To the Women of the Refuge

To the women who risked their lives in order to find refuge...

This is for the woman I met, wearing a child on each arm; trying to shelter them from harm as she got sprayed by tear gas and beaten by wooden sticks in Hungary. Comforting them with soothing words as she braved torture, agony, and pain in order to get her children to refuge. Persistent in her belief in the right to asylum. Resilient in her determination for safety and a new life. Resolute in her decision to cross the border. She was not going to give up. Her children were going to get the chance at a new life. And they did. This is for you.

This is for the woman I met that was jailed by Hungarian police with her two new-born babies. Ridiculed and laughed at by the guards when she asked for milk for her children. Told that they were not worth Hungarian milk because they were savages who did not deserve to step foot on Hungarian soil. Bruised by the cup of water that was thrown in her direction, was this supposed to be sufficient enough to feed her starving children? Lied to by those sworn in to protect, rather than exploit, "if you give us X amount of money, we will let you out- you will still get stopped on the way, but not by us". Spat at by those who thought that she was lesser than them because of the blood in her veins or the colour of her skin or the fabric on her head. To the woman who managed to escape prison after travelling alone with her two children, Noora and Hamada. To the woman who ended up in a refugee camp in Germany.

This is for the woman I met who travelled all the way from Syria, by herself amongst 11 men; and yet, was the strongest of them all. Presenting herself as a true leader. Someone with rationale, resilience, determination, wisdom, and belief. Approaching the ticket counter knowing exactly what she wanted from me, where she wanted to go, and who she wanted to be. Believing that although she was the only girl amongst a plethora of men she did not know, she was brave enough to handle herself. She trusted in her capabilities. She was not shy. She was not hesitant. She was not ready to let her chance at safety slip through her fingers because of her gender. She was not inferior.

This is for the woman I met, fighting for clothes for her sons, daughters and husband as they slept away their trauma. Standing in line with her worn out dishdasha, and ragged hijab. Refusing to rest until she provided for her family. Yelling the sizes, the colours, and the items they needed. Stepping on her pride in order to get what she needed. Refusing to back down until she reached her goals. Not willing to accept lesser than she deserved, "this is too big" she said; "this is not thick enough" she sighed; "please try again" she begged. Not giving up.

This is for the woman I met who was crying. Crying on the bottom of the stair case of Platform 9 refusing to tell me what was wrong- she was strong enough to deal with everything up until this point, why would she choose to rely on someone now? Why trust me to carry her burdens when she carried them herself every second of every day? Why let herself be portrayed as weak and incapable? She was perfectly capable. She could handle herself. She just needed a minute. A break. But she would come back from it. And she would come back stronger than before.

This is for the woman I met who sang. Who sang and sang and sang. And when she was not singing, she was dancing. And she didn't care who saw. She sang about everything, from something as simple as the coffee she made, to the complexities of the country she once called home. She would sing to us about her purple couch and her Persian rugs. She would tell us of her nieces and nephews who loved to listen to her voice. And she would dance traditional Kurdish dances once we played anything with a rhythm on the radio. She would make us laugh. And when we weren't laughing, we were smiling because we knew we would hear her voice again soon.

This is to the women. The strongest women I have ever and will ever meet. The women who braved the most horrifying conditions because they knew what they wanted and were determined to achieve it. This is to the Women of the Refuge. Happy International Women's Day.

Its Your Name on the Line Not Mine

"This is the tragic story of a friend of mine, around the age of 15 living in Najaf, Iraq.
In Iraq, especially in the city of Najaf, we don't possess this concept of casually talking to boys as friends, if we do take part in something like that, we are subject to shunning, discrimination and denunciation by our families. It's simply not done. This phenomena became more and more strict after the 2003 invasion, when Iraq, once secular, was drowned by a veil of religious sectarianism as a form of identity. At this time it is not and it was not seen as okay for a women and a man to talk without the permission of their parents, or the intention of getting married.

This friend of mine, let's refer to her as Sara. Sara somehow managed to get hold of a boy's number, she never told us how or why, but she managed to do it regardless. They would text daily, and since we in Iraq use credit as a method of making calls, he would send her credit to text him or call him. However, they would never physically meet.

