Jurya

Making peace

My name is Jurya, I'm 26 years old from Sinjar city. I’m originally from Sinjar, and I live now again in Sinjar. I graduated from Zakho University with a degree in English Literature. I'm married and working with a local organisation in Sinjar called Al-Mesalla and also I volunteer for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Why home?

Back in 2014, I was about 17 years old. We are a family of five which consists of my parents, and I have one sister and one brother. I am the eldest.

We were living in this family home.

This is the same house my parents returned to recently. It is in central Sinjar in Al-Salam neighbourhood. The streets there have always been uneven and unpaved so mostly mud and dust.

This is the front of the house now. It more or less looked the same before the displacement, and even now, the roof still needs work. When we came back, the house was torched, and the roof was damaged.

But returning is much better than staying in the tents in camps.

Our tent in the camp caught fire once, and we lost everything. Even our work, books and handouts that we had while we were studying all were burnt. This happened the same time as Covid in March 2020. Tents that are made out of tarpaulin burn in no time.

The beginning of displacement

I will start from the beginning of our displacement.

My father remained behind, the four of us went with our neighbours who had a lorry. The lorry had a faulty steering so we couldn’t go through the north of Sinjar and into the mountains, through the arid landscape. I remember on the way, lots of other people who did not have cars and were on foot, got onto the lorry with us too. At one point we were more than 30 people in the lorry.

We went to a place called, Der A’as. This was close to a hill by Sinjar Mountain, the lorry couldn’t go any further. We then walked for 30 minutes to reach Der A’as.

It is a beautiful part of the mountain, there is a water spring and also caves and lots of fruit trees like pomegranate. We stayed in one of the caves for two days, then we walked through a valley towards the tip of the mountain till we reached a place called Chelmera, it has a temple for Yazidis and there were caravans, we stayed there for two days but our water and food started to run down. We did get some food and water through the helicopters that were dropping aid parcels.

My sister went hiking a while ago, I asked her to take photos and this video.

In my opinion, I consider the place sacred, and that it protected us. Without the particular geography of the place, we would not have survived. We became one with the place that provided us refuge and protected us from harm.

This is why I value getting to know the place even more by visiting it again and again.

We then decided to move towards Serdeshti, which is located in the middle of the mountain between the north and south parts. There were no caravans there, we took refuge under trees and there was a tent for the sheep which belongs to local shepherds, we decided to take refuge there too. It was very uncomfortable but we had to stay there for another two days, and we were receiving aid parcels dropped through the air.

We saw my maternal aunt’s family there so we decided to join them instead of going along with our neighbours who were aiming to leave Iraq through Türkiye.

We ended up staying three days in Serdeshti with my aunt’s family and then we decided to go down towards the north of the mountain to be able to get to the border with Syria and then towards Kurdistan.

We went down and arrived to Sherfadeen Shrine. This is one of the most famous shrines for Yazidis here in Sinjar. We only stayed there for 15 minutes and then we saw Daesh approaching us in their cars, so we hurried running back to the top of the mountain.

Our ability to navigate the mountain but also being on foot were defining differences between us, Yazidis, and Daesh’s ability who were mostly staying in groups of at least two cars. They stopped their cars and aimed their weapons at us and started shooting, my friend’s mother was hit in her stomach then we saw military airplanes (I don’t know who they belong to) hitting the two Daesh cars with missiles.

We then headed back to Sherfadeen Shrine, we remained there for one day (or maybe more, I honestly can’t remember exactly). In the morning we heard that there is a route opened through to Syria and then buses would come to take people further inside Syria.

We walked for a whole day nearly reaching Rabia on the border with Syria.

When we arrived to the Syrian border, a small Kia pickup car came and took us to a local Syrian Arab villager who lives on the border. He offered us tomatoes and bread. They didn’t have much food.

After crossing the Iraqi-Syrian border into Syria

After crossing the Iraqi-Syrian border into Syria

After that busses started arriving and took us to a place in Syria called Dereek (Al Malikiyah) this was still close to the border but there was a camp site there and they brought us food and water.

We remained there for a couple of hours and then they asked if we would like to stay longer or be taken to Kurdistan.

We chose to go to Kurdistan. So they brought a small bus to take us near the border again, but there was a problem with that small bus so they transferred us to another bus and that one took us to Faysh Khabur on the border between Syria and Kurdistan.

