“When we first moved to Hanover, the Germans hadn’t even heard of the Yazidi faith. In their eyes we were all Turkish and that was it. And then they learned a little more about the region, but this time they started calling us all Kurdish, and that was it. Again, we tried to explain. It took me years to be able to say openly and without fear, ‘I am Êzidî and I’d much rather you called me Êzidî instead of Yazidi, because it leads to a terrible misunderstanding.’ They think we are the descendants of Yazid, the Tyrant of Karbala, who killed the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, and they hate us. But
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