Dress
- ID-nummer
- 2021.003.001
- Titel
- Dress
- Objektkategori
- Kläder & assessorer
- Publik beskrivning
-
This dress, which belonged to Nadia Murad, is associated with horrific events but also with hope.
In August 2014, the Islamic State (IS) launched a brutal attack on Nadia Murad’s village Kocho in northern Iraq. The younger women, including Murad, were abducted and held as sex slaves. After three months Nadia Murad managed to escape.
This is how she describes the dress:
“This dress represents many things to me. It reminds me of a time long ago, before the violence of genocide swept my community. In Kocho, my cousin was planning to get married. There was some fabric at home, and I worked with my nieces Nesrin and Kathrine to make a dress for me to wear at the wedding. I loved weddings and was very much looking forward to doing my makeup and hair. But the wedding never happened. ISIS came and destroyed my home and my community. They took my mother and brothers from me. I felt nothing but sadness and despair for a long time.
Years later, I travelled back to Kocho and visited the place where my house once stood. To my surprise, among the rubble of my old home, there was the wedding dress. It lay among the ruins relatively untouched. In that moment, I felt the untouched dress symbolised hope. Hope that I would again feel the joy I once felt being surrounded by my family and community. Hope that my community would one day be able to return to Sinjar and rebuild their lives.
It is this hope that I hold onto in times of darkness. It is this hope that drives me to keep moving forward and fighting for justice.”
Nadia Murad donated the dress to the Nobel Prize Museum in 2021. - Pristagare
- Nadia Murad
Part of Dress