S5-Episode 11: Life After Islamic State - bitesize episode

 

Adiba Qasim 00:00

 

At 7:00 in the morning, relatives called my father and said that ‘We are now coming to the north, because the Islamic State at 3:00 in the morning attacked us and many people have been killed and it is very difficult. So, run away! Get out of your house!’

 

Melissa Fleming 00:16

 

From the United Nations. I'm Melissa Fleming, and this is Awake at Night, the bite-sized edition. Adiba’s story really struck me to my core. Not just because of the hell and the horrors she survived, but the way she’s pulled herself out. The way she’s remade herself and especially the way she’s giving back so that other people won't have to suffer the same fate that her family and her people did. Adiba Qasim, who has worked as a humanitarian, is from the Yazidi minority in Northern Iraq. In August 2014, her village was stormed by Islamic State militants who killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis. Adiba and her family managed to escape just before the militants arrived. She was just 19 years old. Here is her story.

 

Adiba Qasim 01:31

 

Many people started to take their cars, and to put their families and their clothes, and just run to the mountains. No one knew where they are going. We were surrounded by the Islamic State. We had not even weapons to fight. We had nothing. We were left alone. So, at 7:00 in the morning, we were shocked, and my father was saying, ‘We will not leave. We have to stay here, nothing will happen.’ And also, my other relatives were saying, ‘No, we are not going. Nothing will happen.’ Our Arab neighbours, the Muslims who were at the neighbouring village, also called us and said, ‘Oh don’t run away. It’s nothing. They are just coming to take the power but stay there and we are going to protect you.’ But actually, the Arab neighbours were the first ones who started to take women, killed men and so on. I forced my father and my brothers, and I said, ‘We have to go.’ We were 14 people in a small car. We tried to run and after 10 minutes they arrived at my village. All my other relatives, 70 people, were taken. Actually, they were taken by the neighbours, not by the stranger Islamic State who just arrived. So, they were taken by the neighbours.

 

 

 

 

Melissa Fleming 03:03

 

The neighbours who had colluded with Islamic state. So, you escaped by 10 minutes.

 

Adiba Qasim 03:13

 

Yes, I was so lucky. Leaving the village. So many accidents. It was terrible. People got killed in front of us because we were running. The Peshmerga and the Kurdish forces they left us, and they were trying actually to hide themselves. And then, PKK came from Syria to protect us, and there was this clash, and people were killed.

 

Melissa Fleming 03:43

 

Where did you escape to?

 

Adiba Qasim 03:45

 

Actually, normally it takes one hour to arrive to Kurdistan, to a safe area. But we left at 12:00 and we arrived there in the night. When we were in the safe area the gas was finished in our car and we decided to sleep on the street. But then, there was a little shop, a little grocery shop which also had some gas. So, we went there and asked if they can give us some gas. They said, ‘You will not go anywhere.’ And they hosted us in their house. That night we stayed there, we took a shower, we ate and the next morning we went to another area in Kurdistan. We found an unfinished building and we went there. We asked the owner of this unfinished building if we can stay there. We were so many families all together in this building. It was not clean. There was not enough water, no toilets and so on. So, we stayed there and then I was just looking at my siblings and my parents, and we cannot do anything, and they feel bad they could not do anything. They felt guilty and ISIS was also close – a few kilometres away. So, we had to run away from there as well. And we said, ‘Let’s go close to the border, to the Iraqi-Turkish border.’ Then, we realized that all our relatives were taken to Syria. And we were still in touch with some of them. They had their phones with them in the beginning.

 

Melissa Fleming 05:27

 

What were they telling you?

 

Adiba Qasim 05:29

 

They didn’t know actually where they are going. And then we lost contact.

 

Melissa Fleming 05:33

 

And then what did you do?

 

Adiba Qasim 05:36

 

We stayed in the school for 15 days and it was very difficult. Organizations and people were giving us food, blankets, and clothes, and I paid a driver and took my family to Turkey. The driver drove us to the border, to the mountains. In the mountains, we were walking, climbing and it took us two days to arrive.

 

Melissa Fleming 06:09

 

So, you ended up in Turkey in a camp?

 

Adiba Qasim 06:11

 

Yes. We stayed in a school and then they moved us by their cars to this military camp. Me and my family, we were seven people. We stayed in a small three-metres room, and it was ‘our everything’ - our kitchen, our sleeping. And we were all sleeping next to each other.

 

Melissa Fleming 06:33

 

And you, what were you doing?

 

Adiba Qasim 06:35

 

I was active in a way. I was cleaning, actually. Cleaning the camp and trying to wash the doors and the windows.

 

Melissa Fleming 06:45

 

But you also continued your education in this camp.

