The Girl Who Escaped ISIS

by Farida Khalaf

  ONE EVENING SOMEONE hammered on our container with their fists. At the door stood a young boy holding a cell phone. “Does Farida live here?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said, getting up. We’d all been sitting around a gas stove, because the winter nights were cold. The boy handed me the phone.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Nura,” he said.

  “Nura?”

  “She wants to talk to you. Only you. She refuses to speak to my mother and aunts.”

  I snatched the phone from his hand and went off into a corner of the container. “Nura, is it really you?” I asked excitedly.

  “Farida!” I heard her dear, familiar voice.

  “Where are you?”

  “In Mosul. I’ve stolen a phone from my ‘owner.’ ”

  When I realized the meaning of her words I felt a cold shudder but hot at the same time. Nura was still a slave. She was calling me from her captivity. “Nura!” I cried. “My dear friend . . .”

  “I miss you so much, Farida!” she said. “Are you all right? I’m so happy you managed to escape. It’s a great comfort to me to know that you’re safe.”

  “You’ve got to try too,” I implored.

  “I have, five times already. But they’ve always caught me again.”

  “Then it’ll work next time!” I encouraged her.

  Nura told me she’d been sold in the marriage hall in Mosul. After Raqqa it was the second-largest marketplace for women and girls. The man who’d chosen her had made her his second wife. He’d treated Nura with great brutality when he forced her to have sex. His first wife hated her. Nura did the housework for both of them and they abused her continually, although the beatings she got from the lady of the house were the lesser evil.

  I thought of my beautiful cousin with her long brown hair and felt sick as she told me all of this. Nura was leading the life of a slave, like so many of us. “You mustn’t lose heart,” I told her. “You’ve got to run away. Somehow you’ll make it.”

  “There’s nothing I yearn for more than to be sitting with you up on the roof of your house and gazing down at your garden, Farida. That’s my greatest desire.”

  “We’ll do it as soon as you’re free,” I promised her. “We’ll go back to Kocho . . .”

  “Someone’s coming,” she interrupted me. “I’ve got to go.” She hung up abruptly.

  When I glanced up I saw that Nura’s mother and two of her aunts had come into our container. They were looking at me in expectation. “What did she say?” Nura’s mother asked softly.

  “She’s fine,” I lied. “She hopes to be with us soon.”

  Nura’s mother burst into tears. “My poor girl,” she said. “Did she say anything about her sisters?”

  I shook my head.

  Nura never called back. I suspect she’d been caught and that they took the phone from her. And yet I keep waiting for her.

  EVERY DAY MORE returnees arrived at the camp. Women and children who’d managed to escape or ISIS had let free. Many of the girls my age were on the verge of mental breakdown. I knew why. Now that they were free, quite a number of them tried to kill themselves out of shame. Or they started harming themselves.

  Afrah had her hands full. She asked Evin and me to talk to the new arrivals and offer them comfort. “The most important thing is to stop them blaming themselves for what’s happened,” she said. “We’ve got to help them put this horror behind them.” That was easier said than done, however. At night we’d often hear screams echoing around the camp when the girls had nightmares. It was as if our tormentors were grasping at us with their filthy hands, even beyond captivity.

  “Listen, we didn’t do it intentionally,” I tried to convince my fellow sufferers. “We are the victims, they are the criminals.” But I had the impression that my words didn’t get through to many of them, who were trapped in their self-incrimination. It was an arduous situation for us all, especially as neither Evin nor I were immune to this destructive self-reproach. We knew all too well how the other girls felt.

  Some older women managed to escape too. One of them told me she’d met my mother in Kazel Tiu, a former Shia village near Tal Afar. The woman said that Yazidi boys were being trained as soldiers there. I immediately thought of my two little brothers and a horrific idea took root inside me: had ISIS succeeded in winning them over to their side? Were the teenagers now fighting for the thugs?

  “They were after our children,” the woman said, confirming my worst fears. “They brainwashed the boys; they were indoctrinated and had to pledge themselves to Islam. They left the girls in peace ideologically. But they were sexually abused, even the really young ones who were only nine or ten. They’re criminals.” She spat in disgust. The last time she’d seen my mother was at the marketplace in Mosul. “We were all held there. And then they decided who would remain imprisoned and who was allowed to go.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this information. Although I was happy finally to receive confirmation that Mom was still alive, what conditions was she living in? I told Serhad what I’d heard to give him a little hope too. He’d become withdrawn inside the camp and his behavior was very aloof. But sometimes the mask slipped.

