ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Jwan was born with both male and female reproductive organs, a condition known as hermaphroditism. She is identified as male on her Iraqi identity card but claims that her feminine side is more dominant.
Her condition has caused problems for the 28-year old woman from Duhok. She claims she was tortured and imprisoned by her brothers for nearly a year and a half, once even buried alive.
She has now fled to Istanbul for fear of her safety. She spoke to Rudaw by phone, recounting her story. “I realized that I wasn’t a boy when I was in grade 7. But they didn’t allow me to go to the girls’ school. I had to then go to the boys’. My life in school was very unpleasant. I couldn’t complete grade 8. I dropped out of school under pressure from my brothers.”
Her family gave her a boy’s name, which is on her ID. She, however, wants to be called Jwan, saying that her feminine looks have caused trouble for her.
“Sometimes I was being asked for my ID at checkpoints where officers were getting suspicious because my gender on my ID is identified as male, thinking that my ID was fake.”
Jwan has four brothers who used to taunt her, becoming aggressive and insulting, she said. She is still haunted by her past. “My brothers were often asking me why I wasn’t shaving my beard. In response, I told them, ‘What should I shave? I have no beard to remove.’ They were asking me to shave, so I could grow hair on my face.”
Her mother was apparently the only one who sympathized with Jwan, helping her to get a job at the restaurant of a cousin.
“I was working in my cousin’s restaurant from 6am until 9pm for two years. I was getting paid 25,000 Iraqi dinars per day, but my brothers were taking the money. So I couldn’t have the money I was earning,” Jwan said.
“My brothers were continuously taunting me. They were nagging me. I left the job I had in the restaurant to work in a hotel where I was washing clothes. In the hotel, I was disguised as a boy, wearing men’s clothes and even taping my breasts to hide them. But this job didn’t last long, either.”
Jwan met a man she described as intellectual, but her life at home became worse when her brothers learned about their relationship.
“I didn’t know what was wrong. My four brothers took me to a room where they insulted and beat me. My whole body was bleeding. They even tried to cut my breasts with a knife.”
She vividly remembers the night she was almost killed by her own family. “My brothers put me in a car. They were all carrying guns. One of them put his pistol on my thigh, threatening to kill me if I were to utter a word at checkpoints. I was too scared to say anything.”
“They took me to my grandparents’ orchard,” she recalled. “I remember it was Tuesday night. It was a very cold night. They dug a ditch there. They then tied my hands and feet. Eventually, they put me in the ditch and covered my body with more than half a meter of soil. Then, they put three big rocks on the ditch. Only my head was outside.”
Jwan said she begged for mercy. “One of my brothers had just had a new-born baby. I shouted, ‘Please shoot me. Do not leave me here in pain, for the sake of God and your newborn!’ My screams fell on deaf ears. They all left, leaving me behind.”
“I will never forget that night. I was petrified by the sound of wild animals. I was so frightened and feeling so cold that I was not even aware of the pain I had in my bleeding body.”
She said she was trapped in the ditch for 11 hours. “My mother happened to be at my sister’s home on the night I was buried in the ditch. She noticed my absence when she returned home the next day. My mother turned to my father, threatening to go back to her parents’ home and kill herself if I was not brought back home in two hours.”
Her mother’s threat apparently moved her father in turn threatened to kill his sons if they did not bring Jwan back. “My brothers along with my mother came around lunch time. My mother fainted when she saw me this way. My brothers later dug me out and took me home.”
“My hands and legs were swollen. My brothers didn’t dare to take me to the hospital because of police. They put me in an animal’s skin for two weeks, until I got a bit better.”
Her brothers continued to torment her. “After this incident, they didn’t let me go out. They didn’t allow me to use phones. I couldn’t even watch the television. They were insulting me whenever my mother was away from home. One day in the middle of the summer, they put me in the basement and turned on the stove in order to torture me. My mother had gone to a funeral in our village that day,”
“They imprisoned me at home for a year and a half.”
One day, Jwan decided to tell her mother about the man she loves and convinced her that fleeing the country was best.
“A friend of mine helped me to go to Soran from there I sneaked into Gavar, then into Istanbul where I registered with the UN and told them about my situation. They were shocked to hear my case.”
The UN apparently has approved her case and will send her to Australia in May this year. “I will undergo surgery this April to change my gender completely to female,” Jwan said.
Jwan said that the reason behind reaching out to Rudaw to tell her story is to awaken Kurdish authorities to the need for a law to protect the rights of people like her in the region.
Rudaw has obtained photos of Jwan that clearly show scars left on her body from torture, but decided not to publish all of them, although she had no objection to doing so.
Dr. Kamaran Jalaladin is a specialist in bladder surgery in Duhok. “I see a hermaphrodite almost every month,” he said. “We cannot perform every surgery in Duhok. We have a team that will decide on surgeries after examining the person.”
He has thus far performed surgeries on 9 people. “In the past, the people turning to us for gender issues were above 16. But nowadays, due to more parental awareness, they bring their children earlier.”
Dr. Ismail Segri is a well-known mullah in the Kurdish town of Koya. He thinks that it is a sin to look down upon people with this condition. “Families should help people like this the way they deal with other patients, until they recover.”
Speaking of gender transformation from a sharia perspective, he said, “It is haram [a sin] to change one’s gender to female if the doctor says that one’s attributes are more masculine than feminine.”
