StoryIn cities of Iraqi Kurdistan, three families of victims of the sinking of November 24 evoke the course of their relatives and the reasons which pushed them to leave to join the United Kingdom.
Round and silent, Zardiah Muhammadamin is dressed all in black. Only the roots of her hair, dyed black, are white. A few millimeters of whiteness corresponding to the time of mourning for a woman who has not dyed her hair for almost three weeks. His daughter, Maryam Muhammadamin, nicknamed Baran, was drowned in the English Channel on November 24, along with 26 other passengers, mostly Kurds from Iraq. Only two men, a Kurd and a Somali, were rescued. The world, based on the testimonies of relatives of the victims and the records of telephone calls, showed, on December 9, that these migrants had joined the British and French aid. Without success.
“Drowned, my daughter became the bride of the sea before she could participate in her own wedding”, says Baran’s father, Nouri Muhammadamin, sitting in the living room of their large family home in the town of Soran, two hours from the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil. 24-year-old Baran had left for England in order to join her husband, Karzan, also an Iraqi Kurd. Living for ten years in England, the 41-year-old man has been naturalized. He works as a hairdresser.
On her cell phone, sitting next to her parents, Baran’s sister Heline, dressed in black, scrolls through photos of Baran and Karzan’s engagement. The bride, with long loose hair and wearing a crown, smiles. According to her relatives, Baran’s attempts to obtain a British visa to join her husband had all failed. “My daughter wanted to join her husband. She wasn’t looking for a job or a better life ”, explains Nouri Muhammadamin. To fight against his tears, this former peshmerga (Kurdish fighter), with piercing blue eyes, repeats courtesy sentences. ” Welcome ! “, he keeps saying.
Baran then opted for a Schengen visa, which she obtained from the Italian embassy in Iraq. On the day of his departure from Kurdistan, November 2, the whole family and his mother-in-law, even some of his cousins, went to Erbil airport. Once in Italy, the young woman took a train to Germany, where she joined the wife of a cousin of her husband, Muhabad Ahmad Ali. This Kurd in her thirties then convinces Baran to illegally take the way to the English Channel. The two young women continued their way to Calais. There, Muhabad’s husband, who also lives in the UK, joined them. The two women, helped by Muhabad’s husband, end up taking a boat. Baran said nothing to his parents.
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