Zelal

I spent my childhood in Gohbal. I remained there till I was almost 19.  

Shortly  before my 19^th birthday, my father’s friend in Mosul told us that the situation is getting worse over there. We were worried about my sister, whose village was very close to where Daesh were at the time.

So my father decided we should leave and head towards my uncle’s house in Domiz.

It was 16^th of June 2014, (almost two months before Daesh attacked Shingal), and despite my father’s decision for us to leave, which we respected, we thought there was nothing to worry about.

We thought perhaps we could have stayed in the village and not leave behind our familiar neighbourhood, friends and relatives.  At the time, I had just received the final marks for my secondary school, I remember failing the maths test (😂).

My parents stayed there in Domiz for a month.

But I went with my uncle’s family to Khanke, which is a more popular area with more Yazidis too. It was only me from my immediate family who ended up there. I stayed there for about eleven days. Then I joined my parents who had rented a house in Sharya.

The camps did not exist at that time, because it was before Daesh entered Shingal; the place we found in Sharya was a house and not a camp.

In retrospect I also think that leaving before the 3^rd of August has definitely helped us in ending up where we are now, the fact that we had to find a rented house meant we were not forced into the camps.

Two months later, Daesh entered Shingal and three days after that, we heard that they were advancing towards Kurdistan. We still hadn’t heard back from our relatives in the mountain. A friend of my father’s who has managed to escape Daesh also ended up with us in Sharya.

I feel lucky, because we didn’t see what others went through when Daesh invaded our villages. But we were tormented thinking of others who are dear to us who were stranded in the mountain (Sinjar Mountain) without any means of communication, no mobile phones, and no news. This includes my sister and her daughter.

A week later, my sister and her daughter managed to escape Daesh and joined us in Sharya. Many others, like the family of my father’s friend, were able to escape through the mountain too and joined us in Sharya.

But soon we heard that Daesh were advancing towards Kurdistan, so we fled from Sharya towards Zakho. We were: my parents and I, my 4 brothers and also my father’s friend’s family, as well as my sister and her daughter.

We hoped that the Kurdish Authority would open the Ibrahim Al-Khalil border so we could pass to Türkiye, but they did not allow us to pass. We remained in Zakho for eleven days in an abandoned incomplete house structure.

This was a time of extreme horror and fear. We took this picture as a keepsake.

We then separated from our friend’s family and headed towards Derabun (Which is where we live now), we spent a couple of nights there before we returned to Sharya.

We found Sharya had become a ghost town, everyone had left, the market and shops were closed and the streets were empty because of fear of Daesh reaching there.

We ended up staying there in Sharya for seven years. I studied there, I finished final year of secondary school, and my college diploma year. I feel like most of my young adult self was in Sharya and that is where most of my memories too. From the age of 19 till 24 and a bit years old.

Despite the struggles and our loss, my best years were spent in Sharya. Despite the fact that we didn’t feel welcomed there, due to there being a lot of pressure on the place, I have lovely memories of Sharya.

Over the seven years we moved around all areas and neighbourhoods in Sharya, living a few months here and there: Galibedri, Shaikh Khedri, The Complex, and the areas close to the camp. We spent a couple of months in the first house, then two years in the next, then three in the following, then we moved into an incomplete structure and stayed there for two and a half years until I got married in 2020.

Part of the reason we had to move so much, was due to the fact that all houses were rentals, often the landlords were putting the rent up (prices are incredibly high and there are no rental contracts) or want to evict to renovate. The first place was incredibly small and we needed more place so we moved again to a three bedroom house. The house owner had a wife who was mentally ill and she used to come and do strange things and then the owner decided to renovate the house because his son was coming back from Germany to settle in Iraq.

Then when I got married I moved to my husband’s family house in Derabon.

Six months later, they moved to Sharya. So we moved with them and ended up staying with them for a year and a half, until we found our own place.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as we had to go back to Derabun because my husband got a job and since 2022 we have lived in the same house.

During our difficult time in Sharya in 2021 we decided to try to leave Iraq with the help of smugglers.

From Sharya we took a coach to Istanbul, passing through Duhok. We left Iraq at 1:30am and arrived  in Türkiye at 10:30am, we then went to a village called Aksara. 

All smuggling cases involve a lot of lies and deception by the smugglers. Our smuggler had promised us a house in Türkiye but when we arrived there was no house.

We arrived in Türkiye after a day and a half of a long journey by bus. When we arrived, we realised that the smuggler had deceived us. The apartment we came to was shared with young Syrians and Egyptians, but this was not suitable for us because we are a family. We told him to provide us with family housing, he said he would try. Instead we found our own place to rent from some local people. It was just a small apartment, old and dirty.

For twelve days we paid the rent from our own account every night for $50, but it was not worth this amount. Our smuggler agreed he would return our money to us, but he did not do so.

Then the smuggler took us to the border with Greece, the journey took six hours to Izmir and then even further to the border. We were exhausted. We were about 40 people in a small bus. I remember the metal door handle was digging into my back. It was an old bus.

We stayed for one night in rice farms. It was humid and cold. Travelling with us were Egyptians, Syrians and only six of us were Yazidis (my husband and I, his sister and his brother and 2 others). 

We were surprised at dawn to see that this group had grown to around 80, we saw Pakistanis, and more Syrians.

In the evening of that same day they were going to provide us with dinghies to cross to Greece.

There are two water crossings we needed to do, one that is slightly shallow and then further on there was a deeper water crossing we had to do and through that we enter the Greek forests. Whilst we were between the two water spaces, we saw the Greek police who started firing into the air.

We escaped back and ended up walking through the shallow waters instead of the dinghy because we were scared and in a hurry (pointing to mid chest hight showing how high the water was). We headed back to the Turkish forest and changed our clothes there.

Then we headed back the same way, first we stayed at our friend’s flat and then the smugglers told us there is another way to be smuggled on the backs of lorries where we would have to stay quiet between goods that are covered with thick material. These will head into Greece and then another smuggler will take us, so we waited to see whether this is a viable option.

Then we heard that the Turkish mafia have kidnapped people after a problems broke out between people fleeing and the smugglers who have taken money and not delivered on their part of the deal. We heard that people have been beaten for asking for their money back so we got scared and decided to return back to Iraq. My sister unfortunately was caught and she was beaten. 

Our aim was to reach the camp that Nadia Murad helped establish in Greece, Serres Camp, and stay there until we are given refugee status and then go to Holland (Netherland) or Germany. That journey was in 2021 in September.

The worst part of all these movements and forced displacement routes was when my parents decided to return to Shingal and I had to leave Sharya.