It’s a cold day and the black streets have turned white with snow. I am on a bus on my way to college. A group of other students are on the bus, some girls are sitting in the back row. All of a sudden, I hear my own name. My sister, Kazhan, comes into my mind and I look back, I think it’s her calling me, but I am disappointed, I can’t see her. I put my headphones on again.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Five years have passed since the day I left my father; he was in his worst health condition ever, receiving intense medical treatment.
My six-member family is from the stunning city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, a breathtaking city surrounded by dense mountains. My 21-year-old sister is the youngest in our family. She just graduated from college last year.
Our family’s life is full of love, which always keeps renewing among us. But our lives, like others, have always faced many difficulties. When he was young, my father was always telling us how he lived his life in agony, how our country had always been at war and threatened, and how successive Iraqi and other governments in the region oppressed the Kurds.
My father is a 65-year-old brunet man who is a friendly, calm person. I have never seen him angry. Our lives were his main priority. His entire dream was that we would not experience the same pain he had suffered in his entire life.
I am the only one from my family who lives far from home. I am a refugee in a colourful and heartfelt British city. Now I am a student at college.
My six-member family is from the stunning city of Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, a breathtaking city surrounded by dense mountains. My 21-year-old sister is the youngest in our family. She just graduated from college last year.
Our family’s life is full of love, which always keeps renewing among us. But our lives, like others, have always faced many difficulties. When he was young, my father was always telling us how he lived his life in agony, how our country had always been at war and threatened, and how successive Iraqi and other governments in the region oppressed the Kurds.
My father is a 65-year-old brunet man who is a friendly, calm person. I have never seen him angry. Our lives were his main priority. His entire dream was that we would not experience the same pain he had suffered in his entire life.
I am the only one from my family who lives far from home. I am a refugee in a colourful and heartfelt British city. Now I am a student at college.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
It’s a rainy day and like most other days I prepare myself to go to college. I quickly get to the station and wait for the bus. I hear the ping of my mobile phone message, I don’t take out the phone until I get on the bus and then I see it is from Kazhan, my sister.
The first text message
Winter, 2020
Hello my darling brother, my father’s condition is getting worse, his illness has had more effects on his body and his hands are completely wrinkled. The doctor told him he has to hemodialysis his kidneys three times a week, because they do not work as before, and he can no longer drink water as much as he needs to quench his thirst. His legs are swelling badly.
This is the message I read on my way to college. I take a deep breath and look at the street from the bus window; my eyes glance at a child holding his father’s hand as they cross the street. This scene makes me a bit happy.
My sister always goes with my father to the hospital, so that they use the equipment dedicated to him; through two pipes, they remove all the blood in my father’s body and after filtering it, they put back into his body. This is called dialysis.
She also writes: We are surrounded by family who always talk about hope and faith, and I always tell them to put themselves in my shoes; each time I look at his face, I feel death is almost seizing his life, and every day I see his sad face and body, I’m entirely helpless.
After reading the message, I think about how people take for granted many things in life, even if they are happy or unhappy, or how long it takes to learn something difficult and the time needed to get used to it. I can recall the days when I was with my father and sister, how happy our days were! We used to be a close family going on to picnics and trips. But now I live far away from them, and my father’s life depends on a set of devices. My family’s life has become a journey between hospital and home, and this is the only thing we can do to protect his life.
I get close to my college, get off the bus. I go into the classroom. We are studying a new subject, but my thoughts are elsewhere. A question comes to my mind: Is it possible that I have not been able to see my father even in his worst condition? Is it because I was born in a region which is called the Kurdistan of Iraq?
Can I be a refugee just because I believe in freedom and truth? Just because I believe in exercising my rights, should my life be under threat? Kurdistan has become a prison for journalists like me; a few months ago, five journalists were sentenced to six years in prison for exercising their very basic rights.
My entire life in exile has become a wondering about my family’s safety. Will my brothers get kidnapped? What danger may they face?
It has been only a few weeks since the new pandemic has spread unprecedented fear among the people. It makes people even more distanced and unsocial. The effects are twice as many for the refugees. I am thinking about what would ordinary people do when they feel loneliness?
A few weeks passed since the first message, one day when I return from college, I get the second one:
Today we went back to the hospital again; the hospital has become our second home or maybe another prison! I look at the other people. Everyone here has the same pain. Everyone here shares the same crime, which is drinking water. Their kidneys do not filter the water and fluids, so it gathers in their bodies.
This message reminds me of refugees who are about to die because of dehydration in the sea; because of the salt, they are not able drink a drop of water.
My focus is on my father, every day my situation is deteriorating with everything in life, I am tired of talking and I don’t want to listen to anyone. I just look at my father, when I look at the hands and see how they are wrinkled and swelling because of those devices that take his blood, I become hopeless and pessimistic again. I look at the machines as they filter blood, and realise there are still two hours left. I lean my head on a wall and tears come down from my eyes. It has been five years that we haven’t been able to laugh as much as our hearts desire.
