'ALL I CAN DO IS TELL THEIR STORIES'

She sends me her alias in a Skype message. Who she is, what she does, and where she does it make it too dangerous to use her real name. She is in Kurdish Iraq, in the northern part of the country, which is in the middle of so many battles, wars, and conflicts that it’s hard for outsiders – and sometimes even for local people – to keep track. But she has a focus amid the chaos: She works with Syrian and Yazidi refugees who have been targeted, tortured, and driven out of their homes by the Islamic State.

The name she has chosen to use is Evin.

 

She is 32 years old. She is Kurdish, too, although from Turkey, not Iraq, and she has close family ties with Yazidis. “They are Kurds, too,” she says. The world knows little enough about Kurds; Yazidis are even more obscure, although they have been in the headlines in recent years. In Iraq, they numbered some 500,000, many of them living near Mount Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. Their religion is an ancient and syncretic one, with elements from Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and Islam. Some Yazidi practices resemble Muslim ones: They won’t eat pork, for example. But for centuries, Yazidis have been persecuted, mostly by Muslims, as “devil worshippers.”

 

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