We Keep Going Because They Keep Going
In the early hours of August 3, 2014, ISIS fighters flooded out of their bases in Syria and Iraq and swept across the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, home to the majority of the world’s Yazidis, a distinct religious community whose beliefs and practice span thousands of years. Within days of the attack, reports emerged of ISIS committing unimaginable atrocities against the Yazidi community.
Many of the Yazidis who survived the ISIS attacks fled through Turkey to Greece.
A number of Yazidis that we work with in Serres, Greece were brave enough to share their stories with us. This is Guli’s story.
PART 1
Our village wasn’t attacked as early as other villages, so we had no idea what was happening. I was spending time with my children and their spouses at home, which was located near the hospital. Suddenly, we started seeing many injured people being brought there. One of my sons went to the hospital to find out what had happened. The injured people told him that everyone needs to flee because ISIS was coming. I told my son that we need to flee, too, but he was confident that the Peshmerga militia would save us. So we stayed put.
The next day, the city was almost empty, and our neighbors told us, “You need to flee, you need to flee.” They were saying that in other villages ISIS was separating people, killing men and taking women. My son said, “This can’t be happening,” so he took his gun and things to confront ISIS. My daughter said, “Are you crazy? Are you going to war? They beheaded all your friends, and they will behead you too.” But he was still focused, saying, “Things like this shouldn’t happen, I will go and fight.”
My son’s best friend called him when he was on his way to fight and said, “Are you stupid? Are you crazy? We are in the mountains right now. They are killing us. We saw how they beheaded people. Why are you still in the Sinjar area? You need to flee right now. They will do the same with you.” So my son came back.
By this time, it was 9:30 AM, and my mother said we needed to leave immediately. My son agreed. I said, “I told you.” He said, “They beheaded all my friends already.”
My son took off his military clothes, because he knew they would kill him right away and behead him. We had to wake up the children. They didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t even eat. I was like a crazy woman, waking them up, saying we needed to leave. We were the only ones still in the area. We heard that the roads leading out of Sinjar were completely blocked with thousands of people trying to flee. We didn’t even try to take our car. We had to leave on foot.
PART 2
After we fled our village, we saw the people coming from Sibur, the first place that was attacked, and they were covered in blood. They had broken arms. They didn’t have any shoes. They were hungry and thirsty. We were so exhausted already, but there were so many people crowded on the streets that there was no place to sit and rest.
There was a temple in the Sinjar area near where we lived, where we worshipped and where our relatives and ancestors of old were buried. Suddenly, it exploded right in front of us. They had already started to bomb our temples.
We finally found a way out of the city through a tunnel, but people came out of the tunnel saying that there were ISIS soldiers waiting for us on the other side. So we went around it. We had to run to make it in time before being attacked. I had a water bottle with just this much [a few centimeters] in it , and my son told me, “You need to keep this with you. You’ve got just one kidney and high blood pressure, so you need to watch out.” My son’s son was just a young child, and he didn’t want to take any of my water. I saw how thirsty he was, but he didn’t want to ask me for any water.
As we walked to the mountain, we passed a woman walking with her three young sons. I realized how thirsty her kids were, and I couldn’t watch anymore. I gave them my water. She said, “No, you need to take it.” I said, “No, it doesn’t matter. It’s like I’m fasting today, I won’t eat and drink today.” When she gave a little bit to one child, the other two went crazy with thirst. People also tried to help her by putting her children on their shoulders, and she tried to hold two of them as they went up the mountain.
We passed a city and thought we could stop and rest there, but then we saw people running away from it saying, “They took our women and young kids. We have to go to the to the mountains.” There was a woman who was scratching her face, it was bloody, and the man with her was crying. I asked, “Why are you crying? What happened?” They said, “They took our three daughters away from us.”
Photo: Washington Post
By the time we reached the mountain, our feet were bloody. The kids were crying, desperate for us to carry them, but we didn’t have any strength, we couldn’t hold them anymore. We reached a stagnant pool of water in the mountain. It was very dirty and full of diseases, but we had to drink it.
We stayed seven nights in the mountains of Sinjar, just trying to survive. All the time there were children crying and screaming. They didn’t have the words to describe how they were feeling. I didn’t know what to do.
PART 3
We finally crossed into Syrian Kurdistan. It was too hot to travel during the day, so it took two nights to get there. We were terrified. It was so hard for us to reach there. We suffered a great deal during that journey.
We waited for a week in Kurdistan and realized that we couldn’t stay there. There was nothing there. So we went straight to Turkey, where we lived in the mountains for four days. We were terrified that a wild animal would attack us or a snake would bite us. Some of the mountains were too high to walk over, so we had to walk around them. Some people died. Kids fell from rocks and died. The Turkish Peshmerga militia came with animals to carry old people and children, but sometimes people would fall off the animals and die, too.
We stayed in Turkey for a year and a half. We reached Greece on the 26th of August. My husband and one son who was injured are still in Turkey, and we are here. One of my daughter’s is still stranded in Iraq.
Yazidis have been spread around. Some are in Germany, some in Iraq, some in Turkey and some in Greece. Five daughters and two sons made it to Germany. One of my sons is married, and has five children there. Two of my daughters aren’t married, and three are. I have seven daughters and four sons all together. Most stayed in Turkey because we didn’t have the money to smuggle us all to Greece. I have my 18-year-old son and my 17-year-old daughter here with me.
I wish you will share this and spread it the world, share it with everybody. Make a movie out of it, so they can see who we are and what we experienced, and so they can help us.
Photos by Shannon Ashton, story collected by Kate Hubrich, LHI volunteer in Serres.