Jun 26, 2018

“What should I do at home all day?” Wassa Nimrud asked Al-Monitor. “I am coming every day to Beit al-Nisa and improving my skills in sewing.” Nimrud is one of the women attending training sessions to become a professional tailor. Her second home, after she was displaced in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Islamic State's (IS) three-year occupation, has become Beit al-Nisa, the Women’s House, in the Assyrian-Christian city of Qaraqosh, 25 miles south of Mosul in the Ninevah Plains.

Every morning, each room at Beit al-Nisa is full of women working — as cooks, tailors, hairdressers, professional trainers and students. In addition, women can enroll in language and computer classes. “Before [IS’] occupation, in our town we didn’t have a house for women,” Vivine Elias, the tailor and trainer, told Al-Monitor. “Now that the city is still half empty, at least we have our own place to work and learn. To be together!”

IS proclaimed its self-styled caliphate built on fear in Mosul in June 2014, and its occupation had spread to Qaraqosh by that August, where a minority of Muslims, mostly Turkmens and Shabaks, have always lived. “Qaraqosh’s citizens cannot forget that frightening night of Aug. 6, 2014, when the entire population fled when [IS] was advancing to take their city. We escaped, not knowing our destiny,” Nimrud said. “We lost everything, we ran away without anything.”

Half of Qaraqosh was destroyed. Churches and monasteries were desecrated, while public buildings, shops and private houses were looted and razed. Its citizens were displaced throughout Iraq and, by now, much of the world. Today, almost one-third of Qaraqosh’s pre-IS population has returned home. As commercial and community life is trying to resurrect itself, the Women's House was founded.

“The idea of a house for women was conceived spontaneously during our displaced life and in the displaced camps” Nival Nabil, one of the project’s coordinators, told Al-Monitor. “In the camps, people could not spend the whole day in the tents, especially during the summer where the temperature reached 45 C [113 F]. So women felt the need to reunite, to do social activities and organize themselves to work together.” Back in the camps, the Italian nongovernmental organization Focsiv listened to their requests, supported women’s activities and today manages the Women's House, employing women who steadily work there.