I illustrated another story for the non-profit blog Riding Up Front, which features stories of immigrant and refugee rideshare drivers. This one takes us to Istanbul, and the story is from a young (and unusually blond) Kurdish driver. His family had suffered injuries in the violence of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict- an armed conflict between the Turkey and various Kurdish insurgent groups demanding autonomy from Turkey in order to create an independent Kurdistan. Full-scale insurgency began in 1984, and continues to the present day.

I wanted to illustrate this dark reality that his family had to live through, and that so many people suffered from. (Since the conflict began, more than 40,000 have died, and mostly Kurdish civilians.) I wanted the graphic nature of the image to be beyond the line of "conveniently sanitized," but before treading into "overly graphic" territory. Treading a fine line in hopes of getting people to look at the grim reality without averting their glance with disgust.