Salam is from the village of Ba’adre in the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, close to the sacred Yazidi site of Lalish. He now lives in France with his wife and their son who was born in April 2020. Salam grew up as one of eleven siblings and was studying Arabic at the nearby University of Duhok when ISIS launched its attack on Sinjar. He is keen one day to finish his studies and perhaps work as a teacher and translator because of his love for languages, but his principal vocation is art. Although he and some of his brothers made pencil drawings while living in Iraq, there was little support for their interests: “Nobody appreciated my art or why I was painting”, says Salam.

After the attack began in August 2014, Salam and his family knew they would never again feel safe in Iraq. With the genocide still ongoing in February 2016, they left Ba’adre and began the perilous journey to safety. After numerous failed attempts over land and sea the family reached Greece, and another nine months in a refugee camp would follow before Salam’s parents and family members began to be accepted, although not all together, by a UNHCR relocation programme. “When we were finally reunited in France,” Salam says, “we all started crying and we did not know how to express our thanks to France.” It was difficult to begin a new life, but in France he soon found friends and a love for the traditional crêpe.

Yet it was in Greece that Salam and his brothers had first found support for their artwork, when a volunteer in the camp brought them the materials to begin painting with acrylics and oil. By October 2016 Salam’s brother Ismail had his first seven paintings exhibited in Vienna, Austria, and Salam then had his own works exhibited in Zurich, Switzerland, in early 2017. Salam, Ismail, and their brother Jason now run the website Brotherly Art, displaying all their artworks online and at exhibitions worldwide, and donating a share of their profits to refugees and displaced people in need. For his painting “The Darkness is Covering Me” Salam collaborated with his brother Sahir, who wrote an accompanying poem. In doing so, the brothers wanted to convey a sense of unity and help the audience to understand the message of the painting by means of the written word. The painting uses rich and dramatic symbolism to tell a narrative of a male figure (Salam’s brother) who is separated from his abducted girlfriend. Salam’s interests in abstract and surrealist art, and particularly the work of Salvador Dali, are clearly manifested in this fascinating work.

Without permission to travel during their first year in France, the brothers used social media to reach out to others and get feedback on their work, while their paintings were shown by friends and contacts across Europe and in the United States. Salam is committed to pursuing a professional career as an artist because his art allows him to continue to tell the story of the Yazidis, and to raise awareness and support for his people. Asked why he thinks it is important to have artists within the Yazidi community, Salam responds: “To keep the message and story alive, to keep reminding people the genocide is happening even if the media doesn’t pay attention, and to generate powerful emotions and empathy through painting Yazidi stories.”

Salam also stresses the importance of doing more to help those people who have yet to reach safety: “We thank everyone who has helped the Yazidis, and all the European governments that have helped. But at the same time, we still need more. Many Yazidis have lost people in their family. They lost their studies and their jobs and their villages. Some are still living in a tent in camps during the harsh winter and very hot summers. Please open your door to help those persecuted. These people have lost everything, and they just want to have a new, simple life.” For many victims, the clock of painful separation and dwindling hope – portrayed so movingly in Salam’s painting – continues to tick.

The Darkness Is Covering Me Poem by Sahir Noh

The darkness is covering me like a blanket...
Alone sitting in this room,
So dark.
So alone.
Crying my heart out
While waiting,
Waiting for your return...

Waiting for the light in our eyes shall brighten the sky again...
Waiting for the lights to go out and the day turns into night.
Still I’m waiting for a touch from your hands to keep me alive...
There I’m sitting near the window
Looking for a shadow
Or to another shooting star
So I can make a wish once more...
Which is to hug you once more.