Too cold to get out of bed

Words and images by Suzy Sainovski

On August 3, 2014, Mayan, her husband and their children fled the escalating violence in Iraq, along with thousands of others, to the Sinjar Mountains, where they were stranded for 15 days with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Mayan shared, “Many died in the mountains and there was no food or water.” The family then made their way towards the Syrian border where passing cars offered to take them to the safety of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. “When we first arrived at this unfinished building, we just slept on the ground. The community around here gave us food”. A few months after they arrived, a harsh winter set in, “That first winter here was so cold,” Mayan recalled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hareman (6) left, mum Mayan (46) and brother Manaa (8) right. Hareman stayed very close to her mum inside their tent. The family has lived here since they fled their home town in Iraq in August 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mayan, her husband and their seven children live on the first floor of this unfinished building along with their extended family. There are also displaced families living on the level below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 From left to right – Hareman (6), Mayan (46), Suaad (14) and Manaa (8). Just behind this building, located in Dohuk in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is another building housing displaced families. There are a staggering 3.2 million internally displaced people in Iraq.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Families have created makeshift clotheslines between the pillars of the unfinished building.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hareman and Manaa have fun running around and playing football with their friends in the unfinished building despite the dangerous one storey drop on three sides of the building.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“When my hands are very cold I put them in my pockets,” shared Hareman. Current evening temperatures in this part of Iraq hover just above freezing and winter has only just begun. Last winter the local community donated clothing to displaced families. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first sight of this building is quite a shocking one. It’s hard to believe that people actually live in these conditions. and the onset of winter makes an already difficult situation even more challenging for displaced families. Last winter was a particularly harsh one across the Middle East.

 

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