Farhan hussein shaqqli, 36
w hen isis arrived, my wife, Fatuma, and our three-year-old son, Dakhwaz, were visiting family in her home village. I fled into the mountains, where I lived for two months alongside thousands of other Yazidis. The nights were cold, but the mental anguish was worse. Fatuma’s cell phone had been disconnected, and I didn’t know if they were safe. I had heard the horror stories of mass killings and girls taken as brides or trafficked as sex slaves, and I feared the worst.
I made it to a refugee camp in Kurdistan and asked everyone I saw if they had seen my family. In August 2015, a year after the attack, a Yazidi man in Syria sent me a video of my wife and son. An Arab man claimed to have bought them from ISIS, and he wanted $1,500 (U.S.) for their safe return. I knew that such sales helped ISIS fund their war, but I felt trapped. I begged for donations. I barely slept or ate. People in the camp gave what they could—$20, $50—and after 15 days, I had raised enough.
As instructed, I went to the TurkishIraqi border and paid. When at last I saw them, my son was so thin, and he was shaking. He had been beaten, and his face was cut. He wouldn’t look at me, not at first. My wife looked like a shell of her former self. I pulled them close to me, and we cried. It was so tragic, but at least we were together, when so many Yazidi families were not and never would be.
At the end of 2017, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Delnas. The decision to come to Canada was a difficult one. My wife’s brother was still in captivity in Iraq. But we wanted to bring our children somewhere safe, so we left. We now live in a basement apartment in Richmond Hill, and my son is in Grade 1 and speaks better English than I do. He loves cartoons and soccer.
Last fall, Fatuma received a video of her brother from ISIS. They said that if we raised several thousand dollars, we could be reunited. We started to raise the money, but ISIS soon stopped responding, and we feared he had been killed. Recently, some Yazidi women who escaped said they had seen him, and that he is alive. We were overjoyed. We now pray every day that he will make it out soon.