One day, two or three weeks after they started talking, he told her to meet him on a side road a near enough to her house to know where it was, but far enough from it so that her family would not know what was going on. And because the general society of Iraq became increasingly restraining on women, due to the dangers of war and terrorist threats, women posses this craving of rebellion against that 'imprisonment'. So she did it. She wanted to see what she was missing out on. Because this girl hasn't had contact with other males, or taught about the dangers that come with meeting males alone, rape or assault, she did it. All these subjects are taboo in Najaf, so she thought 'what's the worst that could happen?' and went ahead with meeting him.

He met up with her, making her feel all empowered and in control of herself; finally being able to be "free". They went around in his car, driving around Najaf, along the river; all the while she felt happy and content. He then took her to his house-not his house, sorry, a random empty building. I'm not sure which one, or where, but it was an empty building. You can all guess what happened next. Yes, he raped her. He didn't leave her there though, he took her back to her home (as if that made it any better) and told her not to tell anyone because in the end if she did, it would be her name that would be shamed not his.

Sara was traumatized, she did not know what had just happened to her. All she knew was that she was in immense pain and agony. She was not aware of the safety precautions to be taken, and she was not aware that she had basically been sexually assaulted and abused. And even if she were, it wouldn't make a difference because the blame would be placed on her for being 'stupid enough to have contact with men'.

Her parents eventually found out, and instead of being comforting and assuring the poor girl that it was not her fault, and that they would protect her, they shunned her. They were more concerned with their place in and how they were seen by society to even make an effort to do anything except tell her how she had disgraced the family. Sara was not allowed to continue her education and was forcefully married off at the age of 15 to a man much older than her.

I'm telling this story because Sara is one of many women that have suffered the same fate. I'm not saying that women should go around naked hanging out and hooking up with random men all the time, I'm saying that restraining women to this extent is dangerous for the women. We think we are protecting them but in reality, were only subjecting them to further pain and discrimination. It's easy to look past these issues and claim them as simply a side effect of war, but we shouldn't. These women are oppressed, and not just the western version of the word. This is a subject which is constantly avoided when Middle Easterners discuss their countries and this should not be the case any longer." - Anonymous, Iraq

The Cross Around My Neck is Heavy to this Day

"So much for the sound of the holy rivers that nourished the fields of wheat. Gone is the smell of the air that moves the arid Earth that I once called home. Far away are the Mountains that shielded me when I fled from the madmen of the East. Here, in gloomy England I live and breathe my last. Grey skies on the cusp of rainfall in Industrial suburbs will be the sight that surrounds my grave. Yet I dream of the fertile land between the rivers and lament that I shall sleep so far away from the halls where my ancestors slept for thousands of years. Someone else lives in my house now and, soon, the walking relic that I am shall turn to a memory of a time long gone. This is the curse of the diaspora Assyrian.


My story begins long ago when the world was new. A City flourished with trade and grew to encompass lands far away from the edges of it’s walls. That city was Assur and no Assyrians live there today. It bequeathed an Empire that stretched from Iraq to Egypt and further. Great Kings built new Cities and engineered Hanging Gardens that mesmerised foreign travellers enough to know that they were in the very centre of the Earth. A grand Civilisation that, as all others before it did and all others after it will, fell into decay. Swift was the fall of the Assyrian Empire. To a people whose worldview incorporated a pantheon of Gods headed by a God of War, to lose a single battle was an apocalyptic sign and, when the battle was lost, sure enough the Empire fell. First it was incorporated into a brief Babylonian Empire but, soon enough, Assyria fell into the hands of the Persians, the first of a long line of foreign invaders. 612 BC was the date that Nineveh fell although a brief resistance continued in the North at Harran until 608 BC. After this point, full political independence was never again achieved.


