. I promised I would keep telling their story and keep trying to help and keep doing whatever I could. And inside, I doubted that it would ever amount to anything. I had promised to use my voice. What was that worth? Convinced I would make no difference, I still refused to break that promise.

Every person there had gone through an unimaginable hell, and were abandoned by the world, and yet they weren’t bitter or hateful. They were looking forward. They were focused on fixing and rebuilding for the future. They were (are) fighters, and kind and gentle and protective, and all they asked was for the international community to remember them, again, after this, the 74th genocide the Yazidi suffered in their history.

For some time, I didn’t think anyone would pay attention. I didn’t realize I had any power whatsoever. Any voice. I didn’t believe I ever would. Slowly though, I found that my stubbornness, on this rare occasion, might be a virtue. That my unwillingness to be quiet when I think something is unjust isn’t nothing.

No matter how few are listening, I’ve learned how to be louder. I know I have made some small difference and I am nowhere near satisfied as long as the Yazidi people, slaughtered and enslaved, are remembered by no one. And they will not get help without us shouting at the top of our lungs about their ongoing struggle.

I don’t have a good ending for this. I suppose that’s because none of it is over yet.

Not for them.

Not for me.

Not fucking yet.

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The poem below is included in my collection, And My Blood Sang, and may be its most important piece. I had started volunteering while running from my own trauma, which I was not yet able to face. The men who didn’t escape were forced to convert or killed unilaterally. Some of the boys who were young enough were taken to be trained as child soldiers. The women and girls, and when I say girls, I mean young girls, were sold as sex slaves. I am in awe of those I met who escaped this slavery; those who I met refusing to let their lives be defined by that experience, either, but who were focused on moving forward.

Their kindness helped me heal. Their strength and resilience showed me what was possible. Here were true survivors, true heroes, and despite all they had been through, they showed me nothing but generosity and love. I arrived having seen the darkness in humanity, and they reminded me of the good. By the time I left, I was in a different place. I remembered why I wanted to help. I remembered that I was not alone. I remembered that people are basically good.

So please, do what you can to help the Yazidi and to grow the Yuva Organization. If all you have are your words, then I ask that you learn to use them. You’d be surprised how much they can do.