Humans of South - Humans of Kurdistan

“There was a strange fear in my heart when I first started this job because we work with an invisible enemy, so we have to do the job with utmost focus and attention, you give your life for the smallest mistake.It was 2009, I had recently started in power distribution and worked at the Shahid station. We had a job at Kareza Wishk that day to fix the power cable. One of my friends, Taha, was electrocuted and lost his life. I could never forget that day. But I got used to my job with time and now I love it”. ...

Aug 05 2020

August 5, 2020

“My love for sports started at the age of 6. Due to the lack of sport supplies at the time, me and my friends had to make the supplies ourselves. When I was 7, the first girls’ tennis team formed in Duhok and I was fortunately able to join. I was one of the top players in Kurdistan and I participated in many local and international competitions. The path was not easy and I faced a lot of challenges, but I was proud to be a representative of my city and country for 8 years. My love for sports did not stop there and it actually grew. It grew in another area, which was hiking and travelling across Kurdistan’s beautiful mountains. I was again lucky to find a group who enjoyed hiking like me. After one year of hiking together, we became a sort of family and our home became the mountains we passed through together, whether it was under extreme heat or under the winter rain”. ...

Aug 04 2020

August 4, 2020

“I have been reading for 15 years. People get addicted to drugs, I am addicted to reading. In the middle of the night, when people are in deep sleep, I am constrained with the texts in a book, in a way that I sometimes feel like I am a character in the book. There are books I have not been able to read because of the lack of time, I have thought of ripping it all out and eating it as a meal. I have been willing to go very far for the rare books. The totalitarian and fascist systems steal everything, but I have done it for the sake of knowledge and self-growth and have stolen books”. ...

Aug 03 2020

August 3, 2020

“I have studied Geography and graduated 6 years ago. I have been a lecturer for 4 years in the towns across the Penjwen border. Due to the bad roads, our towns are not accessible to constant movement so I have no choice but to stay. It is true that these towns are not easily available and lack some services and I, too, am away from my family, but when the people of the towns treat me with respect and see me as one of their own, I no longer feel my family’s absence. We have guests over or visit others most of the nights. Our time is spent really well in towns, life is simple and away from the crowds. I usually go to the mountains and go far from my house. I do not miss the chance that I have in the towns and enjoy the beauty and calmness of it all”. “Everyone says my field of study is not good and doesn’t get me jobs, but I always say that I am one of those who studied the field they wanted, so I am very pleased with my field of study and even more pleased that I am a teacher, although I am not employed and only a lecturer. When I think of the love and respect that my students have for me and how they expect me to teach them something new, it makes me completely happy. When I teach and educate my students, I always tell them that what they have excess of should be love and to perceive everything with love”. ...

Aug 01 2020

August 1, 2020

“During the civil war in the 90s, I worked as an apprentice in a bakery, we would make bread for a Peshmerga base. Because I was the dough maker, I had to go and prepare the dough under a lamp while it was still dark, as there was no electricity then. So, one day the master came in and started making the bread in the daylight, he furiously called me and said: What is that? I looked at the bread only to see it was filled with match sticks, sunflower seeds, and dirt. It turned out that just before I had gone in, a Peshmerga had gathered the flour on the floor and had put it in a bag in the corner so he could take it back for his own cattle. And I had used that bag of flour for the dough. If it wasn’t for the Peshmergas’ sake, my master would have beaten me up and fired me from my job”. ...

Jul 28 2020

July 28, 2020

“Tourists visit this area every year around 2 seasons, spring and summer, although the number of tourists has decreased in the past few years and especially now due to the Coronavirus, people travel less for fear of the virus.We are a group of boatmen here, I have personally been doing this for 2 years. There are beautiful locations in the lake that people cannot see unless with a boat, so peope request a lot of those locations, among them: the Dukan dam, Buk u Zawa, and among the mountains. We have turbo jets which we use to take tourists around. Sometimes when we take people there for the first time, it shows on their faces how happy they are. That has its own delight, at those moments, I feel like I own the locations.” ...

Jul 26 2020

July 26, 2020

“There is one thing, if you live in this country, you have to not mind a lot of things so that you don’t spend all your life distressed. Everything does not happen the way you want it. Just live your life with what you have and thank God for it. Who knows of another’s heart? It has been a while that I have stayed busy in this area, doing a small work just to make enough to live.” ...

Jul 22 2020

July 22, 2020

"I am thankful for the people of Penjwen. When we arrived at Kurdistan’s border, they came to our rescue, brought us water and transported those who were tired. We were shot at the border, but that did not stop us from attending our great Sheikh’s funeral and praising our Sheikh’s resort.I am 31 years old, I have been praising our great Sheikh for 20 years. Other than the cities and towns of the East, we have 14 takiyyas just in the city of Sna, where we gather every Tuesdays and Fridays." ...

Jul 20 2020

July 20, 2020

“When I was a child, whenever Sirwan Cinema and Rashid Cinema would play a movie, they would show the advertisement for it on horses and carriages around the neighborhoods before playing the movie. I remember when they were planning to play Hercules, the horse and carriage would come around early in the morning to show the movie poster, which had a picture of Hercules along with the viewing times and cinema location. There were some really good movies then like Tarzan, Django, Sangam, and the 7 heroes that had a huge audience. I enjoyed the cinema so much that whenever my father would give me money, I would collect it and would go to the movies with it. Some days I would go twice. So since then, I collected the movie posters and the characters’ photos until I started selling posters myself. It makes me happy even now when I come here and see the posters.” ...

Jul 19 2020

July 19, 2020

My wife is my heart's strength. We have been together for many years now. You cannot imagine what this is and what she has been through with me. She was only 13 when we got married. I was the only child and my father was sick and was living with me. Ismat served him very well, she would even shave his beard for him. Now the children have all grown up, all went their own way and we are alone again, busy gardening. We faced many Baath challenges. I was a soldier for several years. Afterwards, the Iran- Iraq war started and I was in Kirkuk. They told us to escape and become fugitives because the situation was really bad and anyone who returned who not make it out alive. So, I escaped and I can say that I am still a fugitive. ...

Jul 17 2020

July 17, 2020