Zehra Doğan/JINHA

SHENGAL – Êzîdîs resisting Daesh attacks on their homeland are preparing to hold Kurdish-language education in their tent city on the mountainside where they live in the thousands since Daesh attacks in August pushed them from their homes.

"Against those who try to destroy our culture, we will continue with education, even if it's up in the mountains," said NarinGülistanAhmet, one of the teachers.

10,500 Êzîdîs live under difficult conditions on the mountainside. They have founded the self-defense organization Shengal Defense Units and are now working to found Kurdish-language schools to preserve the language and culture that Daesh brutally attacked.

45 applicants have undergone a four-month teacher training. Education will soon start in five separate tent schools.

Narin said that although the lessons would only be language and grammar lessons in Kurdish, even this was a major accomplishment in a place where the state long forced the Arabic alphabet on students. Education will now involve educating children in the 31-letter Latin Kurdish alphabet as well.

"In these tent schools, we're taking up our culture against an enemy who has tried to eliminate our language for thousands of years," says Narin. "We're trying to educate children in Kurdish and to resist the edict against us with language." The term "edict" refers to the Daesh attack in the context of thousands of years of imperial edicts by the Ottomans and other powers who ruled the area, ordering the massacre of Êzîdîs.

Narin mentioned that the school urgently needs donations of notebooks, pens, school bags and Kurdish-language books, because the Daesh blockade surrounding the Shengal Mountains on all sides makes it impossible for the schools to obtain the materials.

"We're not going to let the children of Shengal go without education. The war might be continuing but this doesn't mean we can't have education."

(zd/mg/cm)