Yet, there was still hope. One of the legacies of the Neo Assyrian Empire was the emergence of Aramaic as the exclusive language of Iraq and the Levant. It was not the original language of the Assyrians but it became the lingua franca before the fall of the Empire. The Persians, who originally saw themselves as successors to the Assyrian Empire, retained Imperial Aramaic and Assyrian names for the provinces of their Empire. Such was the extent of Assyrianisation that, when the Greeks arrived they named Syria as ‘Syria’, a name derived from the Assyrians. Assyria proper, which is in the North of Iraq but actually stretches into parts of Turkey and overlaps into Syria was the original homeland of the Assyrians. By the time of the Greeks Assyria had morphed into Classical Assyria which was a sort of wider term for a much bigger segment of the Assyrian Empire not limited to Assyria proper. Later, when the Romans arrived and the Persians arrived (again) they split classical Assyria between them. The Romans had Syria province (modern Syria) and the Persian Sassanians had Asoristan which included basically all of Iraq. So, despite the fall of the Assyrian Empire there was an Aramaic speaking people who self identified by a word derived from Assyrian living in Iraq and Syria at this time.


It was in this time that a second Assyrian golden age blossomed. Not one built on war and the God of War but, increasingly, on newer Gods. Prevalent in this time were new religions such as Manicheanism and various Eastern influenced religions as well as Hellenic ones. In the midst of all this, one religion was becoming dominant, Christianity. Semi autonomous Assyrian Kingdoms were the earliest to adopt Christianity as their state religion. Major schools of Christian scholarship emerged in Antioch and Edessa (Urhay) and later, Nisibin. Monasteries dominated the Mountains and Churches the cities. Writers and Poets such as Saint Ephrem and Isaac of Nineveh created Christian works in a uniquely Assyrian style. In this time, Assyrians were persecuted by the Persian Sassanians who pursued a more heavy handed Zoroastrian Orthodoxy than their predecessors and also the Byzantine Romans for perceived unorthodox Christianity. It was in this context that the Arabs came out of Arabia into Assyria.


The Arab invasion was not seen as an immediate calamity for the Assyrians. They were a Semitic people similar to the Assyrians and, at least initially, had many Christians among their ranks. Assyrians saw them as liberators from the harsh taxes and policies of the Persians and Byzantines and were given special positions as translators of Greek philosophical texts for the Arabs. Here there is often a mistaken narrative that the Arabs converted the population rapidly. In fact Abassid writers who travelled around the Empire considered the land from Tikrit upwards to be essentially totally Christian throughout their rule. Though Islam was far more successful in the South of Iraq and the South West of Syria it didn’t really penetrate deep into the Assyrian heartlands. Syriac remained the lingua franca in those parts. Arabisation only extended to the areas that were more solidly Muslim. The Medieval Assyrians were now called the Syrian Christians. Christianity had kept their name and their culture alive.


There were periodic persecutions by the various Islamic Caliphates. One Caliph forced Christians to wear distinctive markers on their clothes. Christians were always considered second class citizens and lows forbid them from prostelytising. They had no fixed tax rates and so bared the brunt of the financial burden of Caliphate war expenses. It was, however, for the most part acceptable, especially by medieval standards. The real calamity for Assyrians arrived with the age of the migrations and, specifically, the migration of the Turks and the Mongol invasions from Central Asia. The Seljuk Turks were not especially bad and the early Mongols were actually favourable to the Assyrians because of earlier missionary efforts to Central Asia. However, the later Mongol Warlords converted to Islam (mainly for political reasons) and, one of them, Timur would inflict the first great Assyrian persecution. Timur decimated the entire Assyrian population. His brutal genocidal campaign kicked the Assyrians out of the great Cities of the former Caliphate and out even of Assyria proper. Tikrit was gone, Erbil was gone, Mosul (Nineveh) was gone, although a Christian community would quickly resurface there. It was at this time, that Ashur was finally and definitively destroyed.


