October 31, 2020

“After I finished the fifth grade in school, I went to Damascus after a while to start working. We started painting buildings with my brother. I was in Damascus for twenty-seven years, and when the Rojava war started along with the uprising, I decided to go back to Qamishli to smell freedom after the city’s liberation from the Syrian regime, and I knew that my kids and I had to serve Rojava. My son joined the Kurdish forces that were protecting the area, and after a while I got the news that he was martyred, I was very depressed and I was also proud. I am now seventy-two years old, I was still looking young, but after my son was martyred, I started looking old. This is the price we have to pay for freedom and for speaking our mother tongue. A while ago I opened a shop to sell used goods to make a living for our daily lives.”