A YEAR AFTER IT WAS FREED, MOSUL FIGHTS ON IS wanted the cave we were hiding in so they threatened to burn us. Our choice was to be burnt or bombed... we had no hope
The Yosif family make their pilgrimage every two days, as if visiting the grave of a loved one. And in a sense they are – although that loved one is their former home, now a heap of rubble piled next to the devastated al-Nuri mosque in Mosul’s once-beautiful old town.
They weep when they see it and they are not alone. Down the road, another man cries beside his wrecked house.
The Yosifs’ explanation for coming is simple: “Because there is nothing better than home.”
We meet them in Iraq’s second-biggest city a year on from its liberation from Islamic State’s three-year occupation.
This was the brutal jihadis’ last bastion – the place where their leader proclaimed his caliphate in the mosque.
IS clung on bitterly as Iraqi and Kurdish forces and coalition air strikes blasted Mosul to powdery oblivion. An estimated 40,000 lives were lost; 70% of the city was destroyed.
In the old town, skeletal remains of homes sag above our heads, their once-hidden innards twisted and exposed like those of the corpses that still rot within.
Endless piles of stone are churned with remnants of family life – a rug, a basket, a child’s shoe perhaps lost mid-flight.
As the battle raged for three months, the Yosifs hid with 53 others in an ancient cave.
There was no light; they ate only wheat with water snatched perilously from the mosque’s well. There was no space to lie down, no toilet.
Mum Hiam, 43, was pregnant. Her beautiful daughters Ahlaa, nine, and Masra, eight, were terrified of the dark.
She recalls: “We lost weight, our skin was scaly and itchy. It smelt terrible. The bombs fell and finally we could not breathe for dust. IS wanted the cave but we refused. They threatened to burn us. But we had no hope anyway.”
Finally forced out into the bombs and bullets days before liberation, they wept with relief when they saw Iraqi soldiers.
In a refugee camp weeks later, Hiam gave birth to daughter Ellen. She weighed just 1kg.
Her face terribly aged, she says: “She was fighting for life.” Incredibly, Ellen won that battle. The family now rent a half-built house in the east of the city. Their only surviving possession, discovered in the rubble, is a wardrobe. Hiam smiles: “There is no money to rebuild yet we have faith we will return. We have hope now.” It is because of this fierce determination that the old town is starting to breathe again. There is no plumbing, no electricity, but 130,000 have returned. In Mosul overall, 830,000 of a million displaced have come home. Shops and cafes are reopening; battered sofas laid out for coffee, fashion
dummies and footballs for sale amid the debris. Washing lines snake between bullet-pocked walls, clothes gathering the white dust that shrouds buildings and fills your mouth.
Sharmem Mohammed, 50, says: “We have no roof but we can’t afford rent elsewhere.” Grandmother Batool need support for all they witnessed. One boy tells me: “I saw people executed for owning a TV. Outside the mosque, Alá says his name. He is resilient,like his city. On the outskirts, a sign in bright letters has been put up. It proclaims: I Love Mosul. These people really do... and they desperately need help to rebuild it. UNICEF is supporting families affected by the conflict. You can donate at Khamees says the only thing that survived in her home was her bed. “Now I sleep on it even though the sun comes through the roof,” she smiles.
But the area is littered with tens of thousands of IEDs. We are shown a newly discovered one and beat a hasty retreat. Water is helping people return. Oxfam repairs have brought supplies to 35,000. Children playfully suck clean water from hose pipes.
Hospitals, too, are being slowly rebuilt. Many were devastated by air strikes or IS arson. Three serve the whole city – there were once seven.
At al-Khansa hospital the operating theatre is charred. It’s the only paediatric unit and its mortality rate is up 20%. Incubators are sometimes shared.
But UNICEF has rehabilitated more than 30 wards here, saving many young lives.
And the organisation repairs minds, too. Hiam’s grandson Alá, seven, is mute due to trauma.
His mum Reem, 24, explains: “I tell him ‘It’s done, it’s finished’ but lots of times IS took my husband and my son was screaming ‘Bring back my dad’.”
He now goes to a school rehabilitated by UNICEF after it was torched.
Like 70% of Mosul kids Alá did not attend lessons for three years but half a million are now back in class. They
www.unicef.org.uk/donate/
iraq-crisis Oxfam has now aided almost 100,000 in Mosul. To donate visit oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/emergency-response/iraq-crisis
There is no money to rebuild yet we have faith we will return. We have hope now HIAM YOSIF WHO LOST FAMILY HOME IN BATTLE FOR MOSUL