Mizgin Hessen is Kurdish, from the autonomous de-facto Kurdish region in North Western Syria known as Rojava, she and her family are refugees from Afrin, presently occupied by Turkish forces after having been attacked by ISIS in 2018. Mizgin cannot read or write, her words were recorded and translated for this publication.

My name is Mizgin Hessen, I was born in Afrin in 1988 North West Syria. I am Kurdish. My father married two women because my mother didn't have any children for the first 15 years of marriage. So I grew up with one father, two mothers, 3 siblings and 7 half-siblings in the village Ber Piye Dersune in Jinderes subdistrict. I did not go to school so I did not learn to read and write. My family could not afford it and there was no school in our village at that time. And when schools were opened, they were those of the Syrian regime. I got married in 2004 on the 12th of March. I can remember that day particularly well because it is the day when the Qamishlo massacre and the uprisings against the Syrian forces took place . I have two daughters who are now 14 and 13 years old.

With the beginning of the civil war and the revolution in Syria, I supported the organization of our local Kurdish revolution [known as Rojava] . At that time, I rarely saw my husband. He worked a lot to support the revolution without getting paid. But I had to feed my children. When the Peoples Defense Units (YPG) were formed in 2011, I worked for the YPG and then for the YPJ (Women Defence Units). It was a peaceful, beautiful life, we were happy. Unlike the rest of Rojava, we never had to face ISIS until 2018. People envied us, Afrin was like a tranquil island in the middle of war and occupation, even if we were shelled by the Nusra front who were with Al-Qaeda. But when Turkey attacked Afrin with their Jihadists at the beginning of 2018, we had to flee and went to Kobane first. We lived there for more than a year and I tried to work. But it was very difficult for me, I couldn't. After that in October 2019 Turkey continued its invasion and attacked the region of Girê Spî and Serê Kaniyê, there was also the danger of Kobane being attacked. To this day, Kobane is still under the threat from Turkey. So that is why we fled again, this time to Hasekê, where some parts are controlled by the Syrian regime.

Hundred and seventy families live here, we have a flat here. Every family has one. Here is where we live now. We are far away from the city. When we arrived, our daughters could not go to school as this is the building where refugees from Serekanye (Ras Al-Ayn in Arabic) were housed when the Turks occupied their city. A refugee camp was built by authorities and then the school opened for a short while. Then the pandemic came and school was closed. The first case of Corona in Heseke was in April 29 2020, they say it's because of a married couple who came from Damascus.

This place is full of refugees running from war, my girls do not have any friends or any opportunities to enjoy themselves like they did before. We are far from the city and there is no money. It's just us. Here it is not like in Afrin. Our life now takes place inside the house even more since the beginning of the pandemic. Now I sit at home and only take care of the children. When you've fled, a lot of things are hard, who can guarantee that they will not attack here tomorrow. That is the fear we have to live with.

On top of these threats and attacks comes the danger of the Coronavirus. Until now we have been attacked by the enemy, Turkey and its jihadist gangs, now we are threatened by a virus. But we will survive this too. We will stay on our land and resist. This time will pass.

The Corona pandemic has caused difficulties in every aspect of life. There are only two small shops in the neighbourhood and you can just get what is available here. No public transport is available and it is difficult to get a car or a taxi. Not much is coming or going. There is a small health centre in the neighbourhood. If a Corona infection is suspected, an emergency number can be called and the ambulance comes to fetch the patient. That is what is supposed to happen. In reality, this it is more difficult if you are ill and have to go to a hospital in Hasekê. Not that it is forbidden, but then you need a car, find someone to drive you there, people you know, people you trust and that's not easy. I got sick, I was in bed for several days, It was not Corona, it was worse, I thought I was going to die. There were many phone calls with contacts to find someone to take me to hospital. But the Syrian doctors couldn't really help me, they just relieved the pain. They said I needed to go to Damascus. They said the doctors over there would understand what the problem was. But with the quarantine, and anyway, how am I supposed to get to Damascus? That's impossible. Since the quarantine, public transport has been stopped between cities and how do you find a car or a taxi when you don't know the right people and you don't have money?

