They called me "Sabia."

Call me 'Jaria.'

Daesh saw me.

As "Spoils of War."

I met them on German streets.

I met them on European streets.

I met them inside the UN corridors.

I met them in every white Western nation.

In Western universities,

In the lecture halls of moral authority.

I met them seated,

Inside global human rights bodies,

Speaking the language of free Palestine,

Of human rights and justice,

With clean hands

And borrowed grief.

Just like the enemies of the untouchables.

I met them everywhere.

The West calls civilised

In White nations,

In politics,

In peace,

In asylum camps,

In partnership with Jasmine,

In global human rights chambers.

They are omnipresent,

And omnipotent.

I met my violators.

Rebranded as Western Citizens,

as Refugees, As Asylum,

As poets, as artists, as journalists,

As editors, Democrats, Labour,

As Green, Conservative,

As inter-race identities,

As inter-religious DNA,

As children of white women,

As partners of white women,

As mayors, ministers,

As prime ministers,

As heads of state,

As business icons,

As ambassadors,

As diplomats,

As leaders.

As scholars,

As voices of concern.

I encounter them.

Again and again

On German streets,

Across Europe,

Across humanitarian organisations,

Within UN spaces,

Within global human rights bodies,

Within ICC halls,

They walked freely,

Unnamed and glorified.

I was born in Sinjar.

I am a Yazidi.

I am ten years old.

Age does not matter to them.

They are my

Cassowaries,

Hyenas,

Lions,

Tigers,

Anacondas.

I am their prey.

their daily food,

Though I am only ten.

 

They hate me.

for what I am,

For my faith,

for my identity,

For my way of life,

For my plural blood,

For my ethnicity,

For my beliefs.

I was born before they were born.

I lived before they lived.

They tried to unmake me.

They sought to erase me.

By chaining my body,

By selling me in slave markets,

By enslavement,

By abduction,

By repeated gang rape,

By tearing me again and again.

They broke my bones.

My legs,

My body,

My vaginal parts,

They cut my flesh.

They stripped my humanity.

Reduced to me as an object,

Turned me into a thing.

I walked through minefields of humiliation.

playfields of humiliation,

A walking carrion,

A walking carcass,

A walking corpse.

It is a Yazidi Genocide.

Yet I stood tall,

Like Dalit women elsewhere.

At times I ask:

Who bears the greater wound?

In the history of genocide

The Yazidi girl,

Or a Dalit girl

Who endured unimaginable

Torture,

Violence,

From our traditional enemies?

We share a history of persecution.

Genocide written upon our skins.

Our histories bleed together.

Genocide written on our skins.

Rape was used as a weapon.

To fracture soul and body,

To erase our race and identity.

Yet our identity endured.

And our race endured.

Our names survived.

They attempted erasure.

for centuries

Of Yazidi skin,

Dalit skin,

And failed.

Despite chains,

Despite objectification,

Despite rape,

Despite enslavement,

Despite beheaded bodies,

Despite lynchings,

Despite being stoned to death,

Despite abductions.

They failed.

We are determined.

We fell.

We stood,

For their hunger

To erase us.

Even in falling,

We rise.

We fall,

But not into silence.

We raise our voices.

Against their tyrannies,

Against their genocide.

Against annihilation.

I will not be intimidated.

I will not be threatened.

I will not be erased.

from the earth and from my skin,

Even if they tried in Sinjar or

Indus civilisation.

They may seek to erase my Yazidism.

But my sacred heartland, "Lalish"

Protects me from their Islam and sword.

Just as Ambedkar protected his

untouchables elsewhere

Through his constitutional justice.