Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 13 L et t e r f rom E r bi l Muslims, from their homes in Syria and Iraq cry to heaven. These are our people, and our hearts long to comfort them. So we jumped at the chance when our church agreed to send us to Iraq for two months earlier this year to report on the situ- ation of refugees and displaced people, and to encourage Christians suffering for their faith. When we landed in Erbil and stepped onto the soil of our homeland for the first time after so many years, we were overwhelmed, our tears of joy mixed with sorrow over all that has hap- pened to our country. We could not help noticing how decades of war have halted progress and dragged the country backward. The country’s I was raised in a nominally Christian home in Baghdad, but it was as a foot soldier in Saddam Hussein’s army during the Iran– Iraq War that I became convinced that as a follower of Jesus I could no longer kill or serve in the military. In 1990, with another war looming, I knew I would be called up again and that I faced execution if I refused to serve. I chose instead to flee Iraq with my wife, Layla, and our baby daughter. We received asylum in Sweden, and now are members of a Bruderhof community in England. Naturally, the human tragedy sweeping the Middle East these days hits especially close to home. The crimes committed by ISIS and other factions that drive people, both Christians and My Return to Iraq Twenty-six years after fleeing Saddam Hussein, a former asylum seeker goes back to visit Christians on the run from ISIS. YAC OUB YOUSIF The author and his wife, Layla, with an Iraqi Christian (center) who was injured while escaping ISIS fighters Photographs courtesy of Yacoub Yousif Yacoub Yousif is Plough’s Arabic editor. He tells his own story in a memoir, I Put My Sword Away: An Iraqi Soldier’s Journey from Battlefield to Brotherhood (Bruderhof, 2016).