Hind Jijji has returned to her hometown of Qaraqosh in northern Iraq after Islamic State fighters were pushed out of the town. She and her family left the area two years ago due to fears that Islamic State fighters will target them as religious minorities.
Jijji was shocked to witness the destruction and ruins brought upon a town she once called home. Her house where she spent her entire childhood was destroyed.
“I can’t describe how I really feel. All of these pieces that have been thrown and destroyed carry beautiful memories,” Jijji said. “These are things that mom and dad worked very hard to build.”
Jijji , her parents and siblings were lucky to have left the town in August 2014 two hours before Islamic State took over. Some in town weren’t as lucky.
Before IS attacked Qaraqosh, Safaa was going to Mosul’s College of Medicine and dreamed of becoming a doctor.
Her family left everything behind, taking refuge in the relatively safer Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.
Jijji told VOA that militants have taken whatever they could and destroyed the rest.
“In every room, there were shattered parts of furniture, broken plates and torn clothes making it hard to walk through the house,” Jijji said. “It was so messy because IS fighters were planning to burn the house, but for some reasons they didn't.”
Jijji added that IS burned hundreds of other houses that belonged to Christian minorities in the area, including the tall church of St. Mary al-Tahira.
“IS graffiti has been smeared on its [church] walls, the nave is scorched black by fire and the altar has been vandalized,” Jijji said.
St. Mary al-Tahira church was once Iraq’s largest Christian church, and about 3,000 people attended the church every Sunday. Its symbolic significance for Iraqi Christians explains why hundreds of residents rushed back to the town to re-establish the church in late 2016.
But things for many Christians including Jijji are not the same anymore. The rebirth of the Christian community in Qaraqosh and the rest of Iraq seems difficult as most Christians who fled the town refuse to return, and instead are embarking on journeys to settle abroad.
The mass Christian departure from Iraq has made the future survivability of the church uncertain in a region where Muslims and Christians have lived as neighbors for centuries.
IS not only targeted minority Christians, but also broke societal fabrics in Iraq.
“I don't want to live in this place again. I don't want to ever live next to people who chose to stay under IS rule,” Jijji told VOA.
She and her entire family are attempting to leave Iraq and join their community diaspora in Europe.
Migration to the West for her is not only an attempt to find safety, but also a door for opportunities.
“Two of my friends who moved to France are now preparing to study medicine. And my high school friend, Maryana, has become a great photographer there,” Jijji said.
Maryana Habash, Jijji ’s friend from high school, left with her family the night IS attacked Qaraqosh as well.
“The situation was so complicated that night that I didn’t even know where some of my family members were,” Habash told VOA. “I could think about anything but how to find a safe place for my two little sisters.”
Habash and her family took political asylum in France in early 2016. She now lives in Riems, France and began school.
Just like her friend Jijji , Habash, too, thinks Qaraqosh is in her past now.
“I might want to travel there at some point in the future, but I will never live there again. The values of human rights are non-existent in Iraq,” Habash said.
Habash says eight more families from Qaraqosh also are settled in Riems, France, and more are on the way, suggesting that Riems will become their new Qaraqosh in the future.
Mass Christian immigration from Iraq is undermining the efforts of Christian leaders who want to establish an autonomous region for Christians in northern Iraq with Qaraqosh as its capital.
“Continued mass migration of our people to the West is the greatest danger to our existence as a religious minority in Iraq,” said Romeo Hakari, who heads the Bait-al-Nahrain, Assyrian Christian political party in Iraq.
There is no official data about how many Christians live in Iraq, but it is estimated that more than 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq before 2003.