Meyrem: We are Left With No Choice But to Leave for Afar

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Meyrem was only a few days married when ISIL entered her village in 2014. She remembers giving birth next to another woman who had died in childbirth and breastfeeding her infant who had survived the death of her mother. Her husband has now become a father to both these young girls but having been ostracized by their relatives, are waiting for resettlement in Canada.

A senior official tells me "Let me call these women's husbands and tell them you would like to meet them."

One of them agreed and I travelled from Erbil to Duhok on Friday, the weekly holiday to meet with the woman (not her real name) and her husband in their rented home. Meyrem was with her husband when they came to the city center to pick me up and she was surprised at seeing I was the same age as her. As we sat down in their home, I saw two little dark eyed girls, one aged two and the other four, peeking at from behind a curtain.

Meyrem and her husband had not been able to convince their family, leave along the others in the community that these children were theirs'. They had only been married a few days when ISIL entered their village on August 3, 2014. The photographs and CD's of their wedding which they had paid for but had yet to pick up were turned to ashes when ISIS set fire to the village's only photography studio.

A whirlwind marriage

Meyrem and her husband had been in love even before he went off to Mosul to study. They got married immediately after he graduated, without even getting engaged first, for he had been appointed to a government post in Suleymaniye.

On August 3, 2014, the day ISIL entered their village, Meyrem had been in her parents house, a few streets away from her own. Her husband had been in provincial capital with his father, where they had gone to convert the Iraqi dinars given as wedding gifts into US dollars. Meyrem tells me, "It is our custom for the bride's family to invite the groom's family over for a feast a few days after the wedding and I had gone to my parent's house to help in the preparations."

Her grandmother and aunt, who had come from a nearby village for the wedding perished when ISIL members set their barn on fire. Meyrem was taken captive together with two of her sisters, her eldest brother's wife and two of her young girls. They were taken to Mosul, where her two young nieces were separated from them. There is still no news of these two young girls. Meyrem doesn't remember how many days passed before this separation but tells me she will never forget any of the events that transpired.

Her husband clears the cookie crumbs the two children had scattered and picking them up, leaves us to speak alone.

In the final weeks of her pregnancy, she was taken from the police station she had been kept in a different nearby police station. The women who tended to her when she gave birth were other Ezidi captives.

There were several other women who had given birth or pregnant in that building which was used as a police station. Meyrem tells that they would often hear sounds of fighting nearby, which sometimes continued through the night. She tells me that there were times they were not fed for days and of how they were beaten when they asked for provisions for cooking.

Meyrem spent a year there during which time she gave birth to a girl who was registered under the name Nur Asma, a name not chosen by Meyrem. Two women who gave birth just after she did died from loss of blood during birth and Meyrem breastfed one of the children who survived.

In Syria

She speaks of this other child she had fed, "The baby was taken into care by a woman from the same village as its mother. She must be three years old now," and tells me she often thinks of this child and would like to know where it is.

Following heavy fighting in Mosul, ISIL started transporting the women away and she herself was sent away together with 20 other women one evening and taken to Syria. She does not know where she was taken but tells me the place was similar to the one she had been held in earlier, except that there were fewer children while the number of women was greater.

She tells me she was bought and sold several times during her time there, whence she was was taken to different villages and regions but she finally found herself in this same center again.

Fighting found its way to this place and one night, together with a very large number of women and children, she was put on a truck which left as part of a large convoy.

She would later found out that this last destination was in Idlib province, from the soldiers of the Syrian regime who rescued her and the other women and children she was with after two days of intense fighting. "The Syrian regime soldiers took me, together with sixteen other women and children and delivered us to the Syrian Democratic Forces."

Mala Ezidiyan

Meyrem spent two days waiting in the Mala Ezidiyan (The Ezidi house), a center set up in Syria's Cizre region, to house rescued Ezidi women and provide them with services as they waited to be reunited with their families, when "I saw my husband among a group of people who were brought there after being freed from ISIL prisons," she says.

When she embraced her husband again after years of separation, her two year old daughter, Nur Asma, was by her.

The Mala Ezidiyan had arranged for a transport to Sengal for rescued Ezidis whose paperwork had been completed and had allotted them two seats, but at the last moment, Meyrem and her husband didn't board the bus.

After an argument that lasted days, they finally came to a decision and this time, the bus that took them to Sengal had a third seat for Nur Asma.

The journey began with Nur Asma on Meyrem's lap but by the time they reached Iraq, the little girl had been given a new Kurdish name.

Despite Meyrem and her husband telling their families, relatives and others that they had been held captive together and that this little girl was theirs', no one around them believed their story. Meyrem who came to the camp not knowing she was pregnant again, gave birth to a second child after seven months.

What had started out as whispers, "Both these children of hers are from ISIL", had now become louder and more brazen.

The Orphanage in Mosul

Meyrem's husband was constantly berated by other camp inhabitants, "How can you accept these children after all that the Ezidis have suffered at the hands of ISIL. Leave them in the place they belong," this place being the orphanage in Mosul.

This led to several heated arguments between Meyrem and her husband and despite thinking of sending the children to the 'place where they belong', they could not bring themselves to do it.

After Meyrem's husband was able to find employment in a private firm in Duhok, they left the camp and rented a house in the city center of Duhok, but they are still under severe pressure from their family, relatives and society.

Meyrem tells me, "I will never be able to forget what happened to me," after relating the sexual abuse she suffered and lapses into silence. Her husband comes back a little while later and sitting by us, pointing to Meyrem's second daughter Sebi, tells me, "When I refused to send this child to the orphanage, my eldest brother called me a shameless man in front of everyone and slapped me."

"My mother's illness, all that the Ezidi community has suffered, is any of this the fault of this little child? Everything that myself, Meyrem and the community has suffered is something that I will never forget but at this same time, we will not send these children away to an orphanage."

Canada

Meyrem and her husband have applied for resettlement in Canada and in the children's passports and national ID cards, have managed to have the husband's name written in the father's section.

Meyrem tells me once again, after showing me the passports and ID cards that after the increasing pressure on them, she had considered sending the children away to the orphanage.

"But after we left the camp, I became one with the children. I would never have forgiven myself if I had left these children in the orphanage solely because of the pressure of my family and society."

Meyrem's husband who has been listening carefully, tells me that they left the camp two years ago and do not want to be in communication with anyone from there anymore, words which make Meyrem happy.

They tell me that while they have applied for resettlement in Canada, they are not hopeful of it working out and that even if they cannot go there, they plan on moving someplace far from the Ezidi community, Erbil perhaps or Suleymaniye.

I take leave of Meyrem and her husband drops me off in the city center, when I thank him for supporting Meyrem in her struggle.

Her husband tells me that rearing pigeons is common where he is from and that he most missed these pigeons during his university years in Mosul. However, when he returned to his hometown after his release, he found out that all these pigeons had died in the ISIL attack. "War took away from us not just all the members of our community that died, but also many other of the living that we used to love."

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(NK/VK)