by Nadia Murad
An elderly couple near us were struggling to walk, and they stopped on the side of the road to rest. Immediately a militant barked at them, “Keep going! No stopping!” but the man seemed too exhausted to hear. He fell onto the road beneath a tree, his skinny body fitting into the small amount of shade. “I won’t make it to the mountain,” he told his wife, who begged him to stand up. “Just leave me here in this shade. I want to die here.”
“No, you have to keep going.” His wife propped him up under his shoulder, and he leaned on her as they continued walking, her body like a crutch. “We are almost there.”
The sight of that old couple moving slowly toward the school made me so angry that suddenly all my fear went away. Breaking free from the crowd, I ran toward a house where a militant stood guard on the roof and threw my head back, spitting at him with all the force I could muster. In Yazidi culture, spitting is unacceptable, and in my family, it was one of the worst things you could do. Even though I was too far away from the militant for my spit to land on him, I wanted him to know how much I hated him.
“Bitch!” The militant rocked back onto his heels and began shouting down at me. He looked as if he wanted to jump off the roof and grab me. “We are here to help you!”
I felt Elias’s hand on my elbow, pulling me back into the crowd.
“Keep walking,” Dimal said in a loud, terrified whisper. “Why did you do that? They’ll kill us.” My brother and sister were furious, and Elias held me tightly to him, trying to hide me from the militant, who was still screaming at us.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but I was lying. The only thing I regretted was that the militant had been too far away for me to spit directly onto his face.
In the distance, we could see the mountain. Long and narrow and bone-dry in the summer, it was our only source of hope. It seemed to me divine that Mount Sinjar existed at all. All of Sinjar was flat, practically a desert for most of the year, but there in the middle was Mount Sinjar, with its man-made steppes green with tobacco, plateaus good for a picnic, and peaks high enough to be in the clouds and covered in snow in the wintertime. At the very top, perched on the edge of a terrifying cliff, is a small white temple, rising out of the clouds. If we could get there, we could worship at that temple, hide in the mountain villages, maybe even bring our sheep to feed on its grass. In spite of my fear, I still expected that we would end up at Mount Sinjar. It seemed like the mountain existed in Iraq only to help Yazidis. I couldn’t think of another purpose.
There was so much I didn’t know as I walked with my village to the school. I didn’t know that Lalish had been evacuated of everyone but our holiest priests and was being guarded by temple servants, men and boys who went there to scrub the floors and light the olive oil lamps. They were now defending the temple using whatever weapons they could find. I didn’t know that in Istanbul, Naif Jasso was frantically calling Arab friends to find out what was going on and that in America, Yazidis were still pleading with leaders in Washington and Baghdad. People all over the world were trying to help us, and they were failing.
I didn’t know yet that one hundred and fifty miles away in Zakho, Hezni would hear about what was happening in Kocho and lose his mind, sprinting from our aunt’s house toward a well where our family members would have to restrain him to keep him from drowning himself. My brother would call Elias’s phone constantly for two days after, letting it ring and ring, until one day it just stopped.
I didn’t know how much ISIS hated us and what they were capable of doing. As scared as we all were, I don’t think any of us on that walk could have predicted how viciously they would treat us. But while we were walking, they had already started to carry out their genocide. Outside one of our villages in north Sinjar a Yazidi woman lived in a small mud brick shed next to the highway. She wasn’t very old, but she looked as if she had lived for hundreds of years because she had spent most of her adult life deep in grief. Her skin was translucent because she rarely went outside, and deep lines surrounded her eyes, which were cloudy from years of weeping.
Decades earlier, all her sons as well as her husband had died fighting in the Iran-Iraq War, and after that she saw no point in trying to live her old life. She moved from her house to the mud brick shed and wouldn’t let anyone inside for long. Every day a villager stopped to leave her food or clothing. They couldn’t get near her, but she must have eaten the food because she stayed alive, and the clothes disappeared, too. She was alone and she was lonely, and every moment she thought about the family she had lost, but at least she was alive. When ISIS came to Sinjar and found her outside of the village and unwilling to move, they went into her room and set her on fire.
PART II
Chapter 1
I hadn’t realized how small my village was until I saw that all of Kocho could fit into its schoolyard. We stood huddled on the dry grass. Some whispered to one another, wondering what was going on. Others were silent, in shock. No one understood yet what was happening. From that moment on, every thought I had and every step I took was an appeal to God. The militants pointed their guns at us. “Women and children, on the second floor,” they shouted. “Men, stay down here.”
They were still trying to keep us calm. “If you don’t want to convert, we will let you go to the mountain,” they said, and so we went to the second floor when they told us to, barely saying goodbye to the men we left in the yard. I think if we had known the truth of what was going to happen to the men, no mother would have let her son or husband go.
Upstairs, women huddled together in groups on the floor in the common room. The school where I had spent so many years learning and making friends now looked like a different place. Weeping filled the room, but if anyone screamed or asked what was happening, an Islamic State militant would scream back to shut up, and the room would fall into a terrified quiet again. Everyone, except the very old or the very young, was standing. It was hot and hard to breathe.
