ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Filled with hope of having a better life in a European country, a Kurdish family from Iran’s Sardasht city began the perilous journey from Turkey to Greece on June 14, but they would not all arrive.
Mehri Nabizada, 30, her husband Sardar Ibrahim, 34, and their two children - Sozhin, six, and four-year-old Solin - moved from Iran to Turkey, before deciding to cross into Greece.
Plagued by a heart condition, Mehri would not make it.
"My wife was very exhausted. She had a heart condition. One night, we stopped walking in a forest hoping she could rest for the night. We were just 300 meters from an unpaved road in the forest and we stayed the night there," Ibrahim told Rudaw.
"She had breathing difficulties. After I carried her to the road, I started to cry out for help. I was begging vehicles passing by on the road to stop and help us. Unfortunately, nobody helped. Nobody stopped.”
He then looked at his wife, whose breathing had become more laboured. He began mouth-to-mouth, and then CPR, but to no avail.
“She died with her head in my hands and the two children sitting beside us…I couldn’t do anything. I sat and cried."
Nabizada's tragic death was first reported by the Kurdistan Region-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights on Sunday - which coincided with World Refugee Day.
The incident took place near the Greek town of Mandra, near the border, on June 14 after the family had crossed the Turkish border from Edirne province.
The story of the family soon went viral on social media, with Kurds across the world expressing solidarity.
Nabizada’s death came one week after the dead body of a one-year-old Kurdish boy from Sardasht, who drowned in the English Channel last October, was found more than 900 kilometres away in Norway.
Artin and his family were trying to reach the United Kingdom when their boat capsized off the French coast on October 27, throwing the nearly two dozen migrants onboard into the sea.
Poverty and state discrimination have pushed many people in Iran, including Kurds, to seek a better life abroad, with many aiming for Europe.
Nabizada’s body is being held in the city of Alexandroupoli, while her family are in a camp near Greece’s borders with Turkey and Bulgaria.
"The police came and separated my children and me from my dead wife. They jailed us for two nights and then they took us to this camp. I asked them where they took my wife. They said the body of my wife had been taken to another city,” her husband told Rudaw.
"I am calling on everyone who sees this footage to help us so I can send my wife’s body back to Kurdistan. I don’t want it to stay here."
Reporting by Nasir Piroty and Frya Younesi
Translation by Zhelwan Zeyad Wali
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Mehri Nabizada, and mistranslated a statement from Sardar Ibrahim that he wanted to return to Iran to bury his wife. In fact, he wants her body returned to Iran for burial, but not to return himself.