In the hospital, my eyes glance at the TV. The news talk about the recent protest of the young people protesting against the government who have paid only two salaries in a whole year, who monopolized the entire market and people’s lives. But they were soon answered with live ammunition by the government’s gunmen and nine people were killed. They even closed all the TV channels that were broadcasting the protests.
I go near our father and look at the machine and think that if it wasn’t for it, our father would be dead by now. You know he has polydipsia. Drinking water has been restricted to him for nearly six years now and he always says he hasn’t drunk water with his own heart ever since. Because if he drinks more than the limit, we know it may cause death.
Our father likes those who come to this department of the hospital, because most of them are the same age as him, and they all tell their stories of misfortunes and events.
Here, father saw his friend whose kidneys also failed. Even though father’s life is getting difficult, today he told his friends, with a big laugh, how he fell and got hurt last night. He is so outgoing that he always makes his friends laugh. And I don't know if I should laugh at his stories or cry about the events.
I look at the street in front of the hospital from the window and I see it’s completely empty, unlike the other days. On Fridays, people go on a trip, picnic, family gatherings and have a good time. But we have been away from these family meetings for years because of our father's illness.
In the message, Kazhan talks about these pains, and writes:
I know every corner of this hospital very well, I am accustomed to the colour of blood, the cries and screams. They wake me up tens of times at nights with screaming.
At the end of her text, Kazhan tells me about Younis, a patient with the same disease as my father who told her, ‘Youth and health are the two things that humans do not know their value until they are gone.’
Younis sometimes talks about his youth, and how brave and strong he was. But now sickness has taken away a lot of things from him, especially his legs. The best companion of Younis, is his auxiliary crutch which is always with him.
I finish reading the message and I murmur to myself, ‘I wish I could throw my pain out of the window one morning by watching the sunrise.’
Bakhtiar is a young Kurdish refugee living in Britain for more than ten years but has not yet been granted asylum. He has always been wondering if he can see his mother again. His mother is the only parent alive, and he longed to see her, but his mother died of cancer, and he couldn’t reunite with her.
Kazhan is a name that means a group of mountains. Now when I think of her, I recall a saying that says something like, ‘they all saw me in their own way, but no one understood what I was saying.’
After receiving Kazhan’s text, I wrote this message to her.
Whenever I sit at any food table, when I try to get to the spoon and fork, I feel like I am full even before I have eaten. Because whenever I want to eat, I think, maybe my sister didn’t eat anything today. When I want to drink water, my father’s grief comes to my mind and I say that I will not drink until my throat cracks, until my tongue breaks. I will hate water until I will be buried. Our religion says water is the source of life, but my father has been begging God for six years for his kidneys to recover, so that he may drink water, like a normal person, as much as he wants.
Water suffocates you angrily and revives you kindly at the same time. I didn’t see its kindness; thousands of people drowned in the oceans to reach a peaceful life. It’s also water that became a danger to my father’s life.
In our history, circling around memory in the east is like blowing fire until there are more flames. The east itself is a piece of fire and burning. We in the east are on fire and will burn in the snow of your winter!
Maybe the answer to Kazhan's letters was these lines. I always want to talk about my times full of loneliness and to tell her about my life. But I never could send the messages of my heart, and I wrote only for myself.
I often walk on foot. Strangely, for me seeing the Sunderland River gives me complete peace. I walk a lot. I walk for half an hour, I get another message, Kazhan wrote, Mr Younis died.
The first text message
Winter, 2020
Hello my darling brother, my father’s condition is getting worse, his illness has had more effects on his body and his hands are completely wrinkled. The doctor told him he has to hemodialysis his kidneys three times a week, because they do not work as before, and he can no longer drink water as much as he needs to quench his thirst. His legs are swelling badly.
This is the message I read on my way to college. I take a deep breath and look at the street from the bus window; my eyes glance at a child holding his father’s hand as they cross the street. This scene makes me a bit happy.
My sister always goes with my father to the hospital, so that they use the equipment dedicated to him; through two pipes, they remove all the blood in my father’s body and after filtering it, they put back into his body. This is called dialysis.
She also writes: We are surrounded by family who always talk about hope and faith, and I always tell them to put themselves in my shoes; each time I look at his face, I feel death is almost seizing his life, and every day I see his sad face and body, I’m entirely helpless.
After reading the message, I think about how people take for granted many things in life, even if they are happy or unhappy, or how long it takes to learn something difficult and the time needed to get used to it. I can recall the days when I was with my father and sister, how happy our days were! We used to be a close family going on to picnics and trips. But now I live far away from them, and my father’s life depends on a set of devices. My family’s life has become a journey between hospital and home, and this is the only thing we can do to protect his life.
I get close to my college, get off the bus. I go into the classroom. We are studying a new subject, but my thoughts are elsewhere. A question comes to my mind: Is it possible that I have not been able to see my father even in his worst condition? Is it because I was born in a region which is called the Kurdistan of Iraq?
Can I be a refugee just because I believe in freedom and truth? Just because I believe in exercising my rights, should my life be under threat? Kurdistan has become a prison for journalists like me; a few months ago, five journalists were sentenced to six years in prison for exercising their very basic rights.