Her condition has caused problems for the 28-year old woman from Duhok. She claims she was tortured and imprisoned by her brothers for nearly a year and a half, once even buried alive.
She has now fled to Istanbul for fear of her safety. She spoke to Rudaw by phone, recounting her story. “I realized that I wasn’t a boy when I was in grade 7. But they didn’t allow me to go to the girls’ school. I had to then go to the boys’. My life in school was very unpleasant. I couldn’t complete grade 8. I dropped out of school under pressure from my brothers.”
Her family gave her a boy’s name, which is on her ID. She, however, wants to be called Jwan, saying that her feminine looks have caused trouble for her.
“Sometimes I was being asked for my ID at checkpoints where officers were getting suspicious because my gender on my ID is identified as male, thinking that my ID was fake.”
Jwan has four brothers who used to taunt her, becoming aggressive and insulting, she said. She is still haunted by her past. “My brothers were often asking me why I wasn’t shaving my beard. In response, I told them, ‘What should I shave? I have no beard to remove.’ They were asking me to shave, so I could grow hair on my face.”
Her mother was apparently the only one who sympathized with Jwan, helping her to get a job at the restaurant of a cousin.
“I was working in my cousin’s restaurant from 6am until 9pm for two years. I was getting paid 25,000 Iraqi dinars per day, but my brothers were taking the money. So I couldn’t have the money I was earning,” Jwan said.
“My brothers were continuously taunting me. They were nagging me. I left the job I had in the restaurant to work in a hotel where I was washing clothes. In the hotel, I was disguised as a boy, wearing men’s clothes and even taping my breasts to hide them. But this job didn’t last long, either.”
Jwan met a man she described as intellectual, but her life at home became worse when her brothers learned about their relationship.
“I didn’t know what was wrong. My four brothers took me to a room where they insulted and beat me. My whole body was bleeding. They even tried to cut my breasts with a knife.”
She vividly remembers the night she was almost killed by her own family. “My brothers put me in a car. They were all carrying guns. One of them put his pistol on my thigh, threatening to kill me if I were to utter a word at checkpoints. I was too scared to say anything.”
“They took me to my grandparents’ orchard,” she recalled. “I remember it was Tuesday night. It was a very cold night. They dug a ditch there. They then tied my hands and feet. Eventually, they put me in the ditch and covered my body with more than half a meter of soil. Then, they put three big rocks on the ditch. Only my head was outside.”
Jwan said she begged for mercy. “One of my brothers had just had a new-born baby. I shouted, ‘Please shoot me. Do not leave me here in pain, for the sake of God and your newborn!’ My screams fell on deaf ears. They all left, leaving me behind.”
“I will never forget that night. I was petrified by the sound of wild animals. I was so frightened and feeling so cold that I was not even aware of the pain I had in my bleeding body.”
She said she was trapped in the ditch for 11 hours. “My mother happened to be at my sister’s home on the night I was buried in the ditch. She noticed my absence when she returned home the next day. My mother turned to my father, threatening to go back to her parents’ home and kill herself if I was not brought back home in two hours.”
Her mother’s threat apparently moved her father in turn threatened to kill his sons if they did not bring Jwan back. “My brothers along with my mother came around lunch time. My mother fainted when she saw me this way. My brothers later dug me out and took me home.”
“My hands and legs were swollen. My brothers didn’t dare to take me to the hospital because of police. They put me in an animal’s skin for two weeks, until I got a bit better.”
Her brothers continued to torment her. “After this incident, they didn’t let me go out. They didn’t allow me to use phones. I couldn’t even watch the television. They were insulting me whenever my mother was away from home. One day in the middle of the summer, they put me in the basement and turned on the stove in order to torture me. My mother had gone to a funeral in our village that day,”
“They imprisoned me at home for a year and a half.”
One day, Jwan decided to tell her mother about the man she loves and convinced her that fleeing the country was best.
“A friend of mine helped me to go to Soran from there I sneaked into Gavar, then into Istanbul where I registered with the UN and told them about my situation. They were shocked to hear my case.”
The UN apparently has approved her case and will send her to Australia in May this year. “I will undergo surgery this April to change my gender completely to female,” Jwan said.
Jwan said that the reason behind reaching out to Rudaw to tell her story is to awaken Kurdish authorities to the need for a law to protect the rights of people like her in the region.
Rudaw has obtained photos of Jwan that clearly show scars left on her body from torture, but decided not to publish all of them, although she had no objection to doing so.
Dr. Kamaran Jalaladin is a specialist in bladder surgery in Duhok. “I see a hermaphrodite almost every month,” he said. “We cannot perform every surgery in Duhok. We have a team that will decide on surgeries after examining the person.”
He has thus far performed surgeries on 9 people. “In the past, the people turning to us for gender issues were above 16. But nowadays, due to more parental awareness, they bring their children earlier.”
Dr. Ismail Segri is a well-known mullah in the Kurdish town of Koya. He thinks that it is a sin to look down upon people with this condition. “Families should help people like this the way they deal with other patients, until they recover.”
Speaking of gender transformation from a sharia perspective, he said, “It is haram [a sin] to change one’s gender to female if the doctor says that one’s attributes are more masculine than feminine.”
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