Roza Amed

 

SHENGAL - Şeda Salım Bışar is a young Êzidî woman, who was taken captive after 73rd edict against Êzidîs but never gave up her passion for freedom. She tried to escape five times and at the end she managed to react to the SDF fighters. “I wouldn’t be alive if SDF didn’t exist,” said Şeda.

 

What we write about the last edict against Êzidîs on August 3, 2014 maybe are just a few drops in worlds of words… The lives became dark in Daesh’s migration routes and prison camps are bringing into blossom again. Resistance of Êzidî women, who have organized in many fields from their self-defense forces to their assemblies, has become a model for whole world.

 

Besides all these, of course it is difficult to find words that will tell some stories. Masculinity blended with militarism from Bosnia to Cyprus from Turkey to Korea in many parts of world sees the women’s bodies as the occupied territories in the battlefields. Daesh tried to do this in Rovaja territories.

 

This story is the story of women and they should tell how they become freeand how they resisted for holding on to the life… Şeda Salım Bışar, who was taken captive by Daesh and whose captured life ended on November 4 in a liberated region of Deir ez-Zor, began to tell her story…

 

‘They killed 68 old Êzidî women’

 

Şeda is just at the age of 20. She remembers what she faced during the edict like it happened yesterday. Şeda said they had been taken captive by Daesh since they did not have opportunities to escape and she added, “They took all captured people to the school. They took the men downstairs and the women upstairs. They collected all our money, phones and gold. Shortly afterwards, they put all the men in the cars and took them away. All of men were killed. They put all women in the cars and took us to Solağ village located between Telafer and Shengal. We stayed there for a day and a half. They took all young women to Mosul and Raqqa and sold them there. The other day, they took all old women behind the school. We heard dozens of gunshots that time. Clothes of Daesh members returning from behind the school were blooded. We could look at the women from the school’s window, we saw about 68 women had been killed. We couldn’t cry or lament for them. Then, they took the boys aged between 9, 10 and 11. We haven’t received any news from them since then. We don’t know if they were killed or they were taken as soldiers.”

 

’15 members of my family were taken captive’

 

Şeda said she had stayed as captive in a school in Telafer for a month and half. Şeda continued to talk as follows; “Every day they came and took the women they liked. They took them to Qezılqiyo, Kesrılnehra villages of Shia. Every day they took 50 or 70 women. I faced these with my family members. They took 15 members of my family captive.”

 

‘Children cried outside, I cried inside’

 

Mentioning that she was taken to Raqqa after a year of her capture, Şeda said she and four other Êzidî women were forced to live with a Daesh member named Fuad from Syria; “We stayed there for a month. We couldn’t meet our cleaning needs from fear. He forced us to take a bath. He tried to sell us.” Şeda said she and her two and half years old brother had been sold an Iraqi man named Ebu Ömer.

 

Şeda had to take care of Daesh members wounded during the war and she said she had been subjected to sexual abuse by a Syrian man named Ebu Salım and she had been abducted to Meyadin by this man. Şeda stated that she had introduced her brother as her son in order to prevent sexual assaults but she couldn’t manage this; “He beat my two and half years’ old brother. He broke his hand. He sent him outside at nights and knocked the door. The child was crying outside, I was crying inside. One day, I went to see a doctor Meyadin on the excuse that my brother was sick so that I wouldn’t have a baby from a Daesh member. Of course I did that secretly, he would kill me if he knew that. I couldn’t have a baby from the people killing us.”

 

‘You will forget Shengal and your people or…’

 

“They asked me “Are you a Muslim or not?” I told them “No”. They told me, “Your people are infidel”. They put me in a room, my brother in another room. They beat me that night with a pomegranate tree branch. I was told, “You will forget Shengal and your people or you will face these. Shortly, they sold me to a Libyan man named Remedan. Many Êzidî women were held by him.”

 

‘I wouldn’t be alive if the YPG didn’t exist’

 

Şeda said she had always tried to escape from the men she had been sold for five times and she told her last escape attempt as follows; “We were hiding in a house in the village called Mehkan. The people began to leave the battlefields. We changed our place with them. We contacted a member of the YPG named Xelil after trying many times. We had to go out from this place and react to Hecin region in order that they react to us. We tried to go there many times, we went and returned. But at the end, we reacted to the Syrian Democratic Forces.

 

“I wouldn’t be alive now if the YPG didn’t exist. I understood I was free when I saw them. I was reborn. They are my mother, father and commander.”

 

What had happened to your family’ members?

 

Şeda ended her story but what about other women in her family? Şeda’s three sisters and her aunt jumped into water to not be taken captive by Daesh; “My three sisters and my aunt jumped into water of Cızir Raqqa on July, 2014 to not be taken captive by Daesh. My aunt was 22 years old and her name was Zine Bişar Xelef. My sister named Xade Salım Bışar had been a nurse at a health center in Shengal before the edict; she was just 16 years old. My other sister Henan was just 15 years old.”

 

Şeda learned what had happened from her survivor sister Wefa; “I came across with Wefa after two years. She told me what had happened. She said, ‘Daesh took us to Raqqa and we stayed there for a month. Then, a man came and wanted to take us to Baghdad. Actually he wanted my aunt. But our aunt didn’t want to leave us. They put four of us in a car. They told us, ‘We bought you, you will marry us.’ They tied our hands. We got rid of the ropes by using our mounts and we jumped from the car. They began to follow us with their weapons when they realized that. We didn’t have any place to hide; we just had the flow river. We jumped into water. I could manage to survive but they caught me again. I asked them what had happened to my sisters and aunt. Then, I took me the place where they had been buried.’”