WITS - to be continued

Sureya has told us her nephew has been murdered, the idyllic fountain sprinkling sounds of bubbling water and birds chirping interspersed with her words. She recounts the terror of his mother, calling Sureya desperate for money to give the kidnappers who hold her son for ransom.

Half Arab, half Kurd, she talks of how they wrapped his pray shawl around his head, stuffed his Koran between his teeth, beat and tortured him before cutting off his head and setting his taxi on fire. All the while his mother frantically raising the money to shove into grasping hands in exchange for his release.

She spoke of the two young girls, babies really, left without a father. The wife. The siblings. The auntie. He was a taxi driver born of a father from one side of this manufactured civil war; a mother from the other. She talked about the violence we are doing to each other, that we have crossed over into something so vile, so horrific, so unimaginable – we are stunned, horrified, numbed. And determined to end this violence.