My name is Amjad and I am from Shingal. I was 14 years old when ISIS came to the border of Shingal. Our life, it was very good before. We had everything we wanted. It was very good. It was a peaceful life.
On the 3rd of August 2014 ISIS went to a village near to us- all our relatives were there. It was about 1 am in the night. We didn’t sleep at all in the night. We just kept calling our relatives to see what’s going to happen.
Our relatives there and even all the men in the village were fighting with ISIS so the women and the other families could run away. At this time, we got a call that one of my uncles and cousins got captured by ISIS. Until now we don’t know anything about them. And my other cousin when he was fighting with ISIS he got killed. It was very hard to hear that our relatives were getting killed or captured by ISIS.
I was shocked. I couldn’t think about fear or running or anything. I was just stuck there; I didn’t know what to do. We saw the explosions when they shot the cars, all this.
We didn’t’ think about running. But when we saw all the people around us in the other village in Shingal were running away, we ran away. We didn’t have time to pack or take anything with us. When we were running, we heard the sound of bombs exploding. When heard the explosions, we said we would never go back to Shingal. We thought it was gone. We would never go back home.
At first, we didn’t know where we were going. Thousands of cars behind and in front of us. There was fighting there too. We saw ISIS with our eyes. We met them there. While we were driving, we saw ISIS firing at us. Some of their bullets went over our car. We were between death and life. We knew we just had to keep going and not stop. Even if we die on it, we have to continue to go.
It was very hard because we spent many years in different camps. Our life is much different here than our life than Shingal. There we had a home, we went to school, we had everything we wanted but here it is much different.
My friends told me there was a program that is very good and useful so, I decided to come. [The facilitators] Alaa and Baxtiyar were very, very good with us. It was like spending it with my family, like we had known each other for a very long time. It was very good program for me.
They taught us the way to live the life, that the first step you go through is you have to forget your past and make goals in your life. And they taught us hope, thinking of your future, hope and courage and thankfulness and how they are all connected and how to be a better person by connecting them all together.
My goal is to get a better life, a comfortable life. Maybe one day I can start studies again. I want to be a person like Alaa and Bakhtear- the way they talk and the way they help people. So maybe after I study, I can help people in this way- helping people to reach their goals, to make goals for their life.
I want people back in America to hear our story so that they know what happened to us. We got the benefit of this program and I want this program to go to other places to more people to reach more people.
-Amjad
Kurdistan Iraq
Because of the generosity of people like you, Amjad has found emotional healing. BUT there are thousands of people just like Amjad with stories that are yet to end with hope. Help Tutapona bring hope and healing by donating today.