ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two blind brothers displaced from Syria’s northern Kurdish city of Afrin, now living in Aleppo’s Shahba, have said years of repeated displacement have eroded their stability, yet they continue to produce music.
"I want to return to Afrin today before tomorrow,” said Welat, 36, who has been blind since birth. “Our lives have been wasted in displacement. It hasn’t been once, or twice, or three times. As someone who worked the Afrin-Tabqa-Shahba line, before everything else, before food and drink, before the light of my own eyes, before property or wealth, I want the return to Afrin."
The brothers are originally from Afrin but now live as displaced persons in Shahba in Aleppo province in northern Syria.
Doctors have told them their blindness is incurable, yet they say displacement has been the greater burden, confining them to dependence and uncertainty after years of repeated uprooting.
Before the conflict forced them to flee, Welat worked along the Afrin-Tabqa-Shahba transport route. He now says life feels reduced to waiting inside a space that is not his own, far from the community he remembers.
Their mother, Meyasa Ebdo, has cared for both sons for four decades, a responsibility made far more difficult during waves of displacement and bombardment.
"Bombs and shells were falling right in front of us,” she recalled. “As we were being forced out and running, their heads would hit the walls; they would fall down in different places. I struggled so much with them. This is a very difficult situation; this is displacement. It hasn't happened once, twice, or three times; it’s been four.”
The family is among the tens of thousands displaced after Turkey and allied Syrian opposition forces launched an offensive in Afrin in early 2018. United Nations agencies estimate that more than 150,000 people were forced to flee the region during and after the operation, many relocating to nearby areas such as Shahba, where large numbers remain unable to return years later.
Like many families displaced from Afrin during years of fighting in northern Syria, the Khilo family has moved repeatedly, carrying few belongings while trying to maintain a sense of normal life.
Despite the hardship, the brothers have turned to music as a way to preserve identity and resist despair. Khalil Khilo, 42, said they began composing songs in 2007, performing music centered on Kurdish culture and their homeland.
“My brother and I produced one song there,” Khalil said. “Later, when we moved to Shahba, we produced three music videos.”
Viviyan Fatah contributed to this report from Shahba, Aleppo.
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