The dentist Shamir* stared at the letter in his hands. It said that he was impure because he was not a Muslim. It said he should leave the country immediately or face the consequences, and if he and his family hadn’t left their house within eight hours, they would die.
Rage and fear were struggling in his body. Leave the house where his family lived for three generations! He had lived in Dora his whole life. It was the Christian district of Bagdad. Who did those guys think they were?
He remembered the story of one of his neighbours. They had not fled when the first letter appeared. After a few days, armed men came in and killed their dog. His neighbours left their house the same day. Within a few hours a Muslim family moved into the house.
Shamir picked up the DVD that was enclosed in the envelope and began watching it. The DVD started with some verses from the Quran. Then he saw a young man sitting on his knees. The man was interrogated by an armed man wearing balaclavas. The young man said he was a Christian. He lived and worked in Bagdad. Then the men explained to him that he was going to die.
Shamir had not heard his wife coming in. “What are you watching, Shamir?” she asked, but her question went unanswered as he was overcome with vomiting. Before their eyes, the young man was beheaded. Amal was sick too. “We have to flee,” he whispered. “Pack only what is really necessary.”
Within six hours the car was packed, and Shamir drove like a madman. Where to go, Syria or Jordan? Would he be allowed to go there? He was not sure. He decided to drive to the north, to Kurdistan, where he heard it was safe.
A few weeks later he was sitting in a small tract home in Kurdistan. He and his neighbour, a former teacher, tried to catch a goat and milk it, but neither one had any experience with these animals. Shamir was dirty, sweating and above all, frustrated.
How could he ever make a living in this place? His children were hanging around in the shadow of the house. They couldn’t go to school because they did not speak Kurdish. Shamir sighed. What would the future bring for him and his children?
He was grateful for the small house. Of course every luxury was missing, but they were tolerated and allowed to stay. Shamir frowned as he thought about when winter would come and this little house had no heating system. Winters tend to be tough in these mountains.
Shamir’s story is one of thousands. He and his family are internally displaced persons (IDPs). Every day 3,000 refugees flee to north Iraq. Forty per cent of them are Christians. Dora, in Baghdad, traditionally was a Christian area. Now it has been “religiously cleansed” of most Assyrian Christians.
Church Destroyed
Not only people, but also churches are increasingly targets of religious violence. On June 5, extremists broke into Mar Yacoub of Nisibin Church in the Dora neighbourhood. According to eyewitnesses, armed militants looted the church, removed the steeple cross, abducted two of its guards and took them to an unknown destination.
