Mevan Babakar, a Kurdish-British refugee originally from the Kurdistan Region, was reunited on Tuesday with a Dutch aid worker who gifted her and her a mother a bicycle 24 years ago.
Babakar, 29, fled the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province in the 1990s during the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime massacred the Kurds. She arrived in the Netherlands with her family.
“My dad decided there was no life for us here, and especially for a young girl in Kurdistan,” she told Kurdistan 24.
He decided to leave the Kurdistan Region and raise Babakar somewhere where she would have more opportunities. Her family was refugees for five years.
“The refugee journey took us through many countries: through Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, and one of the countries [was] Holland. We stayed in Holland [for] over a year,” Babakar explained.
For those wondering here what five year old Mevan looked like. This was my fifth birthday in the refugee camp in Zwolle. She doesn't even know that an incredible bike is coming her way aaaany day now! pic.twitter.com/caZ6NGFh55 — Mevan | میڤان (@MeAndVan) August 12, 2019
Her family lived at a refugee camp near the city of Zwolle in the Netherlands. She relayed to Kurdistan 24 how much safer she felt there than anywhere else.
Babakar highlighted “the kindness” the people of Zwolle demonstrated to her and her family.“That really helped [to] build me as a person,” she said.
The 29-year-old recalled the generosity of a man named Egbert who worked at the refugee camp. He had bought her and her mother a bike when she was 5.
“I remember thinking: it was a beautiful, magical, and generous gift,” Babakar added.
She posted a photo on Twitter of the Dutch aid worker, whose name she previously did not know. After her tweet was shared over 3,000 times, she was able to find him in the Netherlands within 24 hours.