The Assyrians now lived exclusively in villages in the mountains of South East Turkey and North Western Iran. Kurdish villagers took their place in their former heartlands, a trend that continues to the modern day. Assyrians still had some autonomy in their new lands. Hakkari was controlled by the patriarch of the Church of the East, they still held on in Zakho down to the Nineveh Plains. There was a brief resurgence over the next few centuries as they rebuilt on a much smaller scale as part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were, in their earlier incarnation quite tolerant of ethnic and religious minorities. However, tribal warfare between Assyrians and Kurds was quite prevalent at the time and led to several massacres of Assyrians in the 1800’s, most significantly by Bedr Khan. This century would mark the beginning of the end of the Assyrian Nation as it had been the previous centuries and culminated in Seyfo. In 1915 the fascist Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire was running their part in the Great War. Assyrians and Armenians were relying on the Russian Empire to hold their historic lands while the Turks were allied with several Kurdish tribes. When the Russians withdrew from the war, the Turks unleashed a huge genocidal campaign against all non-Muslim civilians in what was left of the dying Empire. The Assyrians lost two thirds of their population and were purged almost entirely from the land that became known as Turkey. As previously, Kurds now occupied their homes.


Then, what was left of the Assyrian nation limped into Iraq and, in desperation, worked for the British Army in return for settlement and citizenship. A return to their Ancient homeland was marked by xenophobia from an Arab and Kurdish population that had forgotten who they were and saw them as collaborators with the British. This reached a fever pitch when the British formally left Iraq. At this stage, Assyrians still made up the largest population in the Nineveh Plains and today’s Dohuk Governate and Akre and were asking for autonomy in this minuscule remnant of a homeland. They were denied with ferocity. In 1933 the Iraqi army (or a rogue Kurdish general depending on who you ask) launched the Simele Campaign which killed up to 3000 unarmed Assyrian Civilians while many others fled to the Khabour River in Syria. An echo of the Genocide just under 20 years earlier, Assyrians were at this point already turning up in countries all around the world. Now comprising just around 5 percent of the Iraqi population and a smaller figure in Syria, Assyrians attempted to continue onward in the face of a new phenomena, Arab nationalism.


Assyrians in Iraq were encouraged to identify as Arab Christians. Though they made up the largest population in places such as Qamishle in Syria and Dohuk in Iraq, they were witnessing mass migration of Kurds into these newly industrialised areas. Though they had a vibrant community in Baghdad, the toll of several wars and economic sanctions led to many seeking emigration abroad. Then the 2003 Iraq war and the subsequent problems of Islamic fundamentalist groups further accelerated their emigration. Though this was all of Iraq’s problem it impacted the Assyrians heavily because they were already a smaller population prone to emigration. They were still asking for autonomy but now in the much smaller Nineveh Plains region where they still made up a slight majority. Just when the Iraqi Government appeared to be moving towards a Nineveh Plains solution, ISIS arrived to expel Assyrians from their ancient capital at Mosul and from part of the Nineveh Plains. In the last week, ISIS captured 250 villagers from the Khabour River in Syria who had fled Simele 80 years earlier.


So, here I am. The Cross around my neck is heavy on this day. Though it saved my people our name and culture in the past, today it is the object of ridicule in my homeland. It has been taken from me so cruelly. I wish I was born at any other time in my people’s history other than this. I wish I could have seen Assyria when it was new but, alas, I must be there at her sad end. It was one too many calamities in a row the wise men tell me. Still, my last thoughts are with my neighbours. My heart is filled with anger towards the Arabs and the Turks and the Kurds and all those who have torn my land into pieces and grabbed a piece for themselves. My despair and sorrow has filled me with a vengeance such that I wish to curse the land forever and all its inheritors. Yet, the sad eyed man God intervenes. He taught me, above all else, to love my neighbours. So, I love my neighbours. I just wish that they hadn’t killed me for believing in the God of neighbourly love."





https://nisibin.wordpress.com/

"Three Years"

"Three years.
Three years of isolation.
Three years of torture.
Three years of constant pain.
Three years of prison under Saddam Hussein.

Out of the eleven of us that were captured, tortured and imprisoned I was the only one who came out alive, praise be to God. And for what you ask? Why did I have to face such hardship? Such misery? Such fate? Why was I sent to prison, you ask? Well let me tell you.

