A baby on the way

Her pregnancy was complicated. Her doctor had ordered her to keep still until the baby was born. Her only thought as she fled from Syria to northern Iraq:

“I must not lose my child.”

“Having to sit in a car was scary enough. But when I was told to get on a horse, I was really alarmed,” says Kamla.

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Her stomach and back are burning in pain. They lift her up onto the horse, and she sits down as gently as she can. They give her Ibrahim, 4, who will be sitting with her in the saddle. She holds her young son tightly. He had been excited when he first saw the horse, but he was scared when they lifted him up onto its back. Now she tries to calm him down. She whispers in his ear that he must sit still, must be quiet.

One of the people-smugglers holds the reins and leads the animal forward in the dark.

She can’t see her hand in front of her face. Still, she desperately strains her eyes, trying to make out the contours of her husband Omar, 35, and her eldest son Ali, 6.

Mountains and crags surround them. Hooves echo against rocks in the rugged landscape. Boots crunch against gravel.

Then she hears Omar’s calm voice in the night:

“They say we’ll be there soon, Kamla.”

But she’s so scared. There are so many stones! What if the horse stumbles and they fall off? Then all hope will be lost. Her heart is pounding in her chest and all she can think is:

“AM I GOING TO LOSE MY BABY?”

Then a gunshot explodes in the dark.

A tent in a lunar landscape

A refugee camp in a dry, mountainous setting.

The Bardarash camp is located just 120–130 km from the Syrian border, in a dry, flat, lunar landscape – a contrast to the otherwise beautiful mountainous country of northern Iraq.

Bardarash is run by the authorities and was first opened to house Iraqis displaced by the 2014–2017 war in Iraq. At the end of 2017, the camp was closed. But it reopened in October 2019 to help the 17,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing north-east Syria that were displaced by armed groups at the border areas.

Today (as of May 2021), there are 3,727 Syrian-Kurdish refugees living in Bardarash.

One of them is Kamla, 41.

“When we came here, I was six months pregnant,” she tells us.

Her third pregnancy was similar to her other two. She had been given injections to prevent her from giving birth prematurely, and she had been told to stay immobile:

“The doctors at home in Syria said that I should lie still. If not, my baby could die.”

She was also told that she would never be able to give birth naturally. At the hospital, they said that anything other than a caesarean section would be too risky. Both Ali and Ibrahim had been delivered by caesarean section, too.

Kamla's new home

The floor is covered with a rug. Along the wall of the tent are some mattresses. The only other thing in the room is a TV, a gift from a relative. Outside the door is a small hallway, where the family’s shoes are lined up.

It’s nice to be in Kamla's home.

Two plastic bags of dried herbs hang from the ceiling. The sound of a washing machine emanates from the small kitchen. There is also a hotplate and a small, shiny sink. Another door leads to a small room with a shower and a toilet.

The two brothers, Ali and Ibrahim, are lying on the floor watching cartoons with their little sister Sundus, 2.

Kamla's three children lay on the floor and watch TV, a gift from a relative.

It seems like Sundus is being drawn towards her mother at regular intervals. She leans on her mother and crawls up into her lap.

Kamla twists her daughter’s hair between her fingers or strokes her back.

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Omar and the sun

Kamla sits on one of the mattresses and begins by telling us about her husband, Omar:

“When he was Ali’s age, he underwent an operation which required a blood transfusion. But there was something wrong with the blood he received. And that’s why he developed a serious skin disease. He can’t be in the sun for too long. At times he has severe pain. He says it feels like someone is throwing boiling water on him,” says Kamla.

Kamla holds a photo of her husband, Omar, who was kidnapped by an armed group in Syria. His face is blurred to protect his identity.

After she met Omar, he was kidnapped by members of an armed group in Syria. They held him for nine months. When he returned home, he said that they had forced him and other men to train “to be like them”.

Kamla says that Omar was unemployed. In the end, he saw no other solution than to contact the group. He would ask to work for them in exchange for payment.

They agreed. But this meant that he had to be out in the sun a lot. In the long run, it took too much of a toll on his health.

One day, he ran away.

Three children are lying on a big pillow on the floor, watching TV.

Kamla's three children lay on the floor and watch TV, a gift from a relative.

Kamla holds a photo of her husband, Omar, who was kidnapped by an armed group in Syria. His face is blurred to protect his identity.

Why flee?

The first phase of the war in Syria started in 2011, with demonstrations in the capital Damascus and subsequent conflicts between the Syrian authorities and various armed groups. Over time, life in the north became dangerous. Eventually, many people fled to northern Iraq.

Kamla’s sister and brother-in-law told her that she and her family should also get to safety. Her brother-in-law could contact people-smugglers. Omar and Kamla agreed.

“It was terrible to have to leave my mother. But I couldn’t stay in Syria with my children. How would I manage to support them alone? It had become dangerous for Omar to stay in Syria. If the armed group had caught him, who knows what they would have done?”

The shot.

Where did it come from?

Another shot.

Her blood runs cold.

The smuggler says: “Don’t be afraid! Just keep going!”

Omar’s voice: “Kamla, don’t be afraid! I’ll help you down from the horse as soon as we arrive. We’re almost there.”

