The creases in the old lady's face started to fill with her tears as her son, Father Marzan Ishoo, described how his father and two brothers were killed.
On February 27 this year, he said, three Arab gunmen entered their family home shouting that they had to leave. When Father Marzan's father and two brothers tried pushing the them out of the house, the gunmen opened fire killing all three men instantly.
Father Marzan wouldn't allow us to film his mother, but as he started to describe in detail how her husband and sons were brutally gunned down in their own home, I had the horrible sudden realisation that I should have asked the old lady to leave the room. The look of pain and shock on her face was almost unbearable, as if someone were going to walk in at any moment and tell her it was ok and they were all still alive.
Father Marzan is priest in the Chaldean Church, one of the world's oldest Christian communities, founded 2000 years ago among the Assyrian people of northern Iraq, who have been here for millennia.
They have suffered pogroms and attacks in the past, of course, from the Persians, Arabs and Turks. But a new level of violence is now driving many out of the country for good. When the Americans invaded in 2003, there were about one million Christians in Iraq. Now, Church leaders told us, half have already fled the country and more are trying to leave.
What they are fleeing is a level of violence that we are not hearing about. Much of that violence targets the Christians and other minorities in and around Mosul. Some are seeking sanctuary out of Mosul in towns secured by Christian militia; small outposts such as Qaraqosh, which lies on the border frontier between the violent Arab parts of Iraq and the Kurdish region of the country - a region only safe due to the strict security imposed by the Kurdish military.
We could only enter Qaraqosh by being picked up by Christians from the town and driven through Christian and Kurdish checkpoints. Once inside, we met a range of people who had fled the violence in Mosul. First, it was a man whose brother had been shot just a few days before. Even though he was in the relative safety of Qaraqosh, he said, he did not want to be identified in any way as he was still deeply afraid. Some of the Islamist groups were still texting those they had driven from Mosul, threatening that they will one day 'get them'. He asked if we could help him and his family get to a third country. We met others as well, and finally were taken to the house where Father Marzan now lived.
He was pale and visibly shaken. His mother, thankfully, had left the room.
But, she had been replaced by the two-year-old daughter of one of his dead brothers. I was struck by her calmness. I asked if they had explained to her what had happened. 'She doesn't understand fully yet but she knows something is very wrong.'
