{"id":72742,"date":"2016-05-02T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=72742"},"modified":"2016-04-28T12:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T11:44:38","slug":"can-we-feel-the-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/can-we-feel-the-heat\/","title":{"rendered":"Can We Feel the Heat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Apr 2016 – <\/em>I am travelling as a peace witness in Iraqi Kurdistan.\u00a0 We visited a sheikh whom I had met in Fallujah in 2012.\u00a0 He and his family were forced to flee to Kurdistan about two years ago.\u00a0 Fallujah is being held by ISIS.\u00a0 None of the residents is allowed to leave.\u00a0 People are dying of starvation.<\/p>\n

We met in the rented apartment of another sheikh who also fled Fallujah with his family.\u00a0 Although he is sick with cancer, both he and our sheikh friend welcomed us warmly.\u00a0 We were graciously served sweets and tea.\u00a0 In the course of our visit, we were joined by yet another sheikh from Ramadi.\u00a0 The U.N. recently reported that the destruction in Ramadi<\/a>, also in the Anbar region, was the worst they had witnessed in all of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Outwardly everything seemed so normal that at first I forgot I was with people now counted among the hundreds of thousands who are internally displaced in Iraq. \u00a0\u00a0In the next couple of hours though, we would hear many tragic stories that would dispel any thought of \u201cnormalcy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have lost everything\u201d our sheikh friend said.\u00a0 \u201cWe are like babies just being born.\u00a0 We\u2019ve lost schools, universities, houses, bridges, hospitals, markets.\u00a0 All gone.\u00a0 People in the U.S. need to know what their government did to the Iraqi people.\u00a0 All this pain, destruction and hurt. \u201c Our host told of a woman who had no breast milk to feed her baby as she herself was starving.\u00a0 However, she had a goat and, for a while, she was able to give this milk to her baby son.\u00a0 Then the goat died.\u00a0 At this point of the story the Iraqi woman translating for me was unable to continue.\u00a0 Overcome by sorrow, she began crying and left the room to collect herself. \u00a0I learned later that this mother searched desperately for someone to give her baby to in order to save his life.<\/p>\n

After a lengthy open discussion, we were invited to join the sheikh\u2019s wife, watching children with other women of the family in a second room.\u00a0 Again a very warm welcome belied an all-too-grim reality.\u00a0 This woman\u2019s mother, sister and daughter are all currently trapped in Fallujah, with 10 children in their collective care.\u00a0 On occasion she is able to reach them by phone.\u00a0 The women in Fallujah weep to her across the line.\u00a0 They are reduced to eating grass.\u00a0 \u201cWe can do nothing to save them!\u201d the sheikh\u2019s wife said.\u00a0 \u201cThe government doesn\u2019t help!\u00a0 We don\u2019t know how this is possible!\u201d It was incomprehensible to me \u2013 I find myself simply unable to imagine this family\u2019s pain. \u201cWe have a saying\u201d she said. \u201cPeople far away from the fire, don\u2019t get burned.\u00a0 They don\u2019t feel the heat.\u201d \u00a0Across that phone line, and waiting for the next call, she feels it.<\/p>\n

As we stood to take our leave, we embraced.\u00a0 They thanked us for the visit. Photos were taken to remember each other by, and I recorded all of the names of their loved ones in Fallujah so they will not be forgotten.\u00a0 I would write those names here, and include the photo for those who read this, but I am fearful to do so.\u00a0 My friends\u2019 situation is so precarious already<\/p>\n

It was early the next day \u2013 that is, yesterday morning – that my driver and I left for Dahook, about three hours northwest of Erbil. The road to Dahook is dotted with many Yazidi, Christian and Kurdish villages. \u00a0My driver and his family are themselves internally displaced from one of the villages surrounding Mosel, and our trip would take us very close to his village. Actually we entertained the thought of visiting there, but the very real fear of random explosions and directed ISIS attacks decided us against the visit.<\/p>\n

The family that was to host me in Dahook are Christians from the same village as my driver.\u00a0 They lost a house to ISIS in Mosel in 2008 and fled after priests were murdered in their church.\u00a0 They had lived there for 20 years.\u00a0 They fled to a village called Teleskuf where they would live for another six years until ISIS took this village as well.\u00a0 To date no one has returned to Teleskuf other than the Peshmerga.<\/p>\n

We passed the area of the Mosel dam and later with my host family we looked together at a map marking the whereabouts of ISIS. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe all know where ISIS (Da\u2019ash) is\u201d they told me.\u00a0 And lines were drawn on the map to show me their current location.\u00a0 They were scant kilometers away from us.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving in Dahook we visited with some Yazidis in an unfinished building where they are living.\u00a0 After a word of welcome we were given water, juice and sweets in a ceremonious manner, so typical of the graciousness in the Middle East.\u00a0 An elderly gentleman shared the terrible story of one of his granddaughters, who had been away from the area at the time of the August 2014 massacre and siege of Sinjar Mountain, but who, when she returned and learned of the brutality her people had suffered, found it so unbearable she took her life.\u00a0 How to respond to such pain? \u00a0\u00a0With action – Seated on the mat beside this sorrowing grandfather was a young Yazidi man who is studying in the university and plans along with other young Yazidis to reach out to about 5,000 children on the mountain with hopes of educating them.\u00a0 I shared the story of my friends, the Afghan Peace Volunteers in Kabul and the fruits they are reaping from their literacy program with street children.<\/p>\n

Next in Dahook we were able to visit several families living side by side as refugees in a church hall.\u00a0\u00a0 Excited little children led me to the curtain which acted as their front door.<\/p>\n

The families behind curtains like these, in camps, or in repurposed or unfinished buildings, have for the time a desperately welcomed measure of security.\u00a0 But they have lost everything they owned.\u00a0 The family I stayed with had fled here with only the clothes on their backs.\u00a0 Fourteen people in a car!\u00a0 Because they are in Kurdistan, which is officially still part of Iraq, they have no refugee status and are not eligible for resettlement.\u00a0 They would have to go to Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan and register there as refugees.\u00a0 They would be at the bottom-of-the-pile, and in the meantime they would have no money with which to sustain themselves.<\/p>\n

“People far from the fire don’t feel the heat.”\u00a0 Here in Kurdistan I find myself feeling the heat of the fire as I watch so many good people who are being burnt.<\/p>\n

The husband and father of my host family has a mother and several sisters in the United States.\u00a0 His wife has family in Canada, Germany and the US. They must feel the heat from here as few others in the comfortable West, author of so much of this region\u2019s suffering, ever can. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat can we do?\u201d my hosts ask.\u00a0 \u201cWe want a future for our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Cathy Breen is a member of the New York Catholic Worker community and a co-coordinator of <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Apr 2016 – I am travelling as a peace witness in Iraqi Kurdistan. We visited a sheikh whom I had met in Fallujah in 2012. He and his family were forced to flee to Kurdistan about two years ago. Fallujah is being held by ISIS. None of the residents is allowed to leave. People are dying of starvation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}