Latest news feedRefugees Magazine Issue 146 ("Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence") – Refugee testimonies: Qais & Layla
Collected by Rupert Colville
"I was kidnapped in the garage and my wife saw me from the window," says the husband, after picking the pseudonym Qais, while his wife settles for Layla (the Middle Eastern equivalent of Romeo and Juliet). "She was so scared, she collapsed. She was pregnant and I thought the shock would cause her to have a miscarriage. They covered my face and took me in a car somewhere far away."
Both Qais (a computer engineer) and Layla (a trained translator) are 30 years old. They met when she began translating documents for his company – and married on 25 December 2002, three months before the start of the Iraq war.
Qais is Sunni. Layla is a Kurdish Shia. It seems strange now, but at that time – just four years ago – their religious identities were not considered important.
"Both my parents are Shia, but it wasn't a problem," said Layla, during a recent interview in the Syrian capital Damascus.
"Mixed marriage was very common in Iraq between Sunnis, Shia and Christians," explained her husband. "My mother is Shia and my father is Sunni, and we lived in a mixed Sunni-Shia neighbourhood. The stratification of society into religious sects was not part of our society."
The first year after the war was "OK", said Layla "but after that it became like hell. The neighbourhood where we used to live has been taken over by Shia – it is one kilometre from Sadr City. Sunnis and Shia have exchanged apartments and now you do not see a Sunni living in a Shia neighbourhood, or a Shia living in a Sunni neighbourhood."
They received their first threats in March 2004: "They started calling me on the phone and threatening my family with provocative and scary messages such as 'We will take your wife away,' or 'We will make you divorce her,'" said Qais. "I didn't know whether it was a Sunni upset because I had married a Shia, or vice versa.
"After the war, a mixed marriage became inconceivable. Everyone was suddenly saying to my in-laws: 'How dare you let your daughter marry and live with a Sunni?' One day we woke up to find graffiti on our house saying 'Their blood is wanted.'"
They stayed on too long, and on 20 May 2004 Qais was bundled into a car by four men and driven away. He was lucky. Many people taken away like this are found tortured and dead a few days or weeks later, but his kidnappers were at the criminal end of the spectrum – people more interested in money than in settling religious scores. In fact, despite remaining their captive for 16 days, he never actually found out whether they were Sunni or Shia.
"They scared me, but I was not tortured. My family had to pay US$25,000 for my release."
After they let him go, Qais and Layla fled to Serbia, where an uncle of Qais has lived for 28 years. While they were there, Layla gave birth to a daughter, who almost ended up stateless because there was no Iraqi embassy to register her. In the end, lack of money drove them back to Syria, where they are not allowed to work and depend on Qais's parents' pension to survive.
"I had a dream, built a house, had a career and opened a private firm and now all this is gone," said Qais. "With all this sectarian tension, I worry that my wife's family will pressure her to leave me."
Return is unthinkable. "If we go back," said Layla "we would have to go through both Sunni and Shia areas. You don't know who will catch you – whether a Sunni group will catch us because of me, or a Shia group will catch us because of my husband."
She looks down at the ground: "Suddenly you have no life."
Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 146: "Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence" (April 2007). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (1.27 Mb) here or high-resolution (4.25 Mb) here.