 

Adiba Qasim 06:50

 

Yes. I did not speak any English. I wanted to speak. I wanted to say what happened. So, there was one guy speaking English in the camp. I was always following him. Wherever he was going, I was following him and taking words and making sentence about where we came from, what my age was. I couldn’t give up. I was always fighting. I was always looking for something new.

 

Melissa Fleming 07:18

 

So meanwhile you’re hearing news probably trickling out about what was happening, particularly to the women. Probably some of your friends.

 

Adiba Qasim 07:27

 

Yes, of course. My cousins, my friends… some of them [committed] suicide directly, to not be touched by them [ISIS]. So, I was hearing all of that and having this guilt inside of me, as well.

 

Melissa Fleming 07:41

 

What was the guilt?

 

Adiba Qasim 07:43

 

That if I was 10 minutes late, I would be one of them. I was feeling very guilty that I am free now and they are taken. It was terrible. It was crazy.

 

Melissa Fleming 07:59

 

You made a decision then about your siblings, I believe.

 

Adiba Qasim 08:04

 

Yes, people started to leave. They started to take the boat and to go to Greece from Turkey.

 

Melissa Fleming 08:09

 

Right, because this was now the beginning also of what Europe called the refugee crisis.

 

Adiba Qasim 08:12

 

Exactly.

 

Melissa Fleming 08:13

 

When Syrians and Iraqis started taking the boats through Turkey into Greece.

 

Adiba Qasim 08:21

 

Yes. When people started to leave, I also put my brothers in a boat, and I sent them to Europe.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 08:29

 

How old were they?

 

Adiba Qasim 08:31

 

Well, first I sent my sister and my little brother. My sister she was 19 and my brother he was 12. I sent them by walking. My other brothers, one of them was he 20 and the other one he was 16. I put them in a boat, and they went to Lesbos. Yes.

 

Melissa Fleming 08:52

 

Where did they end up?

 

Adiba Qasim 08:56

 

First, they ended up in Lesbos. Then, the organizations helped them and took them to Germany. And then, they put them together with my other siblings in Germany.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:05

 

Your family, your whole family except for you, are now together in Germany.

 

Adiba Qasim 09:09

 

Yes, but I never wanted to leave. I always wanted to be home. And, as I said, I was having this guilt inside of me. I was like it’s impossible. It’s easy to just close your eyes and just to go. It’s very, very easy to go start a new life, but I chose to be in the reality. I chose to be in the community. So, I sent my siblings and told my parents that I need to go back home. So, I went back to Iraq in 2015.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:42

 

And what did you do there?

 

Adiba Qasim 09:45

 

I went to a rehabilitation centre, supporting and helping the women who had been sex slaves and who managed to survive with their children.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:55

 

So, this was your first…

 

Adiba Qasim 09:55

 

Yes.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:56

 

You became a humanitarian worker. They had just managed to escape…

 

Adiba Qasim 09:59

 

They had just managed to escape. I’m coming and holding all this pain with them, and they were physically and mentally sick. And we had to take them to the hospital. And then trying to…

 

Melissa Fleming 10:11

 

What was your role?

 

Adiba Qasim 10:12

 

I was more translating, watching them and doing activities with them. But it was difficult because the first question they were asking was, ‘Were you also kidnapped?’

 

Melissa Fleming 10:26

 

They asked you that?

 

Adiba Qasim 10:27

 

Yes. Because at the beginning they were saying that everyone was kidnapped, everyone was taken as slaves. It was difficult. Sometimes some of them were just, you know, during the night shouting and crying. And saying that, ‘No one of you is feeling what we’ve been through. No one understands us. We are dying.’

 

Melissa Fleming 10:50

 

And you were staying there with them?

 

Adiba Qasim 10:53

 

Yes. In the same house and I was not sleeping sometimes in the night. I had to translate something until 2:00 in the morning. Because they did not sleep. I was trying to sit with them and talk. But they were also looking for someone to listen to them. I was there for everyone.

 

Melissa Fleming 11:15

 

Can you remember one story in particular?

 

Adiba Qasim 11:18

 

Yes, all of them. All of them they’ve been through so much. But there were actually two young girls, they were 15 and 16. One of them she gave birth under the captivity. And she had the pictures of her child with her, and the child was taken from her after she gave birth. She was just 16 years old. She was suffering and shouting, and she was not telling it to everyone. So, she was talking to me. The other one, a girl, she was 15 years old and [said] how she was bought and sold and how her father was hiding her. And how they made her hair and everything like a boy to not be taken. To wear the boys’ clothes to not be taken. But then boys were taken to military camps, and then she had to be taken by force as a slave. And then [she was saying] when she found a way to get out and how the smuggler also raped her on the road and so. So, these two are always staying with me and I am holding them with me wherever I go.

 

Melissa Fleming 12:46

 

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