Refugee Crisis

Apr 11

“I lived in Mosul for five months under ISIS. I tried to avoid trouble but one of my neighbors reported me for shaving my beard. They came to my house while I was sleeping. My mother answered the door and they pushed her out of the way and dragged me out of bed. They asked me why I’d shaved my beard. I didn’t know what to tell them. They dragged me into the center of the city and made me kneel next to five other men. They called out on loudspeakers for everyone to come and watch. A large crowd gathered. The faces in the crowd seemed sad but they had no choice but to watch. ‘These men are atheists,’ they said. ‘And they will be punished.’ They took off my shirt and put a blindfold on me. They said that anyone who tried to go to the hospital afterward would be killed. I was the fifth one to be whipped. I could hear the men before me scream out in strange voices. When the first lash hit me, the pain was so bad that it felt like my soul left my body. They lashed me twelve times. I lost consciousness before it ended and woke up in bed.”

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“My father loved children. But I was his favorite because I was the small one.”

“The army searched our house six times. The first two times they knocked on the door.”

“I’m sixty-two years old. I was a government clerk in Baghdad.”

“I lived in Mosul for five months under ISIS. I tried to avoid trouble but one of my neighbors reported me for shaving my beard”

“I studied to be a teacher, but I’m young, so I knew I’d be forced to fight.”

“I wish I could have done more for her. Her life has been nothing but struggle.”

“My husband and I sold everything we had to afford the journey.”

“There is no security in Baghdad. We lived in constant fear.”

“ISIS looks for any reason to punish you.”

“The extent to which refugee children have been conditioned by their environment is heartbreaking.”

“A friend called me at work and told me that a sniper had shot my youngest brother.”

“I’m working as an interpreter. I know what these people are going through. “

“I worked as a waiter in Saudi Arabia for seven years to save money so that I could build a house in Syria.”

“I saw the army burn my neighbor’s house. They set it on fire and took photographs while it burned.”

“Every month we had to go to Baghdad to get my son’s eyes treated.”

“Before leaving for Europe, I went back to Syria to see my family once more.”

Adam Parks https://apollocreativeco.com