At Mission East’s Civic Center in the Iraqi city of Sinjar, a group of girls and women sit and paint the assaults they cannot express in words. Pain over death, grief over missing friends and their own trauma after violence and sexual abuse.
Sabrina paints a girl crying up against a wall. The painting depicts herself. Because that’s how she feels. The young Yazidi girl cries inside over the fact that her friend from school has disappeared without a trace. The classmate disappeared when the terrorist movement Islamic State captured Sinjar in Iraq, killed the men, raped the women and abducted young girls as sex slaves. Among the others, also her friend.
Sabrina has not seen her since. That’s why she’s crying. Therefore, she stands up against a wall, which stands relentlessly as an insurmountable obstacle. But at Mission East’s Civic Center in Sinjar, she learns to process her grief by painting exactly what she feels. Words cannot describe the pain, but a painting can. Therefore, it eases to paint the pain out onto the canvas.
In the picture above, we see Sabrina tell her story to Mission East Managing Director Betina Gollander-Jensen during a recent visit to Iraq.
