Haifa

Becoming, returning

My name is Haifa, I am from Gohbal village.

I live with my parents after returning back to Gohbal. I have three sisters, two are older than me, and one is younger than me. So I'm a middle child.

I graduated from high school, but I haven't started college yet. In October, I will apply for colleges.

Childhood play

In 2013 I was ten years old.

Our street and our neighbourhood was always crowded with children.

There used to be many houses here. But now, there are only a few left.

They were all simple looking houses.

We were not rich, and we had a simple life, but we were happy.

Leaving home

On the 3rd of August, we did not leave immediately.

My aunt who lived in Borek had contacted us and told us that everyone was fleeing to the mountain. But at that that time we didn’t think we needed to leave yet as not many people around us were leaving.

But then at about 2am a car with people from Zorava came through our village and said “Why are you still here?, everyone left already, you should leave now!”

So we left, at 2am in our small pickup car. There were eleven of us, my immediate family and also my cousin and another relative. We were told not to take the main route because it was dangerous. We headed towards Sharfadin temple in the mountain. It’s a very famous and important place for Yazidis.

On the way, our tyre got punctured and we had to stop. We had anything with us to fix the tyre.

While in the car, my sister realised that she was wearing one shoe only and she started crying.

The road from Gohbal (Image: Googlemaps)

The road from Gohbal (Image: Googlemaps)

We were sitting on the road side with my mother. We didn’t know what to do! We couldn't go anywhere.

Stopped on the road from Gohbal (Image: Googlemaps)

Stopped on the road from Gohbal (Image: Googlemaps)

Then we saw a car heading towards us, and we were very scared, but when the car arrived, we realised they were also Yazidis that we knew from Gohbal. They helped us to repair the tyre, and then we continued on our way to the temple.

We arrived to the Sharfadin temple and we saw lots of other Yazidi people there with their cars.

We stayed there for a few hours until sun rise, then everyone started leaving. They were going towards Kurdistan so we followed them.

We went to Bajed Kandala camp near Derabun.

The camp had been set up for Syrian refugees, but most of them had left by then. So it was only Yazidi people there.

Life was very difficult in the camp. We had nothing with us from home. At the beginning we didn't even have even mattresses to sit on, but then gradually life got better, the NGOs that were working there started supporting us, and the situation got better.

My whole family went together to that camp, we were all together but we were not alone in the tent. There were three or four other families with us too.

We remained in that camp until we returned back to Gohbal three years ago, in 2021.

We don't have schools or colleges here in Singal at the moment, so my two older sisters are still there in the camp so they can go to college, and the younger one goes to school.

Displacement aged us all.

After we fled from our houses, we were no longer children.

Before, we weren’t really thinking about anything serious. We were just children playing around, and we didn't care that much about anything serious in life.

But after we fled, it’s like we became older, and the displacement aged us.

We all have missing relatives that our family keep talking about, and we started talking about some difficult things like this.

When we fled from Shingal, and we lived at the camp, I went there to study at a school in Sharya.

I remember there was a garden I used to pass by when I was going to school, and every time I passed by that garden, I took a flower with me.

A friend gave me these prayer beads as a keepsake.

Returning home?

At the beginning we didn't want to return. But my father said that this is not where we come from (meaning the camp), we have to go back to Shingal to try to do something with ourselves because there were no job opportunities in the camp.

We used to do farming before, and we had sheep and hens, but when we fled we had to leave them behind.

I really love animals, but now we don't have any.

We are still farming, but now we grow vegetables on the farms, we don't have livestock anymore.

So we returned back to a kind of a similar life, but also many things have changed.

When we first returned I was very scared. The streets were empty, and I was always afraid, sometimes even scared of my own shadow.

Our old house was not fit to live in. It was not destroyed by ISIS, but it was not in a good condition. All houses made of clay and mud, and had not been repaired for over nine years showed signs of decay and weathering over time.

Wherever you look, you find destroyed houses.

We moved to a different area than the one we lived in before and now we have a different kind of house, which belongs to our cousins family who have gone abroad.

It feels really strange and different to return ‘home’ to a different house than the one you were raised in, and we have different neighbours now too.

Somehow, like in the camp when we were not feeling comfortable nor safe, because it was a temporary place. We knew it was not our place then. We wouldn't live there forever, so we didn't feel safe there. Here in Shingal, it's not that safe because of the security situation. I don't feel safe here either, but I feel safe around my mother and also when I go to Lalish. In Lalish I feel comfortable.

I think each one of the Yazidi children who have returned from camps to Shingal has different wishes in their heart, and they want different things, but I hope that all of them will be successful, and they will do well in school. Just in case, God forbid, something similar happens in the future, they can raise their voices and ask for their rights.