Humans of South - Humans of Kurdistan

“My older brother was sick for a while, I was always worried about him and wanted to see him lead life as any other person. Fortunately that day came and not only did he have a healthy body, but he also decided to get married and forget the past. Today there is joy in my heart knowing that my brother is smiling again and that they have created a new life with his partner”. ...

Aug 09 2020

August 9, 2020

“I am 19 years’ old, I wear my scarf and niqab because I chose to. What people say has never stopped me because God’s affirmation is more important than anything else for me.It is true that my outfit is black and thick, and I also know that I feel the heat more than anyone else, but my faith is so strong that I take the heat in this life for the sake of hell.In the same way that people are free to wear what they want, it would make me happy if that freedom isn’t taken from me and my clothing is accepted.What makes me sad is the fact that most of the criticism I get is by people of my own gender and they are women!”. ...

Aug 08 2020

August 8, 2020

“Life will present you with different paths. When I graduated from Duhok’s Chemistry science department, I worked in journalism as an independent Kurdish Yezidi woman with the Kurdish based TV channels and radios. Then life presented me with another opportunity, which was working in movies and cinema. I now work in Northern and Southern Kurdistan with an international team as an assistant fashion designer, which is a great experience for me in cinema. That is life, it doesn’t stay the same. I am yearning to work as a journalist in media again, and I will continue to work in cinema, because I truly love it”. ...

Aug 07 2020

August 7, 2020

“I am 22 years old and I have come from Eastern Kurdistan to go to Sulaimani for our great Sheikh’s funeral. It was initially not in your plans to come here, but the Sheikh’s son announced and said:Let all my father’s Darvishs come and fear nothing. Hopefully nothing will happen. When we arrived at the Bashmakh border, they stopped us at the Iranian side and Iranian forces fired at us. Me and a few others were wounded, but fortunately my wound is not deep. They wanted to stop us at the KR’s border as well, but later they were very helpful”. ...

Aug 06 2020

August 6, 2020

“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