“We don’t want anything else…We only want to go home.”

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Few parents expect to see the day they must bury their child.  But, in war, all assumptions disappear.  In August, Besi, 25, the mother of three, was forced to bury two of her children as she and her family fled the conflict that had spread to their town in the Tel Afar district of Nineva Province, in Iraq.

As the sounds of battle approached their home, the extended family of some 20 people, fled with few of their belongings. They spent nine days walking in the desert. Besi’s family, including her 79-year-old father, Haider, struggled to continue in blistering temperatures that frequently reached more than 40 degrees Celsius.

 “We had only old bread...It was not enough,” says Besi. 

 

“We had only old bread,” Besi recalls. Then her voice trails off, “It was not enough.”

Her daughter, Sonig, 2, and her son, Al-Ein, only nine days old, succumbed to extreme dehydration. The name they had chosen for their young son, in English, means “spring (water)”.

The family, members of the minority Yazidi sect, reached Mount Sinjar, where some reports estimate at least 300 people, mostly children, died before international assistance opened a secure corridor, permitting tens of thousands of Yazidis the opportunity for safe passage.  

Eventually, Besi’s family found refuge, with others, in a school courtyard in Dahuk Province. She lives with four families in one tent, a total of twenty extended family members sharing one small space.  She spends her days looking after her father, Haider, and her only surviving son, Khanmir, who is 2. He and Sonig were twins.   

For all of the grief she carries, she speaks calmly and definitively of the future. 

“I want to go back because I love my village. It is such a beautiful a place.  I spent my life there.” 

 "I want to go back because I love my village... But, we can only go back if the [militants] leave and we have international protection," she says. 

“But,” she says, adding a caveat, “we can only go back if [militants] leave and we have international protection.”

Unlike some in this community who fear they can never return because of the violent acts committed, Besi underscores her goal, as family members, including her father, look on, nodding in agreement.  “We want to go home,” she affirms.

“We don’t want anything, else,” she says. “We only want to return to our homes.  We had good relations with nearby [Sunni] communities – not a lot of contact – but there were relations.”  She is confident in the hope that one day the situation will improve. But, she says, this will depend on the international community.

“Our greatest hope is that other countries will come to our assistance,” she says.

 

World Vision distributed mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, and jerrycans to Haider, Besi, and 127 other families sheltering in two schools and surroundings in Zakho district, part of a programme assisting internally displaced persons in northern Iraq.