You know, fleeing is a difficult thing. You are forced to flee your familiar surroundings. You always have the feeling that wherever you are, it's not your place, not your environment, not your home. It's true that we are not complete strangers here. And we are still in the same country. But it's still so different from the place where I grew up and lived. This is about escape. This is what escape feels like. We didn't choose it or leave our home of our own free will. We were attacked, we were expelled, and to this day, Turkey forces us to move from one place to another. Only yesterday, on July 5th 2020 they shelled Ayin Issa and Girê Spî (Til Abyad) once again. But it seems that nobody cares. Nobody says anything about it. We Kurds stand alone. On the one hand, there are Turkey's attacks on Northern Syria, our region, our homeland. On the other hand, there is the threat of the Coronavirus. We are at war. In Hasekê, the water supply has been cut again by the jihadist groups allied to and supported by Turkey. This is war. Without clean drinking water, without water for cleaning and washing, how can we stay healthy? Even without Corona, it remains a problem. And it's so very hot.

This virus has spread all over the world and is threatening people. Now it's all about how you can protect yourself, your children, your neighbours and your environment from this virus. That is our duty. For weeks now we have not been going out and we have been avoiding public places, as the Autonomous Administration has recommended as a protective measure. This is a good thing in itself, but it also creates problems.

Usually, me and my two daughters stay alone at home, my husband goes to work and only comes home every 15 or 30 days. But during quarantine he was home all the time, not only he, but most of us stayed home. Nobody went anywhere, everything seemed to stand still. For two months my husband has not received his salary. We are refugees, people who have fled cannot just stay at home, we have to work every day to feed ourselves. We left everything we had behind. My daughters go to school, that means expenses. On a day when you don't go out to work, you suffer. Everything is getting more and more expensive. The value of the Syrian lira is falling. We're struggling with that and it's limiting us even further. It is important that we protect ourselves from this disease, but the water supply has been cut off. What will you use to clean the house where you spend most of your time? How are you going to protect yourself? The resources and medicine in this region are insufficient if the Coronavirus spreads. Life is full of difficulties. On the one hand health is endangered, on the other hand our everyday life is badly marked by war.

But most of the time my head, my thoughts and my heart are with our home, the beautiful green nature and the people who are still in Afrin. Although we are now physically here in Hasekê, we always ask ourselves how the few relatives we have in Afrin are surviving. We live here now, but the house and garden where we raised our children is now owned by Jihadists. The place where we once lived in harmony and experienced so much joy is now marred by war and terror. They have transformed this landscape into a terrible place where Jihadists fight over possessions and shops of the then and now displaced population, where there are explosions almost daily. At least every three days I hear news about the kidnapping of young men and women. Many have disappeared. To this day no one knows where they are. But they do not hesitate to kidnap and murder old women either.

Turkey is hostile to us. It is our enemy. And whatever they want to do to us here, they just do it. Sometimes they send us videos of the atrocities they commit. We were sent a video of our fields being burned. Our house was set on fire, because a picture of my brother-in-law who died in the civil war was hanging on the wall. They sent us this video as well. Your past and your future will be burned before your eyes.

We are far away from our land and our home. My daughters don’t go to school at the moment they don't get an education, because of the danger of the virus. Before all this happened, my daughters could not go to school because of the war and Turkey's attacks on Afrin started and we had to flee. Meanwhile, their school in Afrin no longer exists. Whenever it seems that normality is returning, the next attack comes. Corona is only one of the many attacks that make life more difficult for us here. The atmosphere in the house within the family is good, but it is not like it was in Afrin. Everything seems so far away. Sometimes it feels like prison.

