Ismail Khayat

This small stone was a gift.

Each intern was given one by an artist named Ismail Khayat who works with PLC. It looks simple but what it represents is much bigger than you could guess.

Ismail was a young man in the 80's during the Iraq-Iran war. Iran cut off the water supply to the river that ran through Ismail's village leaving the village quite desperate. As a form of protest he went to the river and drew fish and other pictures on to the stones to put life back where the water used to be.  He also made it a personal mission to try and illustrate the 182,000 Kurds that were killed by Saddam Hussein as part of the Anfal policies (kurdish genocide). Ismail figures he will never be able to draw every individual that is now buried in the hills of Kurdistan. But he will still try.