My entire life in exile has become a wondering about my family’s safety. Will my brothers get kidnapped? What danger may they face?
It has been only a few weeks since the new pandemic has spread unprecedented fear among the people. It makes people even more distanced and unsocial. The effects are twice as many for the refugees. I am thinking about what would ordinary people do when they feel loneliness?
A few weeks passed since the first message, one day when I return from college, I get the second one:
Today we went back to the hospital again; the hospital has become our second home or maybe another prison! I look at the other people. Everyone here has the same pain. Everyone here shares the same crime, which is drinking water. Their kidneys do not filter the water and fluids, so it gathers in their bodies.
This message reminds me of refugees who are about to die because of dehydration in the sea; because of the salt, they are not able drink a drop of water.
My focus is on my father, every day my situation is deteriorating with everything in life, I am tired of talking and I don’t want to listen to anyone. I just look at my father, when I look at the hands and see how they are wrinkled and swelling because of those devices that take his blood, I become hopeless and pessimistic again. I look at the machines as they filter blood, and realise there are still two hours left. I lean my head on a wall and tears come down from my eyes. It has been five years that we haven’t been able to laugh as much as our hearts desire.
In the hospital, my eyes glance at the TV. The news talk about the recent protest of the young people protesting against the government who have paid only two salaries in a whole year, who monopolized the entire market and people’s lives. But they were soon answered with live ammunition by the government’s gunmen and nine people were killed. They even closed all the TV channels that were broadcasting the protests.
I go near our father and look at the machine and think that if it wasn’t for it, our father would be dead by now. You know he has polydipsia. Drinking water has been restricted to him for nearly six years now and he always says he hasn’t drunk water with his own heart ever since. Because if he drinks more than the limit, we know it may cause death.
Our father likes those who come to this department of the hospital, because most of them are the same age as him, and they all tell their stories of misfortunes and events.
Here, father saw his friend whose kidneys also failed. Even though father’s life is getting difficult, today he told his friends, with a big laugh, how he fell and got hurt last night. He is so outgoing that he always makes his friends laugh. And I don't know if I should laugh at his stories or cry about the events.
I look at the street in front of the hospital from the window and I see it’s completely empty, unlike the other days. On Fridays, people go on a trip, picnic, family gatherings and have a good time. But we have been away from these family meetings for years because of our father's illness.
In the message, Kazhan talks about these pains, and writes:
I know every corner of this hospital very well, I am accustomed to the colour of blood, the cries and screams. They wake me up tens of times at nights with screaming.
At the end of her text, Kazhan tells me about Younis, a patient with the same disease as my father who told her, ‘Youth and health are the two things that humans do not know their value until they are gone.’
Younis sometimes talks about his youth, and how brave and strong he was. But now sickness has taken away a lot of things from him, especially his legs. The best companion of Younis, is his auxiliary crutch which is always with him.
I finish reading the message and I murmur to myself, ‘I wish I could throw my pain out of the window one morning by watching the sunrise.’
Bakhtiar is a young Kurdish refugee living in Britain for more than ten years but has not yet been granted asylum. He has always been wondering if he can see his mother again. His mother is the only parent alive, and he longed to see her, but his mother died of cancer, and he couldn’t reunite with her.
Kazhan is a name that means a group of mountains. Now when I think of her, I recall a saying that says something like, ‘they all saw me in their own way, but no one understood what I was saying.’
After receiving Kazhan’s text, I wrote this message to her.
Whenever I sit at any food table, when I try to get to the spoon and fork, I feel like I am full even before I have eaten. Because whenever I want to eat, I think, maybe my sister didn’t eat anything today. When I want to drink water, my father’s grief comes to my mind and I say that I will not drink until my throat cracks, until my tongue breaks. I will hate water until I will be buried. Our religion says water is the source of life, but my father has been begging God for six years for his kidneys to recover, so that he may drink water, like a normal person, as much as he wants.
Water suffocates you angrily and revives you kindly at the same time. I didn’t see its kindness; thousands of people drowned in the oceans to reach a peaceful life. It’s also water that became a danger to my father’s life.
In our history, circling around memory in the east is like blowing fire until there are more flames. The east itself is a piece of fire and burning. We in the east are on fire and will burn in the snow of your winter!
Maybe the answer to Kazhan's letters was these lines. I always want to talk about my times full of loneliness and to tell her about my life. But I never could send the messages of my heart, and I wrote only for myself.
I often walk on foot. Strangely, for me seeing the Sunderland River gives me complete peace. I walk a lot. I walk for half an hour, I get another message, Kazhan wrote, Mr Younis died.
Ako Karim Ismail is from the Kurdistan Region in North Iraq. He is a journalist and has worked as a reporter and news editor for TV and newspapers in Kurdistan. He arrived in the UK in 2015 and now has asylum seeker status. During the last two years, he has been developing real experiences into written works about love, loss and safety, and hopes to write a book about his journey, family, and his explorations of humanity.
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