When I was 15, I was put into prison in Iraq because of the anti-tyranny, anti-Saddam graffiti my friends and I plastered over the walls of Basra. We got away with it for a while, until my friend had written "Saddam will not last, Long Live Khomeini" on the wall of his neighbor. He was then taken in by the police, tortured and interrogated until he gave the names of eleven of us; eleven of his closest friends. After he had given the names, he was executed, like the majority of prisoners.

When I was taken in, the suffering they inflicted upon me was incomprehensible by anyone who had not gone through it themselves. I was abused. I was tortured; physically and psychologically. I was starved. I was kept awake through out the length of the night; waiting for the next beating, the next abuse, the next form of pain that was going to be inflicted upon me for simply disagreeing with a murderous tyrant who threatened the lives of my people. Through out the day we were given little food, and sometimes none at all. We were hardly given any water. Ramadan, the month that was supposed to be joyous and celebrated, was the worst for us. We were given one glass of water for the whole day and the tiniest bit of food; unable to satisfy even the smallest of creatures. I remember drinking a gulp at futoor and attempting to save some for suhoor, but it was all in vain as I was constantly thirsty. Many of the people in the prison died due to the lack of water, food and the poor hygiene. I was one of the lucky ones to have lived.

My father passed away shortly after I was released. He had been grieving for me during my time in prison and had refused to eat. This had in time, resulted in a fatal gall bladder problem. He had undergone several operations in attempt to fix the issue, but they had all failed. I will forever live with this guilt; if I wasn't put into prison for such a silly thing my father would not have died the way he did.

These memories will never leave me and I continue to be reminded of them every day." -Jamal Mohsin (IRAQ)

"I Dare You To Call For Help"

"It was just another 'normal' day for me. I woke up in the morning wishing this day wouldn't be like most other days; filled with the fear and anxiety of being a target of these terrorism attacks that have been so frequent recently. After I got ready I said goodbye to my mother, and as usual the tears she was trying so hard to fight back were noticeable by not only me, but all my siblings. But that was just the 'normal' beginning of just another 'normal' day.

I remember these days to be the most awful, dreadful and disgusting days of my entire life; I just wanted the day to end so we could all go back into the safety of our home, lock the doors and enjoy a little relative serenity before the next horrible day was to begin. This is not how any child should feel about going to school. But this is what we felt about going to school.

When the teacher dismissed us a little bit earlier than usual, I had already packed all my things and ran to the school exit as fast as I could just to get back to the security of my family and my home. I had arrived to the school gate before anyone else had, waiting to be picked up by driver, and that's when I saw him. 

He was my friend's driver so his face was quite familiar, we smiled at each other our usual greeting smiling. Then it happened.

A car pulled over and four men with guns got out of the car. I could not see their faces because they had them covered with a black mask. Next thing I know, I hear a gun shot.

My eyes were sealed shut, and when I finally gathered the courage to open them, I saw a gun pointed towards my face and through the suffocation of fear, I heard laughter in the background.

The man said to me 'he is not dead, but I dare you to call for help. It would be your last day little girl!' Two of the men then stole my friend's driver's car and left him on the floor bleeding to die a miserable, painful death. I froze in my place; my hands in my pocket ready to take my phone out but I just could not muster up the courage. The man's voice was still ringing in my ears; it was as though I was paralyzed with fear, unable to move a muscle without the man's permission. I was stuck there as though time had stopped.

When the rest of the school got to the gate, the man had already passed away. I carry this guilt everyday of my life; always thinking 'what if...maybe they were just messing around with me...maybe I should have taken the chance...maybe they wouldn't of known I had called for help.' For the rest of my life I would hold myself responsible for this murder; was it selfish of me to choose my own life instead of his? After all I was merely a 13 year old girl; what did I know about sacrifice and bravery? I don't think I will ever find the answers to all these questions, and I will have to face the fact that this incident will haunt me for the rest of my life." - Iraq, 22

"This is What a Hero Looks Like"

