Refugees and Mermaids

Fascinating article by Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura in the Times about Ahmad Walid Rashidi, a refugee from Afghanistan who grew up in Europe. Although he hates the Taliban for what they did to him and his family, when he went to Syria he felt the appeal of the Islamic State:

“They are like, what do you call them? Mermaids,” he said recently, sitting in a restaurant here in Aarhus, where he lives. “They just sing, day to day, and I listen, you know.”

Although the Islamic State jailed and tortured him, he came eventually to bond with his captors, and he says, "I left half my heart in Syria."

A glimpe into the minds of children of violence:

“I was not afraid of death,” Mr. Rashidi said. As a child, he believed that death happened only to good people, those deemed worthy enough by God to be rescued from a living hell, like his father and brother. “I had nothing to lose.”