When my turn came, I took a long breath and began with those murky predawn hours of August 3, 2014. Werner listened, all-knowing.
“It’s over for me,” he said. “But you’re still in it. You can start to believe it’s going to go on and on forever. I thought we’d never beat it.”
“How did you make it through?”
Werner reached over and took my hand again, forming a soft bridge between us. “Überleben—to survive. There is only one way to do it. Time—you must learn to walk with time, dear Shaker.”
“Yes,” I breathed, and knew that it was true.
I must walk with time.
And I am. We Yazidis have diminished, but we are not gone from this earth.
The only surviving photo of my father “Babo” was taken in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
Courtesy of the Jeffrey family
The only photo I still have from my childhood, age six at our family’s farm.
Courtesy of the Jeffrey family
Team Shady at Camp Diamondback after a successful mission, 2008.
Courtesy of Ronald Bowers
Working as “Michael the Terp,” Hotel Mosul stands behind me. Years later, this famous hotel would become the backdrop of ISIS’s dramatic capture of the city.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Sergeant First Class Ronald Bowers and I horsing around on a scorching hot day in Mosul, 2008.
Courtesy of Ronald Bowers
Team Shady medic attends to the wounded after an IED attack in Mosul, 2008.
Courtesy of Ronald Bowers
Team Spider in Tal Afar.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Captain Robert Brownsword kitted up at FOB Sykes.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Resting after a mission in the “chair of sleepiness” at COP Destroyer.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Manning the BBQ at FOB Sykes in 2009 for another post-mission party.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Captain Robert Brownsword and Lieutenant Colonel Jay Migone.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Terping for Lieutenant Colonel Jay Migone as we trained Iraqi soldiers out in the Jazeera.
Courtesy of Jay Migone
Taking notes during a brigade meeting with team Spider at FOB Sykes. Courtesy of Jay Migone
Weapons training in Tal Afar.
Courtesy of Jay Migone
Children at play in Khanasor.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
A photo of me taken in the spring before ISIS invaded Shingal, 2014.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Members of my family fleeing ISIS during the invasion of August 2014. Members of my family fleeing ISIS during the invasion of August 2014.
Courtesy of the Jeffrey family
Captain Robert Brownsword in Washington, DC, mobilizing the press at the start of the Yazidi genocide, August 2014.
Courtesy of Robert Brownsword
Refugee camp in Syria with Mount Shingal visible in the distance.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
Helping stranded refugees off the boats on the perilous shores of Greece, 2016.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
With rescued Yazidi children at a refugee camp in Greece.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Yazidi refugees living in squalor in the camps.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
Volunteering with Yazidi refugee children at a camp in Greece.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Keeping survivor and Yazidi spokesperson Nadia Murad close, Idomeni Refugee Camp, Greece, 2016.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Anne Norona and Khairi volunteering together in northern Iraq.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
Commemorating the anniversary of the genocide with Nadia Murad in Stuttgart, 2018.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Standing in front of the Eiffel Tower during a break from a conference in Paris.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Addressing German federal parliament in Berlin, as a member of a Yazidi reunification conference, 2017.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Meeting Anne Norona in Germany for the first time.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
With rescued Yazidi children at a safe house near the Black Forest in Germany.
Courtesy of Anne Norona
Working with Sunday Times (London) journalist Christina Lamb in a secret shelter in Baden-Württemberg Germany, summer 2016.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Camped out while working the treacherous rescue grid.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
Team Shaker member Alex Holstein, California, 2019.
Courtesy of Alex Holstein
Original Team Shaker member Senator Marv Hagedorn of Idaho.
Courtesy of Senator Marv Hagedorn
Original Team Shaker member General Gary Sayler.
Courtesy of Senator Marv Hagedorn and General Gary Sayler
With Khiri at a hospital in Nuremburg after the little boy underwent another surgery to repair extensive damage resulting from torture at the hands of ISIS militants.
Courtesy of Shaker Jeffrey
General David Petraeus, who was instrumental in connecting me with No One Left Behind, an organization that advocates for military interpreters during the immigration process.
Courtesy of General David Petraeus
Acknowledgments
IT BRINGS US great joy to thank the many individuals who have supported us and this book at every stage. We are grateful to the incredibly meticulous and intelligent team at Hachette/Da Capo: Fred Francis, Bill Warhop, and Amanda Kain; and especially our gifted and compassionate editor Robert Pigeon, whose immediate and unwavering enthusiasm for this project was our rocket fuel.
To our wonderfully smart agent Sharlene Martin and her team at Martin Literary, including Anthony Flacco—thank you for guiding this book to the perfect home.
We are also grateful to the following journalists, activists, academics, and authors whose collective focus on war, terrorism, genocide, and the Yazidi people has been invaluable to this project: Christina Lamb, OBE, with The Times of London; Anne Speckhard, adjunct professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School; Matthew Barber, scholar of Yazidi history and culture at the University of Chicago; and David Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. Many thanks to Akila Radhakrishnan, president, Global Justice Center; Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women; Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; and Pari Ibrahim, executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation. Also, thank you to Sebastian Junger, Andrea C. Hoffmann and Farida Khalaf, and Jenna Krajeski, whose exceptional books provided invaluable insights. And we would like to also pay tribute to the journalists with Ezidi24, who have done great work on behalf of the Yazidi people.
Our deep gratitude to Anne Norona, founder of Yezidi Emergency Support (YES) and tireless hero. Please help her continue her dangerous and lifesaving work as she sustains the most vulnerable and forgotten Yazidis: http://yezidiemergencysupport.org/.
