Tuğba Akyılmaz/JINHA

SHENGAL - August 3 is approaching--the first anniversary of the Shengal massacre. As Naima Faris, a survivor of the massacre, struggles for life in the mountain refugee camp, she says she refuses to give up this place to Daesh.

Nearly a year ago, the world watched as women fled the Iraq city of Shengal, the central city of the Êzidî religious group, under Daesh attack. Footage of the women with children bundled in their arms, pushing through a dust storm in their flight from the besieged city flashed across television screens. The young and the old walked for days along the dusty roads; babies died under the scorching sun. Meanwhile, thousands of women and girls from Shengal were taken captive by Daesh as men were slaughtered.

Naima Faris, 45, from the village of Siba Şêx Xidir near Shengal, was one of those women. She was recovering from a hysterectomy a week before when Daesh struck.

"How were we supposed to know that they were leaving us to the wolves," she said of the 17,000-strong army of peshmerga supposed to be protecting the Êzidîs and the Federal Kurdistan Region. When the attack came, Naima was in no shape to go anywhere except on a stretcher.

"My children said, 'no, we're leaving,'" she said. "I ran away, dragging myself over the rocks. My clothes were destroyed. We didn't eat for 12 days. I was searching the ovens for a dry piece of piece. For the children, I would milk goats for them so that they could stay on their feet."

Her daughter-in-law had fled without even having time to put on her shoes; they shared a pair of slippers and wrapped their feet in Naima's keffiyeh. She recalled her grandchildren waving to the warplanes passing overhead, calling out for food, "as if they could hear us."

Naima cries as she says that her younger brother, his wife and her nieces and nephews were captured by Daesh. She still has not heard from them. In the wake of the attack, her family was warned that there was no water on the mountain. Finally, when they saw that the lowlands were unsafe, they headed up the mountain.

"We said, 'if we're going to die, it won't be in the hands of these infidels,'" she said. "What did we see but people living there, baking bread, building a life." The camps on the mountain were founded by Shengal natives under the protection of the YPG and HPG, the Kurdish guerrillas who were the only force to protect the people of Shengal. Now, Naima lives in the camp.

"As soon as we moved to the camp, my son joined the comrades," she said, referring to the guerrilla. "If all the Êzidî youth had done this, Shengal would have been liberated long ago and we'd be in our homes."

(gc/fk/cm)