The Reunions Were Reaffirming, But Not So the Stories

In August 2014 the self-proclaimed Islamic State attacked the Yezidis in their heartland in northern Iraq.  The black flags showed no mercy.  Hundreds of thousands of Yezidis are now are refugees, among them good friends of mine.  I recently went back to see them; the reunions were reaffirming.

They shared their stories of terror-filled escapes and multiple resettlements, but they knew they were among the lucky who did not lose any immediate family member to death or captivity.  The intimacy of the descriptions of the experiences did not allow their stories to be minimized.

But all around the other stories, some of which I heard,  filled the air with an invisible weight. The tellers were compelled to tell, and all were compelled to listen.  Everyone has a story; everyone is a story. 

(The following names have been changed.)

Khider escaped from the jihadists 3 weeks before we met.  He and other Yezidis, initially numbering 800 in his group, were moved from town to town during his near-eight months of captivity.  Fear built their walls of imprisonment, and his recollections were a tangle of rusty barbed wire:  An old woman accused of being a witch beheaded; his sons being taken away to be converted to Islam and trained as jihadists; threats of being killed for little or no reason.  “I was not afraid of dying.  I was afraid of being tortured,” Khider said as he lit yet another cigarette.

Young teen-aged sisters Amsha and Rêsan entered the tent with uncertainty. They sat on their haunches and avoided eye contact.  Knowing that the girls were not going to talk, their uncle chimed in to tell their story for them.  The girls had been recently release after being held captive by the Islamic State jihadists since last August.  Someone had paid a ransom, but that was not discussed.  While in captivity Amsha pretended she was retarded, her lazy left eye helping the ruse.  Following suit, younger Rêsan chopped her hair short.  They were not sold and were returned unmolested for which all were grateful.  Nobody knows where their parents are, the uncle said. The girls' eyes remained locked on the ground.

Unlike most others, Ferhan was immediately engaging in recounting his story.  He and his family ran to the mountain when they heard of the Islamic State’s barbaric attacks on the other side of Mount Sinjar.  They and thousands of others took refuge at a spring tucked in the mountain, “drinking only drops of water.”  After 2 days they were reduced to eating the low quality grain intended for sheep, “… and finally all we had was leaves and grass to eat.”  After a week  an escape route was opened up through nearby Syria.  Ferhan’s family joined the Biblical throngs crossing the brittle landscape of summer.  Some died.

Faisel silently entered the room of the half-completed house, and immediately sat on a thread-worn mat by door.  He was thin with a young man’s soft mustache, and the familiar vacant look from hollow eyes.  He and his family tried to escape the jihadists on the first night of the attack, fleeing up Mount Sinjar’s southern steep zig-zagged road.  His parents and five of his siblings were captured, and there has been no news from them since.  

There was an edgeless matter-of-factness in the voices that only faintly suggested their sufferings, and their deeply shadowed futures.

I choose to believe that, as they have done throughout their long, uneven, and rich history, the Yezidis will survive; and, that they will again find prolonged moments of affirmation and joy in themselves, community, and religion.

The Last Temple

My last three visits to the Sinjar (Shingal) region of northern Iraq have focused on visiting and photographing all of the Yezidi temples (mazara) located there. (Please see previous postings.) With the attentive help from my good friend, Sheikh Xarbi, I completed the journey in April. 
Rob Leutheuser 

On Friday we visited what I thought were the last four mazara on the north side of Sinjar Mountain – Sheikh Barakat, Sheikh Shems, Sheikh Mand, and Sheikh Amîn. It being the first day of the Iraqi weekend, all were being visited by enthusiastic Sinjari Yezidis, as much to enjoy the weather and picnic camaraderie as to visit the mazara. The setting of the latter pair – Mand and Amîn – was absolutely spectacular, but the four mazara had been renovated roughly a now-standard design with the spire's capped with tan block stone and sharply fluted. The exceptions were becoming more difficult to find.

Mazar Sheikh Mand

I had considered leaving the Sinjar the following day, but swiftly changed my mind when Sheikh Xarbi said that there was one last small mazar we could visit. And so we did. 

Mazar Sheikh Qurish sits at the very edge of the mountain's northern foothills that mound up from the tapering alluvial fans melting into the Mesopotamian Plain. We drive for a half an hour on the roads of opportunity through the greened winter wheat, and where not planted, the broad fields of either yellow or lavender wildflowers. We pass small herds of sheep and smaller herds of families searching for the wild spring tuber, quma, coveted by all. Nice puffy clouds, not always a feature, drift overhead.

