BY TOMMY TRENCHARD AND AURELIE MARRIER D’UNIENVILLE
THREE YEARS ago, as darkness fell over the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, Sabah Petrus Shema helped his extended family pile into a pickup truck and leave town. When they were gone, he grabbed two Kalashnikovs and waited as the sound of mortar fire drew near.
Miles down the road, the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) was advancing. By early the next morning, nearly all of the town’s residents were gone, and a stream of panicked soldiers began to pass through, retreating from the front. That’s when Shema knew it was time to flee. “It was a painful decision,” he says. “We were leaving behind our homes, our churches, everything. All we took was our clothes, our IDs and some money.”