Remembering: The Sitos flee Erbil
Jul 29, 2010
On March 31, 1991, Erbil was thrown into chaos. In response to the Kurdish uprising earlier that month, the Ba'ath regime began to take back the cities of Kurdistan. The Sito family was one of thousands who fled to the Iranian border in search of safety.
But on the eve of this exodus, the family was unsure whether they should leave.
Shivan Ahmed was nine at the time, the youngest boy in the family. "We had prepared food and clothes that night, we were discussing whether to escape or not. Suddenly a mortar hit our neighbor's house; there was death and injury. We realized we had to escape and we got in our car and drove," he remembers.
Farida Sadiq, his mother, felt the family had no choice. "We had suffered from tyranny and suppression at their hand. They had killed my husband and I was afraid that they would kill my children too," she said.
The family hid out in some nearby mountains for a day, but the mortars falling on Erbil sounded too close, so they took refuge in a town about two hours away. "We stayed in Khalifan for seven days, but the Ba'ath regime controlled Erbil and was heading closer," Shivan Ahmed said.
They moved to another town, Soran. near Haji Omran, the Iran-Iraq border. They stayed in the radio station for Voice of Kurdistan for a night. The next day, Farida Sadiq and her children left for the Iranian border.
"The road to Iran was very crowded, full of cars and people beside the road too," Shivan Ahmed explained. "We tried to go by car, but within three hours we moved 100 meters, so we went on foot most of the time."
Farida Sadiq remembers, "On our way, we suffered illness, sleeping under rainfalls and hunger for days."
Shivan saw many things he would never forget on the journey. "It was very sad and poignant to me when I saw a man killed when a car rolled over him while he slept under it during a storm," he said.
The family stayed for a month and a half in Urmia, Iran. About 40 people were living in a house with two rooms. They were watching TV when they realized that the Peshmerga, the Kurdish army force, had defeated the Ba'ath Regime in several places in Iraqi Kurdistan. They returned to Erbil. But even then they were afraid because the city was unstable.
Today, Shivan Ahmed's family still lives in Erbil. "Now, we feel free and happy," Farida Sadiq said. "There is no more suppression and killing Kurds just because they are Kurds will not happen again."
Above Photo: Shivan Ahmed poses for a photo in Erbil, Iraq. (Photo courtesy Shivan Ahmed)
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