And there the little temple stands, its softly curved and fluted spire rising above a field of yellow that hides slabs of unmarked stone headstones tilting in the ground. Its humble beauty takes the air from my lungs.  I stop for a long moment to absorb. It is visceral. It is entire.

Mazar Sheikh Qurish

A group of women are washing the swaths of bright cloth (perî) that are hung inside of all mazara, the cloth that is kissed, knotted, and unknotted by the Yezidis upon every shoeless visit. Large pieces of red, yellow, green, silver, white, purple, and gold fabric are draped over the enclosing stone wall and on the struggling olive trees, drying in the sun, waiting to be rehung.

Drying Peri

And in the shade of the mazar brewing tea over an open fire sits an amply mustached Yezidi with scarf loosely wrapped around his head. We join him. The day is complete.

Mazar Sheikh Qurish

A Return to Sinjar: Yezidi Temples - Part I

In Iraqi Kurdistan there are many Yezidi temples, the most famous collection being at Lalish, the Yezidis' most venerated site. But because of the isolation of the Sinjar, the temples and shrines are the least known to the occasional contemporary visitor. Being less confident of my continued access to the region, sooner has become more of an imperative, and so the journey continues.

Sheikh Abdul Qader Temple

26 October 2012 - We jankle along the rutted tracks through the apron of low hills at the foot of Sinjar Mountain, looking for the Yezidi temple Sheikh Abdul Qader.  Soon we see its squat spire gleaming white on the autumnal brown landscape, at once dramatic and humble, as we later find its keeper, Sheikh Mijo Seado Uso.

Sheikh Mijo Seado Uso

I am once again in the Sinjar, called Shangal locally, an isolated region in northwest Iraq, fully defined by the 60-mile long mountain of the same name. From space the mountain looks like the ridged back of an enormous science fiction creature emerging from the featureless Mesopotamian plains, heading due west to the nearby Syrian border. My goal is to visit more Yezidi temples and shrines – mazar – that grace this traditional and sometimes forgotten heartland. (Please visit "Yezidi Faqirs and Sheikhs in Sinjar", March 2012, and multiple other posts in this blog.)

Sheikh Ezid Temple

Although many are flat-roofed, the Yezidi temples are generally known for their domed tops or conical spires, the latter often fluted. They commemorate both holy and historical persons, as well as angels from Yezidi cosmology, sometimes being one and the same. In the Sinjar they are most often found in the foothills, close to where the traditional villages were located before Saddam Hussein forced their abandonment; others are tucked deep in the mountain.

Sheikh Abu Bakir Shrine

The shrines are much much smaller and often appear spontaneous with stacked rock walls. They denote natural features such as trees, rocks, caves, and springs that are sacred to the Yezidis.  They too are given names like the temples. All mazar are the object of devotion and the destination of pilgrimage.

Sheikh Suliman Baxri Xider, mejewer

Each temple has a keeper, or mejewer, responsible for maintaining the temple, lighting the candles (wicks soaked in olive oil), and accepting the donations from visitors.  It is a duty passed down through generations and often shared by members of the family.  Usually, but not always, mejewers are members of the sheikh class.

Sheikh Shems Temple interior

The inner chamber of all temples is festooned with tangles of colorful silk cloth hanging from the walls.  Upon entering shoeless, Yezidis tie knots into the cloth for good fortune, and untie knots of others thereby fulfilling the wishes of those who preceded them.  Also common to the inner sanctums is a pillar in the center upon which the olive oil fires are lit, and round rocks are placed waiting to be stacked, again for good luck or the granting of wishes.

Sheikh Romi Temple

Once again I owe my deepest of gratitude to my dear friend Sheikh Gharbi, without whom my visits to the Sinjar would be impossible.

A Return to Sinjar: Yezidi Temples - Part II

 

24 October 2012 - The Yezidi temple of Sheikh Chilmira is surrounded by razor wire and soaked in clouds, the former from the hastily constructed American military base now manned by four Iraqi Army soldiers; the latter because we are on the crest of Sinjar Mountain in western Iraq. As Sheikh Gharbi, brother Bobir, son Faisel, and I approach, thin, matted-hair dogs bark our arrival. A soldier named Daud, a Yezidi himself, warmly welcomes us. Visitors and pilgrams are few these days.

