An elderly woman freed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Raqqa lost her mind after spending days next to the corpses of her children decomposing in front of her eyes.

No camera and no picture can ever capture the tragedy the people of the Middle East are suffering for more than six years now. For someone standing outside it is impossible to grasp or put into words the deep wounds left on the hearts and minds of these people. As for us Kurdish journalists who have grown up on these lands and even though we spent our whole lifetimes in war and have become witnesses of our own people's tragedy, we still face difficulties in conceiving the tragedy happening in Raqqa, and we face even more difficulties to put it into words.

THEY CANNOT BELIEVE TO BE FREE

Every single story of the civilians who have been rescued from the city, leaves one deeply flabbergasted to say the least. In this city which was totally cut off from the outside world for four years, tragedies took hold far beyond human understanding. These survivors, who were subjected to all possible atrocities, can still not believe to have been freed. Still now their terrified eyes are darting to and fro, lead by hearts filled with terror. Upon hearing cars arriving, they dash off. And when they manage to speak of what they were put through, common sense capitulates.

Some of the rescued civilians from Raqqa are taken directly to the paramedic station built up at the front line. There a team of medics is conducting check ups.

WHILE HOLDING OUT NEXT TO HER DEAD SONS, SHE LOST HER MIND

An elderly woman, three sons of whom have been killed and three of her daughters abducted by the ISIS gangs, clutches the hands of the paramedic treating her and says: "They murdered my children in front of my eyes. I was sitting for days next to their corpses. They decomposed slowly in front of my eyes and turned to bones. I do not know where my three daughters are."

As the 70 year old grandmother was holding out next to the corpses of her children, witnessing the slow decay of her sons' bodies, she lost her mind. When the fighters of the SDF found her together with her wounded son in a home, they were sitting across the remains of the three children. Both, the mother and her wounded son, have lost their minds to some degree. The old woman kept on repeating: "My children have become bones. They are still inside the house. Their corpses puffed up and later decayed, turning to bones. ISIS killed them. I do not know where my three daughters are."

The grandmother, who gripped the hand of a medic, clinching to it, said to her: "Go and bring me my daughters. They have taken them to the Xerbi region. I want my daughters back."

HE WAS TALKING TO HIMSELF

Her wounded son was even in a worse situation. A bullet was stuck in his foot, splitting the bones, and because the wound remained untreated, his foot turned deep black. The man was on the verge of totally going insane and he kept talking to himself. His words were unintelligible. He was just repeating: "I have come to Raqqa. There was no fight. Who is ISIS, I do not know ISIS." The next moment he fell silent. The paramedics did not allow us to come any nearer to him and talk with him.

When one listens to the elderly woman from Raqqa, the tragedy of a Kurdish mother in the town of Cizre in Northern Kurdistan floats before one's eyes, who was forced to keep the corpse of her daughter for 13 days in a fridge to prevent it from decaying amid the curfew imposed by the Turkish state. The lifeless body of mother Taybet comes to mind, which was left by the Turkish forces on the street for days, in eyesight of her children. These happenings and the mentality behind them equal to each other deeply. On the one side there are the barbaric acts of the AKP's fascism which they perpetrate with the blessing of an entire state, and on the other side you have the brutality executed by thugs called ISIS. They are of the same kind, possess the same mentality, are of the same structure, and only differ in terms of their names. The last fortress of the ISIS gangs has been teared down by the children of this people. A state that is built on the very same mentality, will not be able to save itself from the storm of this vengeance.