[LISTEN] A new camp rises for the displaced in the wilderness

I’m in Shekhan, on the outskirts of Dohuk, a city to which some 200,000 Iraqis from Mosul have fled over the last few days.

But this is not a luxurious place and nobody wants to stop here. They didn’t want to leave their homes in the first place. Families on the road are starting to spread out, slow to accept that makeshift camps like this will be where they end up.

Tents erected are flapping in the dusty wind. There is still no water available although wells have been dug. Tests have to be carried out to check if the water is drinkable.

I speak to Mariam, a 24-year-old mother of six children. She is holding a six-month-old baby under the scorching sun.

She tells me it took them a six-hour walk to flee to safety. Her children crying, terrified, they saw dead people as they left Mosul, most likely killed by explosions. They found generous Kurdish families along the way who gave them food and helped them, but they slept on the road for six nights before reaching this camp.

The camp manager tells me he expects many more families to come here once the camp is up and running. Those who managed to take some money with them are running out of it. Once word spreads that there are tents, they will come here.

So where are all the families who fled Mosul?

I met a few of them later in apartments they are renting in the city. Like Mariam, they came carrying nothing but the clothes they were wearing on the night they fled.

Some of them have relatives who are paying the rent for them—like Sandra, a staff member with Save the Children in Dohuk.

Others have some money that is quickly drying up. All of the people I spoke to were extremely grateful to the generous Kurdish people hosting them, but that is coming at a huge price for the region. Hundreds of thousands of others have already sought refuge here in recent times — Iraqis fleeing violence in the western province of Anbar and refugees from Syria.

As the sun goes down in Shekhan, one of Mariam’s daughters, Delvin aged 12, tearfully tells me she feels bad for her father. Seeing him lost, confused and disempowered. He worked as a taxi driver but now he’s been reduced to begging for help.

“We could bring nothing with us; all our things are back at home but people here are helping us, giving us everything we need, may God help them and bless them. We are now in this camp in Dohuk. I wish we had a home and our stuff with us like all the people in the world. We have nothing in this camp,” she says.

No child should ever feel their parents’ shame. And I wonder how many more are on the way here feeling the same.

Karl Schembri is in Dohuk, Kurdistan Region in Iraq