Daud leads us to the passage through the razor wire; intermittent winds lead us to the temple's east side where we join hundreds of fingernail-sized black beetles plastered on the walls, they too seeking refuge from the west wind. The clouds briefly part and we gather at the edge of the crest looking to the north.  Five hundred meters below and 15 kilometers distant the sun is shining on Sherif al Din, perhaps the most well-known temple in the Sinjar, where we will visit later in the day.

 

We enter the open courtyard, and taking off our shoes, stoop to pass through the Hobbit-sized arched passage to the inner chamber, taking care not step on the threshold. Gharbi and the others kiss the stone wall before entering. The windowless room is small, but domed ceiling high.

After our eyes adjust to the darkness we see a few swaths of brightly colored silk hanging on the walls, damp and languid.  As tradition holds, we tie and untie knots to make our wishes and to release those of others before. In the floor there is a hole, just large enough for an arm. Gharbi kneels and reaches down to his shoulder bringing up some soil in his fingertips. He dabs some on his forehead – to cure illness he says. Feeling a the beginnings of a cold, I do the same while thinking about the holy dirt at the Catholic Sanctuario de Chimayo in northern New Mexico. The Yezidis do not have a monopoly on such practices.

It starts to rain.  Large drops. We hastily say our goodbyes over Daud's repeated invitations to stay for tea, and race back to the truck picking our way through the concrete barriers and razor wire, a chorus of barking cheering our every step.

As we drive off of the mountain crest, a covey of partridge flush from the roadside. “This is a symbol,” says Gharbi smiling.  "Today will be a good day."  And so it was.

A Return to Sinjar: Yezidi Temples - Part III

26 October 2012 - There is an annual celebration – a tawaaf – held at every Yezidi temple. It is an occasion to celebrate not only the Yezidi religion, but the community as well, remembering that the Yezidis remain a marginalized, if not persecuted, hyper-minority among the Kurds and in the “middle east.”

Gharbi, Xider, and I had just driven across the west end of Sinjar Mountain, paralleling the Iraq-Syrian border. Gharbi had been told that the tawaaf at Sheikh Ali Shemsa temple is to be today, and we hastened our pace to attend.

Not but 3 kilometers off the main road we see the scrum of cars; Xider turns and follows the pot-holed tracks bumpling through the parchment. I can see the temple's spire, and as we got closer, I notice with measured attention, human figures not only on the temple's roof, but up the fluted spire as well. Experiences at Lalish's annual gathering, jemaiyaii, have taught me that Yezidis can have an exuberant attitude towards their religious sites, some would say irreverent in appearances, but to climb the spire?

Xider parks the car in the helter skelter and we walk towards the temple. There is a rickety scaffolding upon which the young men perch precariously. They are replastering the entire structure in a gleaming white plaster; only the top quarter of the spire remains earthen brown.  Mixed one dish at time, the lime paste is passed hand-to-hand from base of the temple, up the ladder, and into the hands of a square man cutting an imposing figure in his red-and-white checkered kaffiya against the blue sky. He raises the dish each time received, makes a proclamation to which the crowd joyfully responds, and passes it up the human chain to the one teetering at the top who spreads the paste with his hand. When in the day they began this herculean effort I do not know, but it is not until 2 hours later that it is completed to a roar of approval.

All the while, crowds stream into the small temple, littering their shoes outside of the doorway. The mejewer and other men commanding religious respect, sit on cushions in the outer chamber, smoking cigarettes and talking as the faithful squeeze through. As the pilgrims enter the inner sanctum, they leave a gift of money on the threshhold which the mejewer deftly scrapes up and tucks in his robe in a single motion. The pieces of brightly colored silk cloth endure thousands of knots tied and untied. Many wishes should be fulfilled today. 

A short distance away a larger throng of Yezidis compress under the deafening din of live music powered by a generator in the back of a pick-up truck. The young musicians sit on lime green plastic chairs, their traditional rhythmic music screeching and squawking as the surrounding circle of 200 dancers hold hands straight-armed and move their feet in united restraint. A cluster of women in the traditional dress of white robes and black jackets, topped by white head scarves or oversized buns, watch impassively.

As I think that the tawaaf is complete in its relentless energy, a parade of Yezidis approach from another direction. It is the pari sewarkeren (the carrying of the fabric) ceremony. The silk cloth in the temple is replaced during the tawaaf at each temple. Even fabric can only grant so many wishes.

The afternoon grows late. Gharbi, Xider, and I retreat to the car for the hour longdrive back to Gharbi's home. I sit tiredly in the back seat, smiling. It  has been a good return to the Sinjar; a good journey indeed.