The fact that my husband spends the whole day at home is not a big problem. But when I look at my neighbours, it's very different. They are irritable and quarrelsome. We are not like that. We always agree. My neighbours don't live the way I live. But every life is different, you can't compare one life to another. I can say that my husband is at home all the time, and we wake up together and spend our days together. When he is here, he is very supportive at home, I will never forget his efforts. Sometimes we, my husband and the two children sit together and talk, discuss a topic, exchange how the day went, how the days to come will go. We sit together and talk about what we want to do together. We try to make sure that we all agree. But if even one of the four of us disagrees, opposes the decisions, then we cannot implement them. And it is usually Avrin (my 13-year-old daughter). She often becomes a problem for us. There are three of us, but sometimes we cannot convince this one person. But by discussing things over with her, we try to convince her.

Now my daughters are at home 24 hours a day. Always. As a mother I find it most difficult to see my children just sit there and have no chance for school education, no perspective. If, as a mother, you cannot offer your daughters any perspective, if you see that their future is uncertain, then it is very difficult for you. We thought that when the war was over, then… But the war does not stop. To this day Turkey threatens to attack. Our home country, is occupied. Serê Kaniyê and Girê Spî are occupied. Turkey threatens to advance even further. It's uncertain what will happen next.

Our life in Afrin was very different before the war. There is no comparison. My daughter Rojbin went out of the house there in the morning and didn't come back until evening. She went to school, went to music classes in the afternoon, took English lessons, met her friends and did many other things. She was very active and hardly had time to pick up her phone. Here she is only indoors, never meets anyone and never takes her phone out of her hand for even one second. I once took her phone away for an hour, that hour she slept. Then I gave her the phone back because I did not know how to change her situation. Staying at home all the time leads to frustration, morale and motivation drop. But what should she do?

I am sitting at home now, too because of the quarantine. But we will get through this, too. But what keeps us alive is that we know one day we will return to Afrin, that we will move back into our home. We do not lose optimism because we have children who will study and develop. I send my children to English classes that have been set up here because I am optimistic and keep hope alive. If we are not optimistic, if people lose hope, then everything will stop. There would be no point in doing anything. One day Afrin will be liberated. Serekaniye and Gire Spie will be freed.

I'm still alive. Living is having morals, enjoying the time you have. We're not dead yet. We're alive, we'll live. We have children who will live and learn. We haven't reclaimed Afrin yet. Until we do, Corona or no Corona, we cannot rest, we cannot die. That is what keeps us alive, that is what gives us hope.

My name is Mizgin Hessen, I was born in Afrin in 1988 North West Syria. I am Kurdish. My father married two women because my mother didn't have any children for the first 15 years of marriage. So I grew up with one father, two mothers, 3 siblings and 7 half-siblings in the village Ber Piye Dersune in Jinderes subdistrict. I did not go to school so I did not learn to read and write. My family could not afford it and there was no school in our village at that time. And when schools were opened, they were those of the Syrian regime. I got married in 2004 on the 12th of March. I can remember that day particularly well because it is the day when the Qamishlo massacre and the uprisings against the Syrian forces took place . I have two daughters who are now 14 and 13 years old.

With the beginning of the civil war and the revolution in Syria, I supported the organization of our local Kurdish revolution [known as Rojava] . At that time, I rarely saw my husband. He worked a lot to support the revolution without getting paid. But I had to feed my children. When the Peoples Defense Units (YPG) were formed in 2011, I worked for the YPG and then for the YPJ (Women Defence Units). It was a peaceful, beautiful life, we were happy. Unlike the rest of Rojava, we never had to face ISIS until 2018. People envied us, Afrin was like a tranquil island in the middle of war and occupation, even if we were shelled by the Nusra front who were with Al-Qaeda. But when Turkey attacked Afrin with their Jihadists at the beginning of 2018, we had to flee and went to Kobane first. We lived there for more than a year and I tried to work. But it was very difficult for me, I couldn't. After that in October 2019 Turkey continued its invasion and attacked the region of Girê Spî and Serê Kaniyê, there was also the danger of Kobane being attacked. To this day, Kobane is still under the threat from Turkey. So that is why we fled again, this time to Hasekê, where some parts are controlled by the Syrian regime.