For Khairi Aezdeen, former US combat interpreter and current Yazidi activist and volunteer. Thank you for the hours you spent telling your part of the story, and for your ongoing work to help all those left behind with you in the camps.
Thank you to James Miervaldis and every member of No One Left Behind, for their relentless collective efforts to bring US combat interpreters home, and for shepherding us through the labyrinthine Special Immigrant Visa process, while also providing invaluable information for the book.
Our gratitude to Becca Heller, cofounder and executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP), her fiercely intelligent associate attorney Julie Kornfeld, and their colleague Jonathan Riedel. Your work to advocate for refugees and t
o help displaced individuals like Shaker find paths to safety is awe-inspiring.
We must place writer, lobbyist, and pundit Alex Holstein in his own category for his brilliant and aggressive help marshaling so many elusive members of the intelligence community, the United States government, and the military into an indomitable army of support for Shaker, the Yazidi community, combat interpreters, and this work (he also took the time to read over every page).
Thank you, Mike Williams and “Mike B.” for your courageous work and encouragement from the shadows.
Thank you to Colonel Jesse Johnson and General David Petraeus, two all-American heroes who deserve stars of their own on the flag. We owe these two men an enormous debt of respect and gratitude for their support of this work through their incredible efforts on behalf of Shaker, and all the combat interpreters left behind after wars came to an end.
Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, human rights activist, survivor, and founder of Nadia’s Initiative. Your courage has been a beacon for every survivor.
We are grateful for the exceptional and ongoing efforts of Senator James Elroy Risch, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and his staff for taking Shaker under their mighty wing. We will see you at Shaker’s barbecue in Washington, DC.
The original members of Team Shaker were there from the very start, answering countless questions over endless hours, reading pages while also offering incredible life-saving support to Shaker and the Yazidi people. There is no doubt that without the tireless and selfless efforts of these four brave and selfless men, Shaker and so many would have perished at the hands of ISIS in 2014: Robert Brownsword, Jay Migone, Ronald Bowers, and Senator Marv Hagedorn.
Many thanks also to journalist and filmmaker Jason Stant with the Associated Press for his continuing friendship and support.
And to all the volunteers in the Mosquitos, and around the world fighting for humanity itself. You know who you are.
From our hearts, we thank you all.
From Shaker Jeffrey:
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I must pay tribute to our Yazidi high spiritual father, Baba Sheikh, for continuing to shepherd our people through the pain of yet another genocide. And after him, I must offer gratitude to my entire family, both the living and the lost: my mother and father, grandfathers and grandmothers, brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins. Together and in the memory of those no longer with us, we will carry on fighting for the next generation of Yazidis, so that they may live and thrive in peace.
I am humbled by all those who have tried to help me and my people survive and get to safety. My brothers-in-arms: Bowers, Brownsword, Migone—thank you for being with me and keeping me going all this time. And to Senator Marv Hagedorn, whom I “met” on the mountain and who has never really left my side—you are my brother.
Thank you to General Gary Sayler, and the members of the United States government, who have done so much for me personally and for my people. And all the “fighting friends” I met on the mountain, whose names I would never know—together we worked in the pit of hell to save so many. You will always be in my heart.
I would like to personally thank my Yazidi sister, Nadia Murad, as without her courage so many of us would have none left. Our work together carried me across the darkness.
I must also pay tribute to the following heroes and steadfast friends: Nawaf Ashur, Dr. Andreas Gammel, Dr. Mirza Dinnay, Murad Ismael, Staff Sergeant Richard McNall, Sergeant First Class Catlin Tanner Eagleman, and all the brave and good members of Team Shady and Team Spider.
Many thanks also to Jonathan Howell, Christopher Faulkner, and Marvin Iavecchia, who were with me during the war and helped me get through it.
And a special thank-you to journalist Christina Lamb for traveling to meet our survivors, capturing their pain so movingly with her gifted pen, and sharing it with the world.
And thank you, Kaça Babo, daughter of my father, my sister Katharine, for finding the words.
From Katharine:
I AM SINCERELY grateful to Shaker’s family in Iraq and his Yazidi counterparts for opening up their world to me with such patient generosity. The courage of each and every Yazidi kept this project going every step of the way.
I am sincerely thankful for the loyal friends and colleagues who have all guided, supported, and inspired my work in innumerable ways: Marlene Cooper, Dr. Christine and Mark Till, Libby Burton, T. C. Boyle, Elias Campbell, Dr. Ted Brown, Christl Reeh, Dr. Azil Resiew, Gloria Allred, Susan Schellenberg, Gail Regan and Nancy Regan, the Leofantis, Wongs, Fyalls, Seppanens, and Smiths.
And thank you to my first reader, editor, and loyal armchair partner, Matthew, and his girls. Not one word would have made it out without you.
I must thank and pay tribute to my family: Alex and our wonderful loving children, who waited so patiently as I toiled away again. I hope to have made you as proud of me as I am of you. And my gratitude goes to my mother, who faced down her own tyrants from a hospital bed—your unwavering decency and bravery through intense pain has inspired so many. Thank you to all my loving cousins, especially Aida Harris, who filled an abyss. And thank you to my steadfast big brother, John—always at another’s side doing what is right and good.
And to dear Brako Shaker, my sweet brother. Thank you for gifting me with your darkest sorrows. Our long perilous journey together will only end when I can reach out at last and touch your hand.
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Shadow on the Mountain Page 27
