The wrong turn after school
November 2016, I met a German journalist. He came to Kurdistan-Iraq with an idea of a project. Once I heard about his project, I decided to join him as a translator. The idea behind the project was to try to interview 12 different people whom have lived in the war-zone, places close to war-zone and under the influence of war, especially ISIS war. For that purpose we managed to arrange a meeting to do one of the twelve interviews with an ISIS fighter.
December 4th, 2016 we went to Kirkuk. A city which was attacked by ISIS fighter’s just weeks before we went there. It was my first time going to Kirkur and by far this was the most peculiar and intense experience in my life. We were escorted by the S.W.A.T team to the high secure prison. We were expecting a “typical” ISIS-fighter: long beard, long hair and an aggressive look. But the person, who came in, was a 15-year-old boy…
He was trained in desert and he knew how to use so many different types of heavy machine guns. He had witnessed his father, brother and his uncle’s death. His father was killed in an air-strike, his brother and his uncle were killed in a battle. He brought back his brother’s body and buried his brother by himself and he is only 15. All that happened after he DROPPED OUT of school when he was an 8th grade student.
At that day, I saw the importance of education, how education can change someone’s entire life. How it can directly or indirectly drag you from tragedy, protect you from disasters. I realized how powerful educated people are and how powerless and vulnerable uneducated people are. Since that day, I decided to dedicate myself to prevent what has happened to that kid from happening to any other kid in this society.
Now,being part of something immense and overwhelming as UNLEASH is truly exciting as I have the feeling of belonging to this group of people. Combining this great mount of diverse and world widely talents can have a great positive impact on people’s life globally and I look forward to being part of co-creating the solutions for SDGs.