Hundred and seventy families live here, we have a flat here. Every family has one. Here is where we live now. We are far away from the city. When we arrived, our daughters could not go to school as this is the building where refugees from Serekanye (Ras Al-Ayn in Arabic) were housed when the Turks occupied their city. A refugee camp was built by authorities and then the school opened for a short while. Then the pandemic came and school was closed. The first case of Corona in Heseke was in April 29 2020, they say it's because of a married couple who came from Damascus.

This place is full of refugees running from war, my girls do not have any friends or any opportunities to enjoy themselves like they did before. We are far from the city and there is no money. It's just us. Here it is not like in Afrin. Our life now takes place inside the house even more since the beginning of the pandemic. Now I sit at home and only take care of the children. When you've fled, a lot of things are hard, who can guarantee that they will not attack here tomorrow. That is the fear we have to live with.

On top of these threats and attacks comes the danger of the Coronavirus. Until now we have been attacked by the enemy, Turkey and its jihadist gangs, now we are threatened by a virus. But we will survive this too. We will stay on our land and resist. This time will pass.

The Corona pandemic has caused difficulties in every aspect of life. There are only two small shops in the neighbourhood and you can just get what is available here. No public transport is available and it is difficult to get a car or a taxi. Not much is coming or going. There is a small health centre in the neighbourhood. If a Corona infection is suspected, an emergency number can be called and the ambulance comes to fetch the patient. That is what is supposed to happen. In reality, this it is more difficult if you are ill and have to go to a hospital in Hasekê. Not that it is forbidden, but then you need a car, find someone to drive you there, people you know, people you trust and that's not easy. I got sick, I was in bed for several days, It was not Corona, it was worse, I thought I was going to die. There were many phone calls with contacts to find someone to take me to hospital. But the Syrian doctors couldn't really help me, they just relieved the pain. They said I needed to go to Damascus. They said the doctors over there would understand what the problem was. But with the quarantine, and anyway, how am I supposed to get to Damascus? That's impossible. Since the quarantine, public transport has been stopped between cities and how do you find a car or a taxi when you don't know the right people and you don't have money?

You know, fleeing is a difficult thing. You are forced to flee your familiar surroundings. You always have the feeling that wherever you are, it's not your place, not your environment, not your home. It's true that we are not complete strangers here. And we are still in the same country. But it's still so different from the place where I grew up and lived. This is about escape. This is what escape feels like. We didn't choose it or leave our home of our own free will. We were attacked, we were expelled, and to this day, Turkey forces us to move from one place to another. Only yesterday, on July 5th 2020 they shelled Ayin Issa and Girê Spî (Til Abyad) once again. But it seems that nobody cares. Nobody says anything about it. We Kurds stand alone. On the one hand, there are Turkey's attacks on Northern Syria, our region, our homeland. On the other hand, there is the threat of the Coronavirus. We are at war. In Hasekê, the water supply has been cut again by the jihadist groups allied to and supported by Turkey. This is war. Without clean drinking water, without water for cleaning and washing, how can we stay healthy? Even without Corona, it remains a problem. And it's so very hot.

This virus has spread all over the world and is threatening people. Now it's all about how you can protect yourself, your children, your neighbours and your environment from this virus. That is our duty. For weeks now we have not been going out and we have been avoiding public places, as the Autonomous Administration has recommended as a protective measure. This is a good thing in itself, but it also creates problems.

Usually, me and my two daughters we stay alone at home, my husband goes to work and only comes home every 15 or 30 days. But during quarantine he was home all the time, not only he, but most of us stayed home. Nobody went anywhere, everything seemed to stand still. For two months my husband has not received his salary. We are refugees, people who have fled cannot just stay at home, we have to work every day to feed ourselves. We left everything we had behind. My daughters go to school, that means expenses. On a day when you don't go out to work, you suffer. Everything is getting more and more expensive. The value of the Syrian lira is falling. We're struggling with that and it's limiting us even further. It is important that we protect ourselves from this disease, but the water supply has been cut off. What will you use to clean the house where you spend most of your time? How are you going to protect yourself? The resources and medicine in this region are insufficient if the Coronavirus spreads. Life is full of difficulties. On the one hand health is endangered, on the other hand our everyday life is badly marked by war.