When we crossed the border, one of my maternal uncles came to pick us up to take us to Derabun where we stayed in for two months with another Yazidi family. There were eleven Yazidi families in that area.

Then we moved to a camp near Bajed Kandala camp which was originally created for Syrians and because the Bajed Kandala camp was full, they had to make another camp on on the opposite side of the road, which took mostly Yazidis who were forcibly displacement from their villages in August.

Captured and rescued

The camp was so full, we were about ten families in each tent. A lot of people had to sleep outside the tents as there was no room inside the tent.

There was a kitchen inside a metal cabin shared between every ten tents. We ended up sleeping in these kitchens in the hope that with lots of people arriving and leaving all the time to and from the camp, we will end up with more room for our family in the camp. My family and two of my uncles' families ended up taking refuge in one kitchen.

My aunt’s family then decided they would leave Iraq for Türkiye and they asked if one of us would like to join them so that they will be able to help the rest of the family to get out of Iraq through a request for reunification.

But we couldn’t leave my father behind. My father had still not left Sinjar at this point and we hadn’t heard from him since we left our home. We had to wait for him. How could we leave the country without him? What if he was to reach Kurdistan and not find us here?

So we decided to stay. My father finally joined us five months later. He captured by Daesh and ended up being taken to Kocho, Tel Afar, and then Mosul, but then Daesh let go of some of the older people and he was one of them. He was rescued by the Kurdish soldiers in Kirkuk and they brought him with other elders to Lalish and he managed to reach us in the camp from there.

The warmest memory I will keep carrying with me is when my father was rescued and returned to us. It was a great day. I don’t think there is a matching wonderful memory.

We remained in that same camp for eight years and my parents stayed there for nine years.

They only came back to Sinjar last year (2023).

During those years in the camp I was going regularly to Sharya whilst I was doing my last year of secondary school. And then again when I went to university to study English Literature, I went to stay at my aunt’s house, but I always returned back to the camp in holidays and in between finding a job here in Sinjar.

My parents remained always in the same camp, but they moved around inside the camp. First we were all in that kitchen with two other families and then we moved into a tent of our own, but then when that tent burned down we moved again to a different tent.

Hopeful return

After I finished university, I went back to Sinjar to work with a local organisation called Al-Mesalla and I am also volunteering with the Red Cross. I had to stay in a place like halls of residence for women because my parents had not left the camp then. I remained in that residence for a year and then I got married. My husband also joined me in Sinjar when he found a job here. We are now renting a flat here, and its just me and him living here.

His family are still in Shaikhan, but my parents came back to Sinjar in August 2023. They are now about ten minutes walk from us.

There aren’t that many places to rent here in the centre, it is a small flat on top of hairdressers’ shop; the flat has two rooms. There are other shops on that same road, the one next to the hairdresser, there is a shop that fixes mobiles and sells mobile accessories.

As part of Al-Mesalla, I help with workshops and training support and advocacy for women and girls and with the Red Cross too, I support local families who have missing family members (since the genocide). At Al-Mesalla, we have social workers who provide training for women and girls and also we provide financial support and training for best ways of managing life and cost of living. We also provide seed money for small initiatives led by women. I have been also working hard on developing myself, I have been trained on peace building, conflict resolution and also currently training to be a counsellor to help with conflict resolution particularly cultural and religious conflict.

As you know, the area has a mix of people from different backgrounds, Yazidis, Christians and Muslims, the Christians have not returned yet but certainly the others are going back regularly and as you would expect conflict will emerge between Yazidis and Muslims. So we are doing our best to make peace.

We can’t run away from our homeland. Any place that has racial conflict, anywhere else, will not progress unless it confronts its violence, discriminations and racism. Especially places with people from mixed cultural backgrounds, ethnic and racial differences, always end up with conflict and wars. I do sometimes worry about Iraq’s future and whether any of the prejudice and violence towards us will ever end. When my father was abducted by Daesh and then was rescued, Yazda wrote his name in the list for immigration to Australia in agreement with the Australian government. This is a special system open only for survivors of genocide. They interviewed my family and added my father’s name, if anything comes through, we will want to join them and leave. But we can’t join them, my husband and I are still thinking of leaving Iraq in a year or two. We have even discussed not having children here because I worry about my children’s future here in Iraq. I worry about losing them. I don’t want them to be collateral damage.