Beritan Şengalî closed her eyes and thought. She thought of how she could say her feeling and then she went in the middle of the room and showed us a place, “Here it is. They stopped right here. Everything happened here,” she said.

ROJBIN DENIZ

Shengal- Beritan Şengalî was stuck in the village, where she returned to find milk for her sister’s child. Then, she had to face the reality of ISIS away from her family. Her words may be the words of hundreds of women. In this article of our article series, Beritan tells us how she hid in a tunnel and what her eyes recorded in her mind.

Beritan could not return from Suka Kevn after finding her uncle’s house.

“In a short time, thousands of ISIS members entered Suka Kevn. I could not stay in the yard anymore because they could see me. I was in fear as I heard their voices closer. There was a tunnel-like place in the yard of the house. I hid there. In a very short time, ISIS members came to the house where I was hiding in the yard. The tunnel was narrow but I moved on slowly and found myself inside the house. There was a thin wall between the tunnel and the room.  There was a small place fulling with old stuff, and it did not attract anyone's attention. ISIS members did not check it.  It was a tight place, luckily because I was thin and small, I could fit in even the narrowest of places. There was a small hole in the wall to see the room. I saw ISIS members entering and going out of the room.”

“My father did not teach me how to use guns”

Beritan witnessed the atrocities that would be told to the whole world through the small hole in the wall of the room. She witnessed what women faced in that room.

“After a while, I heard the cries, screams of women. ISIS members brought about 40 women in the room. The women were in fear and their clothes were torn. I was also in fear of being seen. My father knew what Yazidis and Yazidi women had faced during the previous edicts. While leaving my family to find milk for my sister’s child, my father gave me his gun to protect myself. But my father did not teach me how to use it. I was holding the gun to be ready to use it if ISIS members saw me.”

“They looked so scary”

Beritan saw some of her relatives among the women; her uncle’s wife and her 40-day-old child… She knew most of the women kept in the room. She watched them through the small hole in the wall.

“The women were forced to sit together in the room. There were totally 45 women in the room. But I did not know how many children were in the room. I could not see them because there were ISIS members inside the room. There were always six or seven ISIS members watching the women and children in the room. All ISIS members carried guns in their hands. They looked so scary. They generally spoke Arabic. But there were ISIS members speaking different languages. I stayed in the basement not to be seen by them.”

“I was very afraid of being found by them”

What hurt Beritan the most was not being able to do anything while hiding behind the wall. “I was alone and thought if I could fight ISIS members with a gun. There were many ISIS members so I did not have the courage to fight them and I was very afraid of being found by them.  I saw my uncle’s 40-day-old daughter. She always cried because she was hungry. My uncle’s wife did her best to calm down her but she could not. Then, ISIS members entered the room and shouted to my uncle’s wife, ‘Silence your baby or we know how to silence her.’ They told her.”

“They were holding chopping knives”

Stating that most of the Yazidis do not know Arabic, Beritan said that the edicts made the Yazidi community even more introverted. Underlining that women were first people, who were killed during the edicts carried out against the Yazidis, Beritan said that hundreds of women, like her uncle’s wife, did not know Arabic due to their introverted community.

“I understood what ISIS members told my uncle’s wife. My uncle’s wife did not understand their words but she understood what they said from their faces. She tried to silence her baby again. Then ISIS members entered the room again. My uncle’s wife told them in Kurdish, ‘My baby is hungry, if you give me milk, she would stop crying.’ However, ISIS members did not pay attention to her. ISIS members told her, ‘If you do not silence your baby, we will cook her and force you to eat her.’ Then, two ISIS members entered in the room. They were holding chopping knives in their hands. One of them took the baby from my uncle’s wife, the other took the head of the baby…”

Beritan stopped talking at that moment, she could not speak anymore. We waited for her in fear of what she would tell us about the baby. Beritan tried to tell us what she witnessed many times but she could not. We were about to tell her “Do not tell” but at that moment she began to talk again. “When I tell you that moment, I will feel more powerful to avenge innocent Yazidi women and their children,” she told us and showed a place in the room, “Here it is. They stopped right here. Everything happened here.”

Tomorrow: A world dying under the debris of Shengal