I found the readings deeply moving and also difficult at times to comprehend and process. I started with the second assigned reading. First I saw the picture of Yazmin and then I read after what happened to her. I thought that the burning had been inflicted o her. But then to read that she lit her self on fire from trauma and that she thought she was being recaptured was something that truly demonstrates the horrors that they faced. The stories we read this week further showed the brutality that was inflicted on Syrians, Yazidi, and people in Iraq. The brutality was often indiscriminate and also scarier because it was so unpredictable. I found problem with the author of the beekeeper saying that the boys had it worse. I feel like victims should never be weigher against each other and also that boys and girls each had horrific and traumatizing experiences that they had to survive. Nobody left their capture unscathed.
I think furthermore that what was overarching necessity for all survivors was the necessity of mental health and rehabilitation. As I read I just kept realizing that many of these people would have to watch the fathers, brothers, husbands die or hear about their deaths. However, they were fighting to survive and so they did not have real time to process their deaths. The trauma to have to repress your sorrow and fight for you and sometimes your remaining family to survive is an immense emotional burden. This on top of whatever horrors they faced after irreparably changes who you are as a person. While being able to escape is the first step there is so much that it takes to actually start to recover from such traumatic events.
I think another article that was so interesting was the one about Halabi. He was such an enigma in the article. I mean I felt like as the story unfolded more parts of him were exposed but at the same time he became more shrouded and secrecy. I think even by the end the person writing the article didn’t even really know who he was or what he stood for. I read Halabi as a man that would do anything to survive and that included leaving his wife and children behind and telling whatever stories that he could in order to achieve this. While there were stories of him helping or not being as violent there are also accounts of him being aware of the torture and oppression so many faced during his time in the intelligence in Syria. I think is there ever an innocent person who is a member of a government body that represses people. How do we justify allowing the possibility of refugee status for him. But then also as it was shown in the article he played a very small role in a much larger regime. They were after him because he was the highest government figure in Europe. As the article pointed out is this really justice if you were to try this small scale person for crimes when there are much bigger players still roaming free.