A set of barred windows were open to let air in, and from them we could see just beyond the school walls. We rushed toward the windows to try to see what was happening outside; I struggled for a view behind a row of women. No one looked in the direction of the town; everyone tried to pick their sons or brothers or husbands out of the crowd below and see what was happening to them. Some of the men sat forlornly in the garden, and we pitied them. They looked so hopeless. When a line of pickup trucks arrived at the front gate of the school, crowding together haphazardly with their engines still running, we started to panic, but the militants told us to be quiet so we couldn’t shout the names of the men or scream as we wanted to.
A few militants began walking around the room holding large bags and demanding that we hand over our cell phones, jewelry, and money. Most women reached into the bags they had packed before leaving the house, dropping their things into the open bags, terrified. We hid what we could. I saw women take IDs out of their bags and remove earrings from their ears, stuffing them under their dresses and into their bras. Others pushed them deeper into their bags when the militants weren’t looking. We were scared, but we weren’t giving up. Even if they took us to the mountain, we suspected they would want to rob us first, and there were some things we refused to part with.
Still, the militants filled three large bags with our money and cell phones, wedding rings and watches, state-issued IDs and ration cards. Even small children were searched for valuables. One militant pointed his gun at a young girl wearing earrings. “Take them off and put them in the bag,” he instructed. When she didn’t move, her mother whispered, “Give them to the man so we can get to the mountain,” and the girl removed the earrings from her ears and put them in the open bag. My mother gave up her own wedding ring, the most valuable thing she owned.
Through the window, I saw a man in his early thirties sitting in the dry dirt against the garden wall beside a skinny, fragile tree. I recognized him from the village, of course—I recognized everyone—and knew that like all Yazidi men, he prided himself on h
is bravery and considered himself a fighter. He didn’t seem like someone who would give up easily. But when a militant approached and gestured at his wrist, the man said nothing and did nothing to resist. He just held out his hand and looked away as the militant pulled off his watch and threw it into his bag, then let go of the man’s hand, letting it fall back to his side. At that moment I understood how dangerous ISIS was. They had brought our men to the point of hopelessness.
“Give them your jewelry, Nadia,” my mother ordered quietly. I found her in the corner with some of our relatives, all of whom were clinging to one another, petrified. “If they look and they find it, they will kill you for sure.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. I held tightly to the bag where my valuables were hidden in the sanitary pads. I had even pushed the bread to the bottom, worried that the militants would make me give it up.
“Nadia!” my mother tried to argue, but only for a second. She didn’t want to draw any attention to us.
Downstairs Ahmed Jasso was on the phone with his brother Naif, who was still in the Istanbul hospital with his wife. Later he told Hezni all about these terrible calls. “They are taking our valuables,” Ahmed told his brother. “Then they said they will take us to the mountain. There are already trucks outside the front gate.”
“Maybe, Ahmed, maybe,” Naif said. If this is our last phone call, he thought to himself, let it be as happy as possible. But after he spoke to Ahmed, Naif called an Arab friend in a nearby village. “If you hear gunshots, call me,” he told the man, then hung up the phone and waited.
Finally the militants demanded that our mukhtar hand over his cell phone. They asked, “You represent the village. What have you decided? Will you convert?”
Ahmed Jasso had spent his life serving Kocho. When there was a dispute between villagers, he called the men to the jevat to try to resolve it. When tension rose between us and a neighboring village, Ahmed Jasso was in charge of trying to smooth things over. His family made Kocho proud, and we trusted him. Now he was being asked to decide the fate of the entire village.
“Take us to the mountain,” he said.
There was a commotion by the open windows, and I forced my way back toward them. Outside, militants had ordered the men onto the trucks parked outside the school, and they were pushing them into lines and onto the trucks, cramming as many men as would fit onto each one. Women whispered together as they watched, scared that if they raised their voices, a militant would close the window, blocking their view. Boys, some of them only thirteen years old, were being put on the trucks along with the men, and they all looked hopeless.
I scanned the trucks and the garden, searching for my brothers. I saw Massoud standing in the second truck, staring straight ahead along with the other men, avoiding looking up at the crowded window or back at the village. With his twin Saoud safe in Kurdistan, Massoud had barely said ten words to us during the siege. He had always been the most stoic of my brothers. He liked quiet and solitude, and his work as a mechanic suited him. One of Massoud’s closest friends had been killed when he and his family tried to escape Kocho and go to the mountain, but Massoud never said a word about him or Saoud or any of the others. He had spent the siege watching reports from Mount Sinjar on TV, as we all did, and at night he would come up to the roof to sleep. But he didn’t eat, he didn’t talk, and unlike Hezni and Khairy, who were always more emotional, he never cried.
Next I saw Elias, walking slowly in line toward the same truck. The man who had been a father to all of us after our own father died looked completely defeated. I glanced at the women around me and was relieved to see that Kathrine wasn’t at the window; I didn’t want her to see her father like this. I couldn’t turn away. Everything around me faded—the noise of the women weeping, the militants’ heavy footsteps, the harsh afternoon sun, even the heat seemed to disappear as I watched my brothers being loaded onto the trucks, Massoud in the corner and Elias in the back. Then the doors closed, and the trucks drove away to behind the school. A moment later we heard gunshots.