"The year is 2004, and Iraq was making headlines for the first time since the 2003 invasion. Outside it was your usual rainy southern November, but inside what would happen that year would stay in my memory forever. As an 8 year old, who has been in the United States practically her whole life, my Arabic was decent, but I spoke english and Arabic. Nonetheless that did not stop one of my white teachers from asking me
“Do you know Arabian, I mean I know your family is not from here”
“Um yes.’ I responded shyly.
“I need you to translate, we have a student who just came from Iraq we cannot understand a thing.He is in the ESL room”
At the thought of the word, all I imagined was bloodshed thinking back to the news I had just watched that morning with my father on AlJazeera. Nervous, I walked over to the classroom.
Sitting in a desk all by himself, the teacher pointed to him.
I walk over, with the lowest “Salaamu Alaikum” I have ever said in my life. He was almost in tears, and I was always weak to tears.
“Inti tehchi arabi” he asked me if I spoke Arabic,
“Ah ana behchi arabi”
“areed ahli. “
I need my family, he told me in tears.
“Abchi la ahli” I cry for my family.
The teacher gave me a look but I did not even want to look, or translate what he had said. In that moment both my Arabic and English was weak. I just wanted to hug him. But I just stood there.
“Ma fee sakan. Ma fee ahel. Abchi” No family. No house. I cry.
“Ma fee soora. Ma fee ahel. Gataloolni chi haja” There are no pictures. No family. They killed everything.
When he said they killed, he pointed to a poster of an American soldier on the board reading 
“This is what a hero looks like.”
My blood boiled. An innocent child my age, with parents like me, and a life, lost everything. Somebody dressed in a uniform which he labeled himself as a soldier, honorable, and praised, killed a whole family. Then it occurred to me. This boy was alone. Just like Iraq was alone.
“Ena erfeektek itha itreed. Ma ita’ayet. Ena hon”
"I’m your friend if you want. Do not cry. I am here."
From my accent, he could tell I was not Iraqi but that did not matter to him. It was time for me to go and take a test, so the teacher escorted me back to class.
“Did he speak to you?”
“What did he say?”
“He is something we call a refugee.”
Refugee. I only ever heard that word on television or from my mom speaking of how my uncles and her were considered refugees, although she held a Palestinian passport.
I did not answer my teacher only asking her to sit back in my seat and write my test.
For the rest of the year since that day, he would ask to see me. I would even skip gym class to go into his ESL class. When he was not laughing at my inability to speak Arabic like him, I tried teaching him english. He would speak of Iraq. The street markets. The mosques in Baghdad. He would wonder where are his friends were openly to me always bringing me to tears. The year ended, and we promised we would stay friends forever.
Forever did not last long. The new school year started, with Hurricane Katrina. My family and I evacuated to New Jersey and lived there for a while. My thoughts stayed with him. But then we came back to New Orleans, and third grade went on along with every other year with him nowhere in sight. For a while I forgot about him until a few months back. I remember him telling me about the beauty of the mosques and churches of Iraq and the Iraqi people, and as I was scrolling through my Tumblr, I saw these mosques with a picture of a child who had once again become a refugee from Syria. An Iraqi turned to seek refuge in Syria only to become a refugee again in his own country of Iraq. That night I remembered that fateful day ten years ago when I met him.
I never did see him after that, and I cannot even remember his name. But every day I hope that I see him at university orientation, the grocery store, Eid- Salah, just so I can thank him. I wanted to thank him for teaching me what humanity meant at seven/eight years old. I want to thank him, for the first time of me meeting an Iraqi, making it memorable. I want to thank him for showing me the beauty in hope, which he held onto despite having his whole family killed, and being a refugee in the so called land where you can pursue your happiness. I just want to thank him because when I remember him, I remember that the millions of Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi refugee children have a story like he does. It did not matter to him that I was not Iraqi or that I did not understand what war meant, all that mattered was I was a human willing to be a friend.

It costs nothing to be human, and still until this day I think of him, and remember Iraq, the forgotten one with beauty that exceeds war and bloodshed. The land and people who still stand strong.

It costs nothing to have an ounce of humanity.

I wish he knew, although I forgot his name, I remember him and what he did to my life." -Anonymous