Yezidi Faqirs and Sheikhs in Sinjar (Shingal)

But for Sinjar Mountain there is no topographic relief in the region of northwestern Iraq or northeastern Syria. The 75 kilometer-long mountain runs on an east-west axis; its narrow ridge seems lonely.. Its history is as radical as itself, and has been home to Yezidian people as long as can be remembered.

Today the Yezidis are still there, but the world has changed. In the 1980s Saddam Hussein, in the time-honored strategies of despotic rulers, sought to lessen the threats of enemies (real or perceived) through ethnic dilution. In this case he moved Kurdish and Arab Muslims into the Sinjar region. Additionally, he forcibly relocated the Yezidis from their villages to desolate concrete collective villages (mujamabaats) on the plains at the foot of both the north and south sides of the mountain.

Tentatively a few Yezidis are moving back to some of the villages. But all sense danger and realize neglect. The Sinjar is not officially in quasi-independant Iraqi Kurdistan where conditions of safety for the Yezidis, although not perfect, are relatively secure.  Additionally the Sinjar is a poor brother to Iraqi Kurdistan when it comes to the sharing of the Kurdistan Regional Government's largess.

The comforts of modernity erode tradition. There are few such comforts in the Sinjar.

These are portraits of Sinjari Yezidis – primarily sheikhs and faqirs - both religious designations within Yezidi'ism. The younger and more educated generation prefers Western-styled clothes; and, mustaches, if at all, are modest, as is the dress for all women.

Yezidis in the Sinjar

Thursday, 14 October 2009


Faqir Khalaf stood outside the walls of the small village of Karsi, his white beard resplendent against a brittle and blue Mesopotamian sky. Nearby was an Ottoman police station last used almost a century before. Although the stone walls are battered, it remains an imposing structure and reminder of an earlier era drenched in ferocity and oppression. I was in northwestern Iraq's Sinjar (Shingal) region, of the same name as the 75-kilometer long mountain, near the Syrian border visiting an isolated population of Kurds who adhere to the Yezidi religion.

With an unbroken gaze, he held my hand in both of his to punctuate his request … or I should say demand … that when I return to America I must tell the President that the Sinjari Yezidis are poor and in danger; they need America's help. Only when I agreed did he release my hand and eyes. Although a small man, he suddenly looked smaller.

I had been hearing this same refrain since arriving in Iraqi Kurdistan several weeks prior: The Sinjari Yezidis were alone and they knew it.

They resented their comparative poverty and feared for their very survival once the American military withdrew from Iraq 10 months hence. This fear was not abstract; it was palpable and rooted in personal experiences. (Indeed, earlier in the day my host, Sheikh Gharbi, took me to the grave of a friend who was killed in a terrorist attack but a month before.)


For centuries Sinjar Mountain was a refuge for Yezidis, but that was to change under Saddam Hussein who relocated ethnic and religious populations to eliminate feared or actual opposition to his regime. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Sinjari Yezidis were forced from their traditional villages into collective villages (mujam’at) located on the plains below the mountain,  and Arabs were brought in to the region. The Sinjari Yezidis now share the area with Muslims – Arabs and Kurds. They are no longer the feared 19th century brigands, and the mountain is no longer their refuge.

Yezidi'ism is monotheistic and regarded by many to be related to Zoroastrianism, the first of monotheistic religions. The Yezidi religion has absorbed seemingly discordant fragments of beliefs and rituals from other religions that have flooded the region and has for centuries protectively wrapped itself in its own secrets. A result has been a perfect environment for the propagation of benign and malicious misinformation, such as casting Yezidis as “devil worshippers.” (The Yezidis believe in a Lucifer who was actually loyal to God.)

They are a small religious minority within the sprawling Sunni Muslim-dominated Kurdish community. Some Yezidis vigorously maintain that they are a separate ethnic group; many acknowledge that ethnically they are Kurdish. Some Muslims believe that Yezidi'ism is a 12th century apostate offshoot from Islam; most Yezidians believe their religion to be very ancient and they alone are the true descendants of Adam. Regardless of the viewpoints, substantiated or not, for centuries Yezidis have been intermittently and violently persecuted by Muslims – Kurdish, Turkic, and Arab alike.

Fakir Khalaf wore a roughly woven black shirt under layers topped by a white robe. Such shirts are only worn by faqirs, those who choose to lead ascetic lives, a choice limited to members of four tribes. Because the shirt had been soaked in Zamzam, the holiest of springs at the Yezidian religious site of Lalish in Iraqi Kurdistan, itself is considered holy. All who greeted Khalaf did so with reverence and kissed the sleeve of the black shirt.