Her stomach hurts. Her back. Must not lose the baby. What if something happens to Ibrahim and Ali?

A scared voice in the dark: “Who was shooting at us?”

The smuggler: “An armed group. They didn’t want the men to leave, because they want to recruit them. We’re going to split the group in two. It will be safer for you.”

No education

Childhood.

“We were happy. We played. We had no idea about any problems.”

Kamla comes from a Kurdish village in north-east Syria, in the Al-Malikiyah district, known as Derika Hemko in Kurdish. The district has a city of the same name, and the river Tigris flows about 20 kilometres away, at the intersection of Turkey, Syria and Iraq.“We were five siblings, and I was the second oldest,” she continues. “My father was a construction worker in the city, and my mother took care of us. We had a house with two bedrooms.

“One of the first things I remember – and I must have been around five years old at the time – was that my father wanted to send me to school. But I didn’t want to go because I was afraid of the teacher. To this day, I can neither read, write nor do arithmetic.”

Kamla shrugs:

“It was actually quite common for the children in our village not to go to school. The reason was that we were not registered in the public system. We didn’t have ID papers.

“Today, of course, I wish I could read and write. Mostly because I want to help my children with their homework.”

Intense pain now. Stomach, back, and now legs as well.

The journey across the border only takes between 15 and 20 minutes. But it feels like an eternity.

Omar: “Now! We’re here.”

Finally. He helps her down from the horse.

Peshmerga are Kurdish armed forces, officially used for military and other security forces in Kurdish autonomous territories of northern Iraq.

Peshmerga are Kurdish armed forces, officially used for military and other security forces in Kurdish autonomous territories of northern Iraq.

Light from hand torches. Four uniformed men say they are from the Kurdish army, the Peshmerga, and welcome them to the autonomous Kurdish Region in northern Iraq. They are helpful. They hand out water. They say they will drive the refugees to a centre where they will be registered and assigned a place to live.

One of the soldiers addresses Kamla: “You are pregnant. You should sit in the front of the car.” At the centre, women and men sleep separately in caravans.

But there are so many women in the caravan that she has no room to lie down. For a while, she manages to lie on her side, otherwise she has to stand or try to sit.

She’s dead tired. So afraid for her baby. She feels like she’s in a coma.

The next day they are driven to Bardarash.

Chickens in Damascus

Little Sundus puts her arms around her mother’s neck and nuzzles her face into her throat. Kamla continues:

“Eventually, it became difficult for my father to find work. First, we moved to the city of Al-Malikiyah and later to Damascus, where the whole family worked on a chicken farm.”

Kamla is silent for a moment, before she asks:

“How can you expect to live a normal life when you’re poor?”

She shakes her head:

“I remember the feeling of hunger. Being so hungry that I couldn’t sleep,” she says.

“As the unrest grew in Damascus, we returned to Al-Malikiyah.

“Later, I met Omar, who was a friend of my uncle. Omar was working in northern Iraq at the time.

“We got married in Syria.”

Kamla is afraid to live in the tent to start with. Outside, winter storms are raging, with strong winds and heavy rain. The tent shakes. She is also afraid that the electrical wires will cause a fire.

She cries a lot.

Less and less help

“When we came here, we received food and water from the camp management. We had to set up the tent ourselves. It was difficult because my husband was ill.

“Later, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) helped us get birth certificates for the children and a marriage certificate for Omar and me. They are important papers for everything from schooling to healthcare and a potential home mortgage in the future.

Daily life

The weekdays go something like this:

“Sundus wakes up at seven in the morning, I get up and help Ali get off to school. I find him clean clothes, give him breakfast and make a packed lunch, and when I have a little extra money, I give him a coin so he can buy something good.

“The two youngest stay home with me. I cook and do housework. I have a friend in the next tent, otherwise I stay with the kids. It is generally safe here in the camp, but on the other hand, you can never know what kind of people there are here.”

She is fast approaching her due date. She visits the health clinic in Bardarash to explain to them that she can’t give birth normally and must have a caesarean section. They send her to a doctor in Dohuk, who says that she should have a natural birth.

Two weeks later, Kamla returns to try to persuade the doctor, but to no avail.

Her baby will arrive any day now. She returns to the clinic in the camp. There she talks to a woman who works for the UN and who agrees to contact the camp management. There is a lot of back and forth, and the days go by. Kamla is now overdue.

Finally, they arrange an appointment with the hospital for a caesarean section and Kamla is sent there.

Now, she is in so much pain that she just screams.

At the hospital, the doctors say she should have given birth earlier.

The baby could have died in her womb.

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Sundus tries to manoeuvre a ballpoint pen in her chubby child’s hand. She wants to draw. Kamla looks at her three children.

“I love all my children equally.”

Then she smiles a little:

“But I always dreamed of having a girl.

“When I realised that my baby was alive, I was incredibly relieved. When they put Sundus in my arms, I was happy.

“Now I hope God will help to make life easier.”

Sources: Syria.direct, UNHCR, Wikipedia

Pictured in Iraq:
Kristine Grønhaug (text), Beate Simarud (photo)