The Child Writer and The Young Artist
Amera Ali and Suad Smo are cousins. They are both Yezidi. They were both captured by ISIS in 2014. And they both found ways to survive by doing what they had always done: Amera wrote, and Suad drew.
About Amera & Suad
Two Voices, One Scream
About Amera & Suad
Two Voices, One Scream
”Her work doesn't offer easy answers or comfortable resolutions. It sits with the difficult truth of what happened—and continues to happen—to the Yezidi people.
The Writer
Amera Ali is a 22-year-old Yezidi refugee, law student at the University of New England, and part-time youth worker at Backtrack. But her story begins long before Australia, in a small Yezidi town in Iraq, where a young girl loved to write.
Through a quirk of poor birth record-keeping, Amera started school at five years old instead of six. By the time she was ten, she was already a prolific writer—filling notebooks with her thoughts, dreams, and observations about the world around her.
In August 2014, ISIS entered her town. Everything changed.
The Power of a Brother’s Love
“My brother Ali has been missing since 2014, but he has never been far from me. Distance does not change anything, because he is always with me in my heart. I will never say that Ali is far away, because he is the closest one to me — in my memories, in my thoughts, and in every step of my life.
Every night before I sleep, I sit on my bed and talk to him. I imagine he is sitting beside me, just like we used to do before everything changed. I speak to him until I feel calm enough to fall asleep. These moments remind me that love does not disappear, even when someone is missing. Ali stays with me in every breath, in every hope, and in every dream I carry.”
Captivity
Amera was ten years old when ISIS militants captured her, along with her family (except for her father), and thousands of other Yezidi people. Her older brother Ali was taken separately. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. She didn’t know if she would ever see him again.
But Amera did what she had always done when the world felt too big or too frightening: she wrote.
On scraps of paper secreted in her clothes and shoes, Amera recorded her thoughts, feelings, fears, and experiences. She wrote messages to Ali — desperate that if she could leave them somewhere, he might find them. And if he found them, he might find her.
Against all odds, Amera managed to keep most of those scraps of paper throughout her captivity.
Survival and Voice
Amera and her mother eventually escaped and made their way to Australia as refugees. Ali is still missing.
Years later, Amera translated her messages from Kurmanji into English and assembled them into a book. What began as a ten-year-old’s desperate attempt to reach her brother became a testimony — not just of her own survival, but of the thousands of Yezidi people who were murdered, enslaved, and displaced in what has been recognised as genocide.
Today, Amera uses her voice to ensure the world does not forget what happened to her people. She advocates for the missing, for justice, and for the recognition that survivors are not victims waiting to be saved — they are leaders, experts, and bridge-builders creating change in their communities.
”This book carries those screams. It carries the truth that was hidden. It carries the voices of girls who were taken, of mothers who were broken, of fathers who could not protect their children.
Suad: The Artist
Suad Smo was also captured by ISIS in 2014, along with her cousin Amera and thousands of other Yezidi people. While Amera secreted scraps of paper in her clothes to write messages to Ali, Suad found another form of expression: art.
In captivity and in the years that followed, Suad created artwork that captures what words sometimes cannot—the weight of grief, the persistence of trauma, the fragments of memory, and the quiet strength of survival. Her drawings don’t shy away from the darkness. They bear witness to it.
When Amera decided to share her messages with the world, there was only one person who could provide the visual language for her words: Suad.
Throughout For Ali, For Us All, Suad’s artwork appears alongside Amera’s writing — not as illustration, but as dialogue. Two cousins, two survivors, two forms of testimony woven together into a single, powerful scream that demands to be heard.
Suad’s cover artwork and the pieces featured throughout the book represent her own journey through captivity, loss, and the long road toward healing. Her art gives form to what many survivors carry but struggle to express — making visible the invisible wounds that don’t appear in photographs or news reports.
The Yezidi Genocide
The Yezidi people are a religious and ethnic minority primarily from northern Iraq. In August 2014, ISIS launched a systematic campaign to exterminate them, killing thousands of men and elderly women, and enslaving thousands of women and children.
Many Yezidi people are still missing. Families continue to search for their loved ones. When remains are found, families are often asked to pay fees to receive them — adding financial burden to unimaginable grief.
The international community has recognised what happened as genocide. But for families like Amera’s, the genocide is not history. It is present tense. It is ongoing. And it demands justice.