Contemporary news from Iraq rarely includes the plight of the Yezidis. Even when the occasional story about the religious minorities reaches the Western press, with very few exceptions, the emphasis is on Iraq’s Christian communities whose situation is also dire. The last spate of significant news regarding the Yezidis was in 2007. In April of that year, 23 Yezidis were taken off a bus outside of Mosul and executed. Others on the bus were not harmed. And on August 14th, suicide bombers killed over 500 Yezidians two Sinjari villages. Many considered these to be strategic terrorist attacks to stoke the furnaces of sectarian violence in Iraq. Yezidis were the victims nonetheless.

Such news still crackled unspoken through the air in the village, even when four young men retreated to the shade to resume a game of cards on the ground covered by powdered sand, while we drank the obligatory sweet tea from stocks that had none to spare.

That night while sleeping in a mujama’at on the plains at the foot of the mountain, I was awoken by the deep rumbling of large military planes flying low overhead. Soon, silence will disturb the sleep of Sinjari Yezidis.

At the Spring - Sinjar, Iraq

On Iraq's Sinjar Mountain (Shingal), Pir Maholo and his son arrived at the spring-fed well with four donkeys in tow, each ladened with a dizzying variety of empty water containers. Their clothes were tattered and their deeply bronzed faces glowed under the loosely wrapped red-and-white kaffiyas. They had walked for 3 hours, leaving their flock of sheep grazing in higher in the mountains.


Pir Maholo's attempt to maintain his small flock of 20 sheep was an act of determination and desperation, desperation born from natural and political causes. The Sinjar region was in its 4th year of drought and the mountain showed it - brown and barren. The Sinjar is home to a large population of Yezidi Kurds, adherents to an ancient non-Islamic religion persecuted for centuries by Muslims. Unlike the Yezidians who live in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Sinjari Yezidis' security is vulnerable in the broken-glass pattern of  the Kurdistan Regional Government's and the central Iraqi Government's  military presence and jurisdictions. They are as isolated as the Sinjar Mountains.

I was the guest of Sheikh Gharbi, a Yezidi I had met the year before at Lalish during the annual Jama'iyya celebration. At first I hesitated to accept his invitation, noting that I would be leaving the security of Iraqi Kurdistan; but the doubt was quickly dispatched knowing I would be well taken care of.  It was a singular opportunity to visit this legendary community of Yezidians.

That morning we had left Sheikh Gharbi's home in Zorafa, one of seven collective villages strung along the northern toe of the Jebel Sinjar brutally imposed on the Yezidians by Saddam Hussein some 20 years ago. Later we arrived in the 3-house mountain village of Zerwa, home to one of Gharbi's brothers. He and others were slowly repatriating their villages. Yusef had killed a small goat in anticipation of our arrival. After the mandatory tea in a dim and small room, we piled into two pick-up trucks full of men and children driving up the mountain. It was a celebration.


The Yezidi mazar (temple) appeared as we bumped around yet another bend in the dusty wash, its blindingly white and fluted spire piercing the cloudless sky. Although monotheistic, Yezidis build such mazars at places deemed to be holy in their own right, such as springs; locales of historical events in their cosmology; and, to honor holy persons often in conjunction with their cemeteries. This mazar, Pir Ewra, dedicated to person, clouds, and the nearby spring, anchored one of three hillside cemeteries.

As Yusef started the fire of thumb-sized branches collected by the children, and Gharbi sat with Sheikh Fakir Murad in the mazar's anteroom, Pir Maholo arrived at the well. His son had already climbed down the well to reach the water now 10 feet below the concrete rim. It took an hour to fill all of the containers, and knowing that they would be lucky to reach their flock by nightfall, Pir Maholo refused the invitation to share in food. We watched as they left, donkeys laboring under their life-giving load.

We returned to the temple for our meal. Yusef presented the tin platter of charred and tasty goat meat, and his son unwrapped a bag of flat bread and another of fresh tomatoes. Spring water was our drink.



Robert Leutheuser
October 2009

2009 Travel Black and White Photo Sampler

Pir Malaho, Sinjar Region, Iraq


Lalish, Iraqi Kurdistan

Ba'adra, Iraqi Kurdistan

near village of Karsi, Sinjar Region, Iraq

near village of Karsi, Sinjar Region, Iraq