After losing everything, displaced are grateful to have their lives

A tall, distinguished looking woman, Nadine* stands in line at a World Vision/World Food Programme-supported food voucher distribution.

She waits quietly, with more than 100 others, as they move through the line to receive vouchers, redeemable to up to 150,000 Iraqi dinars ($130 (USD)) per family each month (or $26 (USD) per person).

At least 19,000 families —115,800 people — across the Erbil Province will receive these vouchers monthly for the next three months.  

Nadine is one of 1.9 million Iraqis displaced by the ongoing conflict.  The United Nations reports that at least 2.8 million people will need food assistance this winter in Iraq.

“My heart is black... All of our hearts in Iraq, they have become black,” says Nadine. 

World Vision’s World Food Programme-supported food vouchers will provide families the opportunity to purchase needed food items according to choice, while also allowing them to prioritize other purchases, such as medicine. Food vouchers can give displaced families an increased sense of control over their lives, but this is only limited consolation in a life fraught with difficulties.

Nadine dedicated her life to family, friends, and her profession. For decades, she and her husband enjoyed teaching. They lived in Baghdad, where they raised two well-educated children, a son and a daughter. They were proud parents, good citizens, and interested in building a better Iraq. 

But this dream died.  “My heart is black,” Nadine says, without flinching. “All of our hearts in Iraq, they have become black,” she adds.

In 2007, Nadine’s son was killed in an attack in Baghdad. Soon after his death, her husband died of an illnesses which was exacerbated by the loss of their son.

She took a job teaching in Mosul, where she lived in a beautiful home with her daughter until last summer, when militants captured their city, one of Iraq’s largest.

“At first we were told: ‘You can stay, but you must pay the tax [for Christians].’ Then they said: ‘You can stay, but you must convert.’ [That was when], we knew we must go,” Nadine says.

“At first we were told: ‘You can stay, but you must pay the tax [for Christians],’” she remembers. “Then they said: ‘You can stay, but you must convert.’ [That was when], we knew we must go.”

They had a car that they packed with all of their valuables, their jewellery and their money.

But, outside of town, on a highway, they were stopped at a checkpoint. The militants took everything; the car and everything in it. 

“We got away walking,” she says. “[But], only with our clothes.” She speaks with the calmest countenance, choosing her words carefully, an articulate representative of many who have lost all but their life. 

Despite the horrors of this war and the cancer that doctors recently diagnosed in her chest, Nadine still expresses gratitude.

“The community here has helped us so much, with clothing, with food,” she says.

The food vouchers Nadine receives today will offer some respite from worries of where their next meal will come from.  “We will taste whether they make a difference,” she says.  

Nadine’s steadfastness is belied only by her hands, held at her waist where she is nervously wringing them.

“We can be angry for a long time... But, we are no longer under the constant threat of death. We have lost everything, but we are alive,” Nadine says.

“We can be angry for a long time,” she says, “But, we are no longer under the constant threat of death. We have lost everything, but we are alive.”

*Name changed for protection.

World Vision is providing food vouchers to displaced families in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.  You can help support our work here.