I fell away from the window as the room erupted in screams. “They killed them!” the women shouted, while the militants swore at us to be quiet. My mother was now sitting on the floor, motionless and silent, and I ran to her. My whole life, whenever I’d been scared, I’d gone to my mother for comfort. “It’s okay, Nadia,” she would tell me, stroking my hair after I had a nightmare or if I was upset over a fight with one of my siblings. “It will be okay.” I always believed her. My mother had lived through so much and never complained.
Now she sat on the floor with her head in her hands. “They’ve killed my sons,” she sobbed.
“No more screaming,” a militant ordered, pacing the crowded room. “If we hear another sound, we will kill you.” Sobs turned into choking sounds as the women tried their best to stop crying. I prayed that my mother hadn’t seen her sons loaded onto the trucks, as I had.
Naif’s Arab friend called him from his village. “I heard shots,” he said. He was crying. A moment later, in the distance, he saw the figure of a man. “Someone is running toward our village,” he told our mukhtar’s brother. “It’s your cousin.”
When Naif’s cousin got to the village, he fell down, panting. “They killed everyone,” he said. “They lined us up and made us climb down into the ditches”—shallow trenches that, in wetter months, hold rainwater for irrigation. “The younger-looking ones they made lift up their arms to check for hair, and if they had none, they were taken back to the trucks. They shot the rest of us.” Almost all the men had been killed right there, their bodies falling on one another like trees all hit at once by lightning.
Hundreds of men were taken behind the school that day, and only a small number survived the firing squad. My brother Saeed was shot in the leg and shoulder, and after he fell, he closed his eyes and tried to calm his heart and stop breathing so loudly. A body fell on top of him. It belonged to a big, heavy man who was even denser now that he was dead, and Saeed bit his tongue to keep from groaning under the crushing weight. At least this body will hide me from the militants, he thought, and closed his eyes. The ditch smelled of blood. Beside him another man who was not yet dead groaned and cried from the pain, begging someone to help him. Saeed heard the footsteps of the militants as they walked back in his direction. One of the militants said, “That dog is still alive,” before letting go another deafening round of automatic fire.
One of the bullets hit Saeed in the neck, and it took all his power not to cry out. Only when the militants sounded far away—moving down the line of hundreds of men—did Saeed dare move a hand to his neck to try to stop the blood. Nearby a teacher named Ali was also wounded but alive. He whispered to Saeed, “There’s a farmer’s shed nearby. I think they’re far enough away that we can make it there without them seeing us.” My brother nodded, grimacing in pain.
A few minutes later Saeed and Ali heaved the bodies of their neighbors off them and crawled slowly out of the ditch, looking in both directions to make sure there weren’t any militants nearby. Then they walked to the shed as quickly as they could. My brother had been shot six times and most of the bullets were in his legs; he was lucky that none of them had pierced his bones or organs. Ali was wounded in his back, and although he could walk, fear and blood loss had made him delirious. “I left my glasses back there,” he kept telling Saeed. “I can’t see without them. We have to go get them.”
“No, Ali, my friend, we can’t,” Saeed told him. “They will kill us if we do.”
“Okay,” Ali said, sighing and leaning against the shed wall. Then a moment later, he’d turn to Saeed again and plead, “My friend, I can’t see.” And it went on like this while they waited, with Ali begging to return to get his glasses and Saeed telling him gently that they couldn’t.
My brother scraped up dirt from the shed floor and pressed it into their wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. He worried that the loss of blood would kill them. Light-headed and still shaking from fear, he listened
for sounds from the school and from the field behind him, wondering what was happening to the women and if ISIS had begun to bury the bodies of the men. At one point, a sound like a bulldozer passed by the shed, and he thought they must be using that to fill in the ditch with dirt.
Khaled, my half brother, was taken to the opposite side of the village where men were also being lined up and shot. Like Saeed, he survived by playing dead and then running for safety. His arm hung useless by his side, shattered by a bullet to the elbow, but at least his legs worked, and he ran away as quickly as he could. Watching him leave, a man lying nearby whimpered for help. “My car is parked in the village,” the man told Khaled. “I have been shot, and I can’t move. Please get my car and come get me. We can go to the mountain. Please.”
Khaled stopped and looked at the man. His legs had been crushed by bullets. There was no way to move him without drawing attention to them both, and the man would die unless he got to a hospital. Khaled wanted to tell him he would come back, but he couldn’t find the words to lie. So he just stared for a moment at the man. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he ran.
ISIS militants shot at Khaled from the roof of the Kocho school as he ran by, and Khaled saw three men from Kocho take off from the ditch in the direction of the mountain, an Islamic State truck following close behind them. When the militants on top of the truck began firing, Khaled threw himself between two of the round bales of hay that were scattered across the farm and stayed there until the sun went down, shaking and nearly passing out from pain, all the time praying that a strong wind didn’t roll away the hay bales, exposing him. Then, when it was dark, he walked by himself through the farmlands to Mount Sinjar.