Yazidi Student Club Leads AUK in Celebrating New Year

The American University of Kurdistan (AUK) enrolls a large contingent of Yazidi students, so the Yazidi New Year, Çaršama Nîsanê, is cause for celebration on campus. April 19th, the formal observation of the New Year, is a holiday on campus just as it is elsewhere in the Kurdistan Region, which meant April 18th would be the best day to recognize the holiday with associated activities. The University’s Yazidi Student Club held its first event on that day, showing off the splendor of Yazidi culture to the AUK community as a whole.

The event started with a speech by club president Hakim Murat Ali, a sophomore in the College of Nursing. He was in traditional Yazidi dress, flanked on both sides by other Yazidis, also traditionally attired. They were standing in front of a table full of Yazidi cultural symbols and food for the guests. He gave an overview of his religion, with an understandable emphasis on New Year festivities. In the very center of the table were red flowers; flowers symbolize the “new life” that comes out every spring and came out with the creation of the universe commemorated by this holiday, and they are red to represent the blood pumped into the first person created. The club’s president explained that it is customary for Yazidis to attach these red flowers to their doors on New Year’s Eve. He went in-depth on sartorial matters, revealing that their cummerbunds function as pockets and that headdresses for both males and females have had “braids” built into them since time immemorial.

The interactive portion of the event began when attendees were invited to eat the copious food on the table (provided they were not religiously fasting) and play a certain Yazidi game. The Christian Easter does not “own” egg decorating; for their New Year, Yazidis boil eggs and color their shells, since eggs are analogous in shape to the Earth, the creation of which is being marked. Celebrants have a lighthearted test of strength in which they try to break the eggs of others using their own. At AUK, Yazidis and non-Yazidis alike engaged in this contest, and several then consumed the edible insides.

Traditional singing and dancing took up the rest of the event. The singer was performing Yazidi folk songs about love, in which lyrics and ululation alternated. In the dancing, chains of people connected at the hands rhythmically circled the area. AUK’s Yazidi Student Club was represented well among the dancers, but Yazidi visitors from the University of Duhok and non-Yazidis from AUK, like CAPA Director Loucine Hayes, also joined the fun.

New years start at different times for different cultures, and the American University of Kurdistan just hosted a respectful – and educational – celebration of one. Thanks to the Yazidi Student Club, the AUK campus enjoyed some more color than usual on the previous day in honor of this new beginning for Yazidis. One member of the Club, Saada Hussein, likewise a sophomore in the College of Nursing, expressed a powerful hope for the next twelve months: “I hope more Yazidis from Sinjar will be able to return home and there will be more acceptance of our religion by others.”