Rewiring

Back in 2016 a large group of us drove in two vehicles to a newly erected camp for the displaced Arabs of Mosul. 

Saad, who liked to be known as Operations Manager, sat or rather was crunched up in the back of my vehicle, and was, for Saad, unusually quiet as we listened to music. Wondering what was ‘wrong’ with him I asked him if all was ok with him. His reply took me by surprise, as it both broke with protocol and yet was a totally genuine “Saad” answer. “Be quiet, this music is rewiring my brain.” So quiet I was. And quiet I continued to be as the song went on repeat and repeat for maybe 30 minutes. 

Several days later Dr Saeed asked me “what’s wrong with Saad, it's as if his brain has been rewired.” Since that day in the car, since the music our Saad was actually focused and centred. The music had reached a deep place where something fragmented was healed. 

Fast forward to 2025, and we are working with precious children and adolescents who have been marginalised, outcast and punished for the fact that their brain works differently. We are walking closely alongside the autistic community with the prayer that there will be a rewiring of life skills, so that they can discover and connect with themselves, their families and eventually with their varied Kurdish and Arab communities.

The cold facts tell us that there are over 4000 diagnosed cases of autism within the Kurdish Region of Iraq and a higher number inside Federal Iraq. This is not yet a region that easily accepts the ‘Dignity of Difference’ as described by the late Rabbi Sacks. This is still a region dominated by the honor/ shame culture, such a child is frequently looked upon as a curse, sick with an incurable disease, a blight on the family. 

A study made by the University of Cambridge showed an unprecedented increase in diagnosed cases since the 2003 war, with 75 cases among each 10,000 children. 

There are six educational centres ( locally incorrectly known as rehab centres ) in the Kurdish Region, each one is home to 15-20 children. The monthly stipend granted to these children is low, around $100 per month. Sadly, appallingly, registration for this stipend has been suspended since 2012. I think you get the picture. 

The mental health needs of the families are beyond desperate. There is no education, no psychological support, no social support. The families tend to be very low income with neither financial nor emotional capacity to accept their children and work with them to integrate them into some level of family or social life.

Tragically some of the children are locked in a room for life. Some chain their children to a wall, some tie their hands and feet with rope. Some are tied to the roof . The situation is dire.

The mothers wear the black garments of those in mourning. Their children are as if dead, they have no hope, they wail and cry hour after hour as if death hits again and again. They do not leave their home, they have disconnected from both family, community and life. They are the living dead.

Earlier this year we opened our stable doors to a small group of local Yezidi autistic kiddies, then included an additional equine assisted therapy session for special needs including autistic kiddies from our Syrian community. News in Mesopotamia travels fast, mainly through social media. 

We were then approached by two private centres, one which was founded by a strong but broken family whose first born son is autistic. They needed solutions and have dedicated their life to helping autistic children. Each child is accompanied 24/7 by its carer who were trained by professionals from Turkey.  

K, the founding mother says, “here in Duhok we lack specialised autism centres, that focus upon rehabilitation and integration for the children. Across Iraq we suffer from the absence of structured systems and educational frameworks. There are no qualified trainers due to insufficient academic and practical preparation in universities and colleges.

“We were able to send our son to Kartal, Istanbul for a year, at the end of which we brought their programme to Iraq so that our son and others could benefit. Many of our children reach us as adolescents making our work harder. Many have suffered degradation and abuse. 

“We have a strict routine which begins at 08.00 with sports, followed by breakfast. We conclude the day with sports. We take the children out several times a week both for enjoyment and development within the larger community but also to ensure that they are tired and sleep.” 

They try to make the children so tired that they sleep at night as the carer sleeps with the child.  The children are effectively orphans as the families have abandoned them. They know only their carer.

The second centre, close to the Syrian border, travels quite a way to come to us. There are a total of 30 children. We accept (hard for us, but the logistics are hard for them) 15 children at a time, with one carer to two children.

Once again we have jumped into deep waters, our hearts heavy for these kiddies and their broken families, knowing that we are not equipped to serve them but believing in the miraculous and the quietly radical transformation that we have been privileged to witness as our horses help the children with movement, balance, rhythm, focus, concentration, connection and communication. 

We continually hear that the children are excited when it's “horses day”. They are up and ready early and that their “happiness lasts for days.”  Thus we push into the unknown and pray, especially as our number of autistic students (nearly all abandoned by their families) per week is now around 40. This was not planned; it was another one of those things that “just happened”, and we had to make the decision to run with it or not. We run and pray to make a small difference with their levels of communication, social interaction and integration and behaviour. We have committed for the long haul with the prayer that there will be gradual healing and the day will come when the parents are reunited with their children and accept them as special, with gifts and skills that only an autistic child could be blessed with.

Of great interest to me is the story of Temple Grandin, born in the 1950s, called ‘hopeless’ by the doctors who misunderstood autism. Her mother refused to send her to an institution and taught Temple to communicate through words, pictures and touch as she thought in images. Her mother opened doors instead of closing them.  Her story is that her difference became her strength. Where others saw chaos, she saw patterns and discovered that she could see the world the way that animals do. She saw the things that humans ignored but scared the animals, even such a simple thing as a shadow on the floor that frightened a horse.  She embraced her autism to reshape how the world understands animals. 

Temple became a professor, a scientist, an inventor, and a global advocate both for autism and animal welfare. Autism was not her curse. Autism was her lens of genius. Autism was her platform and her inner strength. 

Overflowing with beauty and serenity, plants, trees, fruit, birdsong, ducks, geese, chickens, rabbits, the horses and Oscar our very empathetic dog, Horses for Hope is the perfect place for exploring the world of the autistic child, a place where as Rabbi Lord Sacks wrote “Difference does not diminish, it enlarges the sphere of human possibilities.” And may I add, makes deliberate space for the miraculous to shine. A safe space where rewiring can take place. A safe space where that which is considered to be a flaw, a blemish, a curse can become the key to each child’s destiny, to that which they were born to change. 

We value your support, as always, as we step into this world unknown to us, and together with the animals entrusted to our care, look for destiny keys for these children.

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