Exile: “I Have Not Dreamed of Being Here Since I Still Live There”

This chapter focuses on the exile situation, which is embedded in the lives of every Kurdish-Yezidi refugee to a different extent. Refugees’ exile situation is related to their uprootedness and detachment from social and spatial roots and environments. The chapter explains how refugee detachment in host cities results in a variety of issues with their adaptation, settlement, and orientation processes, as well as self-alienation, a loss of their cultural and social values, and feelings of isolation and melancholy. However, many refugees cope with the implications of their exile situation through reattachment and mobilization for the homeland cause on a daily level. They maintain cultural, economic, linguistic, and political elements of the homeland as the foundation for their social interaction and relationships with one another.