But most of the time my head, my thoughts and my heart are with our home, the beautiful green nature and the people who are still in Afrin. Although we are now physically here in Hasekê, we always ask ourselves how the few relatives we have in Afrin are surviving. We live here now, but the house and garden where we raised our children is now owned by Jihadists. The place where we once lived in harmony and experienced so much joy is now marred by war and terror. They have transformed this landscape into a terrible place where Jihadists fight over possessions and shops of the then and now displaced population, where there are explosions almost daily. At least every three days I hear news about the kidnapping of young men and women. Many have disappeared. To this day no one knows where they are. But they do not hesitate to kidnap and murder old women either.

Turkey is hostile to us. It is our enemy. And whatever they want to do to us here, they just do it. Sometimes they send us videos of the atrocities they commit. We were sent a video of our fields being burned. Our house was set on fire, because a picture of my brother-in-law who died in the civil war was hanging on the wall. They sent us this video as well. Your past and your future will be burned before your eyes.

We are far away from our land and our home. My daughters don’t go to school at the moment they don't get an education, because of the danger of the virus. Before all this happened, my daughters could not go to school because of the war and Turkey's attacks on Afrin started and we had to flee. Meanwhile, their school in Afrin no longer exists. Whenever it seems that normality is returning, the next attack comes. Corona is only one of the many attacks that make life more difficult for us here. The atmosphere in the house within the family is good, but it is not like it was in Afrin. Everything seems so far away. Sometimes it feels like prison.

The fact that my husband spends the whole day at home is not a big problem. But when I look at my neighbours, it's very different. They are irritable and quarrelsome. We are not like that. We always agree. My neighbours don't live the way I live. But each life is different, you can't compare one life to another. I can say that my husband is at home all the time, and we wake up together and spend our days together. When he is here, he is very supportive at home, I will never forget his efforts. Sometimes we, my husband and the two children sit together and talk, discuss a topic, exchange how the day went, how the days to come will go. We sit together and talk about what we want to do together. We try to make sure that we all agree. But if even one of the four of us disagrees, opposes the decisions, then we cannot implement them. And it is usually Avrin (my 13-year-old daughter). She often becomes a problem for us. There are three of us, but sometimes we cannot convince this one person. But by discussing things over with her, we try to convince her.

Now my daughters are at home 24 hours a day. Always. As a mother I find it most difficult to see my children just sit there and have no chance for school education, no perspective. If, as a mother, you cannot offer your daughters any perspective, if you see that their future is uncertain, then it is very difficult for you. We thought that when the war was over, then… But the war does not stop. To this day Turkey threatens to attack. Our home country, is occupied. Serê Kaniyê and Girê Spî are occupied. Turkey threatens to advance even further. It's uncertain what will happen next.

Our life in Afrin was very different before the war. There is no comparison. My daughter Rojbin went out of the house there in the morning and didn't come back until evening. She went to school, went to music classes in the afternoon, took English lessons, met her friends and did many other things. She was very active and hardly had time to pick up her phone. Here she is only indoors, never meets anyone and never takes her phone out of her hand for even one second. I once took her phone away for an hour, that hour she slept. Then I gave her the phone back because I did not know how to change her situation. Staying at home all the time leads to frustration, morale and motivation drop. But what should she do?

I am sitting at home now, too because of the quarantine. But we will get through this, too. But what keeps us alive is that we know one day we will return to Afrin, that we will move back into our home. We do not lose optimism because we have children who will study and develop. I send my children to English classes that have been set up here because I am optimistic and keep hope alive. If we are not optimistic, if people lose hope, then everything will stop. There would be no point in doing anything. One day Afrin will be liberated. Serekaniye and Gire Spie will be freed.

I'm still alive. Living is having morals, enjoying the time you have. We're not dead yet. We're alive, we'll live. We have children who will live and learn. We haven't reclaimed Afrin yet. Until we do, Corona or no Corona, we cannot rest, we cannot die. That is what keeps us alive, that is what gives us hope.