Nearly 1 million people have sought refuge in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Among them: a nun, a wedding singer and a pair of “nerds” fleeing ISIS.

A Syrian singer’s songbook, a Turkmen calligrapher’s ink, a Palestinian Iraqi’s lucky lighter, a Yazidi teenager’s Taylor Swift album. These are a civil war’s survivors and the things they carried.

Throughout Iraq, more than 1.9 million people have been displaced by recent violence. The country’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region is now hosting more than 850,000 displaced Iraqis, in addition to more than 225,000 Syrian refugees.

Iraq’s displaced population cuts across religion, ethnicity and class. The stories of the uprooted reflect a fraying social fabric, and the challenges of a country in the throes of endless war. “This isn’t just about our survival,” says a university professor displaced from Iraq’s restive Anbar province and now living in Iraqi Kurdistan. “This is about the survival of Iraq and an entire region.”

The profiles below introduce some of the newly displaced – divergent in backgrounds and divided by beliefs, but united in a struggle to figure out their place in one of the most fractured countries in the world.   read more