Lincoln, Nebraska: a refuge for Yazidis, and now their final resting place

They came to America seeking the freedom to pray and work in peace. But in death, many hoped to be buried among the hills of their homeland, in northern Iraq. Yet for the past year, the Yazidi community of Lincoln, about 1,000 strong, has watched in horror as Islamic State militants ransacked ancestral villages, took women as slaves and slaughtered hundreds of people, turning the Sinjar region into a war zone. The prospects of going back, even in a coffin, are bleak.

So the Yazidi elders of Lincoln, which is thought to have the largest Yazidi population in America, have begun contemplating what for many might once have seemed unthinkable. They would like to build a cemetery in Nebraska. "After what happened back home, we lost our land, we lost our home, we didn't have anything left," says Sheikh Hassan Hassan, a Yazidi clergyman in his 50s. "People said, 'If someone dies over here, what are we going to do?'"

Yazidis, a tiny religious minority in Iraq, have for nearly 20 years sought refuge in Nebraska’s capital, attracted by a low crime rate, plentiful jobs and affordable rent. Many have raised children here, learned English and even become fans of the University of Nebraska’s Cornhuskers football team. Still, their attachments to the homeland remain strong.

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Iraqi Yazidi people who fled their homes in Sinjar enter Iraq from Syria at a border crossing in Feshkhabour in Dohuk province in August 2014. Thousands of members of the minority, fled their homes after Islamic State militants took control of Sinjar. Photograph: Adam Ferguson/The New York Times

“Most of the Yazidis are not really wealthy,” Hassan, who left Iraq in 2009 and came to Lincoln two years later, says through an interpreter. “Most of the money they make goes back to their families.”

As conditions have worsened in Iraq, more Yazidis have arrived. Zeyad Eesa (27) came to town about five months ago with his wife and two children. Other Yazidis furnished his modest but comfortable apartment near downtown Lincoln with used sofas and chairs. A local charity helped him find a job at an all-you-can-eat buffet and provided a van he could drive to work. His older son is making friends at a public elementary school.

The transition, Eesa says, has been smooth. “Here it’s freedom. It’s a free country. Nobody asks you what religion you are.”

But even as he settles into a routine in Middle America, his mind is never far from Iraq, which he fled last year as Islamic State advanced. Using Facebook, he still checks in regularly with friends and relatives overseas. Too often, the accounts are grim. “I have to know,” he says. “I think about them every day.”

So does Gulie Khalaf, who left her job as a teacher here last year and helped start Yezidis International, a nonprofit organisation in Lincoln that assists Yazidis around the world. (The group uses an alternate spelling for the religion.) Khalaf spends many evenings in Facebook chats with Yazidis in refugee camps, where her organisation hopes to establish more educational programmes.

"We're lucky to be here," says Khalaf, who was raised in a refugee camp in Syria in the 1980s and moved to the US as a teenager. "We have a chance to speak for the people back home."

There had been longstanding tensions between Yazidis, who practice an ancient faith that includes a belief in reincarnation, and larger religious groups. But no persecution from the recent past compared with what happened in August 2014 .

Islamic State, whose attacks on ethnic and religious groups have been characterised by the UN human rights office as possible genocide, cornered Yazidis on a remote mountain without provisions. Many were executed or raped, and President Barack Obama was prompted to authorise airstrikes and humanitarian aid. Many Yazidis ended up in refugee camps in the Middle East, where they have found relative safety but limited opportunity.

Khalaf understands their predicament. She said her family fled Iraq in the 1980s, before she was born, during that country's war with Iran. The family returned briefly, but then left again during the first Gulf War. Khalaf moved from place to place as a child, eventually going from refugee camps to Atlanta and then Buffalo, New York, where she and her family were among a handful of Yazidis. After college, she came to Lincoln to be part of a larger Yazidi community.

“You see them in Wal-Mart,” she says, “and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re everywhere’.”

The Yazidis in Lincoln, a city of about 270,000, are simultaneously tight-knit and loosely organised. They meet in their apartments and congregate in the parks on weekends: Lincoln has no Yazidi community centre, house of worship or commercial district.

For many years, Yazidis would observe religious holidays by renting out a banquet hall. But since Islamic State started its massacres, those occasions have been cancelled. No one feels like celebrating. “Everyone’s just too sad, too upset, about what’s going on back home,” says Khalaf.

Until at least the past two years, the bodies of Yazidis who died in the US were usually returned overseas for burial. With the advance of Islamic State making that an impossibility, Hassan now hopes to find a suitable burial ground in Lincoln. He said initial meetings with city leaders and advocacy groups had been promising.

Tom Randa, executive director of the Good Neighbor Community Center, which helps Yazidi arrivals find work and stock their pantries, said securing a section of an existing cemetery might be more achievable in the short term than staking out a separate graveyard.

“We’re at a point where this project is becoming a reality,” he says. “When we started at the beginning of the year, this was just a vision.”

The cemetery project, Hassan says, is about more than just fulfilling a practical need. It is also an acknowledgment that Nebraska is now home. "That means we want to stay here," he says. "We want to put our roots in Lincoln." – (New York Times service)