Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/840553
n o longer looked like a funny uncle, he was an officer that was showing me respect accrued for the guest and once more promising to protect me. There is no Daesh in Batnaya but there is no Batnaya either Batnaya, that we have entered in a convoy was petrifying. Some six thousand people used to live here. Now, there was not a single whole building left. We have seen a lot of old, rusty car wrecks. All of them were telling a story of suicide bombings. The church, that once upon a time had to be a real gem, towered over the settlement. It stopped being a piece of art when the terrorists made themselves a bunker out of it. There was even a gym in a central nave. From every corner sad fragments of monuments and stat- ues were silently screaming in agony. The floor was cov- ered with pieces of religious tomes. Quite often they were handmade and lovingly calligraphed. The rest of the village did not look much better. Some of the buildings were mined, kilometres of tunnels spread below them. They were not checked yet. Suddenly, our bodyguard sternly held onto my arm. I have put my left foot right next to thin copper wire that was attached to a small cask with cables protruding from it. It lied on the verge of half – burnt house waiting for someone to have less vigilant guardian than I did… Internally displaced means "I lost all my hope" The real meaning of "it will be only getting worse" dawned at us some time later though. Few dozens of internally displaced persons camps have been put in place in Iraqi Kurdistan. From afar they look like fields full of tiny white houses. When you approach them early in the morning, like we did, the light mirrored from the tents is clean and bright, almost blinding. The tents though are not bright and are not clean, but to realise this, one has get closer. People whose entire hope has been stolen, sit on the concrete steps without saying a word, without moving a muscle. Little kids run around piles of rubbish and play in the drainage ditches. And the tents, they are no more than sheets of stitched, oily tarp. And yet for millions of people they are the only home. Stories of the Yezidis we have met in the Sharia, Jamheshko or Quadia camps were so different and at the same time terrify- ingly similar. In 2014 ISIS has invaded their motherland close to the Sinjar mountain. Most of the warriors that tried to protect their land were killed and freedom was taken away from another few thousands. First people we met were two women. Both of them spent few years in captivity. In small voices, calmly, listing exactly all the dates and places they started telling us about the slave mar- kets, transactions in which they were sold, group rapes and medications that were meant to prevent them from getting pregnant. "That was not the worst though" – they said. When they were in captivity their only goal was to save two fifteen – year old boys, sons of the one of them. For some time they have managed, boys were travelling with them. But at some point they were taken away by force. Those two sisters we have spoken to, got released after their family paid ransom of some twenty thousands of dollars. As soon as they got to the camp in which they live to this day, they asked about the boys. No one wanted to say anything. Their uncle just showed them a Daesh' pro- paganda film. Two young boys sat in a crouch somewhere in the middle of the forest. If you knew what to look for, you could just make out barrels of two Kalashnikovs they kept on their sides. They talked very quickly, I had no idea if it was Arabic or Kurdish. Both of them seemed calm and controlled but their shaking hands were telling a dif- ferent story. Wider frame showed them wrapped up in a suicide bombers' vests. Another one was just a black background with the name, date and number of killed and wounded. Just the information when and where they have committed an attack and what the result was… Heroes don't always wear capes Next tent we have gone to, served as a sitting room of Muhammad's and his family. The boy is seventeen years old. His father was killed in a suicide bombing attack. The teen- ager himself has closed his mother's eyes when she died of hunger and exhaustion crossing the Sinjar Mountain when they had to flee after ISIS attacked their village. He has four www.fragoutmag.com