“In media department, very easily and with little resources and cost you can provide for students here. We can turn that room into a studio. It doesn’t cost much. You can collect the funds from students. With little money. There are cheap carpets. With simple light, you can create an atmosphere for students where they feel they’ve gone somewhere else, has come from a studio, not from an unfamiliar place. Or that they’ve come from a cold room with few chairs to a studio that has light and camera and many staff. Thank you.”
Teacher: “For us journalists in Kurdistan Region it is important that our record is done nicely.”
She is no longer among her friends and her memory is all they have of the long time they had together. Shifa and five friends of hers had formed a group and named it Group 5+1 to promote media work on campus. But the group’s name was changed to 5-1 after her death.
Niyaz Abdullah: “During those four years, we six girls a special friendship. We all worked for different agencies. But our work differences and the policies or strategy of our agencies never had any role on our friendship during those four years. So we had named it Group 6. But because five of us studied radio & television and one studied print we named it 5+1. With Shifa, whenever we felt our opinions would lead to a split we’d stop the conversation. That was to make sure the different opinions that have caused the society to divide do not come between us too. That’s why the loss of Shifa was for me the biggest in life.”
Shifa’s relations with her classmates and teachers were more than just a relation between teacher and student. Her teachers would always consult her and be proud of her. She too always kept an eye for new things in the course of her work.
“I felt her tiredness, but I also knew that she never let one work affect another. She always preferred challenging tasks. Whenever I give the students an assignment she was the first to sign up for it. Shifa’s departure was not only from her family but from the media and her friends and teachers.”
Because of her skills and experience the journalism department of the Salahaddin University has now laid the foundation stone of a new lecture hall named after Shifa Gardi.
Standup: “From now on, students studying journalism will be able to learn media work and journalism ethnics in this hall named Shifa Gardi.”
Hazim Bindian is a former classmate of Shifa from the journalism school. He recalls a memory from a day the two of them went to Sulaimani on a work assignment.
Hazim: “From the long time we were friends I have a memory from a day when it was me, Najmadin, Avan and Shifa. Shifa was serious. She was carrying with her a notebook of 10 pages. She was worried about tomorrow’s exam and so was reading all the way. I was so irritated that they were not talking to me and just busy with their studies that I called Dr. Saman and said please lets not do the exam tomorrow. We are tired and I am returning from a trip. He agreed to delay the exam and laughing and singing started inside the car all the way to Erbi. And because I have small eyes, Shifa said I should stop the car.”
Hazim: “Kurdish women are Peshmerga, held in high esteem, Shifa has now joined them, that’s the nature of volunteers, she did so for people and land, fearless and carefree.”
Shifa’s teachers say that her research paper was rich and they have been using it in their lectures and classes.
“In her research she had highlighted some people and I asked her why she had thanked those people, she replied: because I am indebted to them. One of them was her mother.”
