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By Hollie McKay | February 11, 2021 | 11:03am EST
Featured is the aftermath of an accidental explosion and fire inside a displacement camp in Northern Iraq in the summer of 2015. Those who fled ISIS were trying to save lives but were then forced to flee again. (Photo credit: Hollie McKay)
In the immediate months after the ISIS assault, before the burns of those who had fled the area had scabbed into scars, I went to meet with a group of Christians camped inside a church. Their memories could not be wiped, but they were just beginning to grapple with what had happened.
The whiteboard inside the Mar Elia Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region bore a message for the hundreds of Christian families driven from their homes: “Be grateful. Be alive. Be happy. Be careful.”