  “Is that really true?” he said. “I wish I could help her.”

  “You can’t,” I said gingerly. I didn’t tell Serhad that our mother had been taken to the slave market. And I also kept quiet about the fact that ISIS was apparently giving our brothers military training. I didn’t think he’d be able to cope with this information.

  Even the details I did reveal rattled him. His first reflex was to join the Kurdish brigades in an attempt to liberate the area where my mother was. “We need to reconquer Sinjar and Tal Afar,” he said. As part of a surge in November the Kurdish units had advanced into the city of Sinjar, but were pushed back by the bitter resistance of the Islamists. “Just imagine. If we’d kept hold of the city we’d now be able to march on to Kocho.”

  “Serhad,” I pleaded, “you’re the only one I’ve got left. Please stay with me.”

  “But we’re talking about Mom!”

  “Mom will be delighted when she comes back and finds you alive.” I reminded him that we couldn’t assume we were going to see our father and Delan again. I’d never put it so bluntly before. But now I needed to be explicit to hold Serhad back. “We need you, Serhad.”

  Without saying a word he stormed out of the container, leaving me standing there alone.

  IT WAS A bleak, gray winter. If at first I’d thought our stay here in the refugee camp would be temporary, I slowly realized that our situation was not going to change in a hurry. Against all the prognoses to the contrary, the Sinjar region and Mosul were still under ISIS control. The front lines had hardened.

  I grew more dissatisfied by the day with my existence in the camp. Ever since I’d arrived, the prevailing mood had continually been one of Armageddon. If any camp inmate ever forgot for a second the horrors of the present, another would be quick to remind them. When so many traumatized people live in such close proximity, there’s no spark of optimism. It was wearing me down.

  But I was especially irritated by the fact that I had nothing to do here. I’d already missed half a year of school. After the summer holidays I would have been entering year twelve and taking my exams in the months that followed. I’d even had the prospect of a grant. But now? Now my dream of becoming a math teacher was over. Like everyone else here I was in limbo, suffering from a lack of prospects.

  Toward the end of February or the beginning of March 2015, we were visited in the camp by a delegation from Germany, made up of representatives of the Yazidi community there as well as German government officials. Word soon got around that they were going to offer a limited number of people the opportunity to leave Iraq and travel to Germany. Apparently, young women and girls had a particularly good chance of being accepted into the program.

  “Why don’t you try, Farida?” my brother said.


  “You want me to leave you here alone?”

  “I’m not a child anymore,” he said, peeved. “I’ll get by without you just fine.”

  “And what about Mom?”

  “When she’s free we can come and join you. Life in Germany is supposed to be good.”

  I thought about it. On the one hand, leaving my country behind seemed like a betrayal. On the other, I had to accept that I had absolutely no future here at the moment. I couldn’t even finish my schooling. Instead I was getting wary looks from people. Maybe new opportunities would open up for me in Germany.

  “You can try, at least,” my brother encouraged me. “I’ll try too.”

  So we went to see the people responsible for registration. And Evin came as well. In the interview, which a German woman conducted with us through an interpreter, we told her the entire story of our abduction. “You poor girls,” she said, shocked. “I’m sure you’ll be accepted into the program.”

  After the delegation left, nothing happened for a few weeks. Spring came and the sun shone again with greater intensity onto the containers. But this had no effect on the atmosphere in the camp, which was just as bleak as in winter. We assumed that the foreigners who’d come to visit had forgotten us again, and for our part, we gradually forgot them too.

  But then, one day in April, Uncle Adil’s phone rang. On the other end of the line was a man who spoke in a loud voice with a military tone. “Yes, yes, that’s right,” my uncle said as I tried to read his face. “She’s my brother’s wife. Yes, on this number. Let me know.”

  When he’d hung up Serhad and I looked at him expectantly.

  “Your mother’s escaped,” he announced. Impulsively we shrieked with delight. “She’s under the Peshmerga’s care.”

  “When’s she coming?” I asked.

  “The soldiers are taking her to the hospital first. They’ll let me know as soon as she’s arrived.”

  This was the best news I’d heard in my life. Mom was free. I felt as if someone had removed black veils from my eyes. I went out of the container, turned to the sun, and whispered, “Thank you! Thank you, my Lord. Thank you for having answered my prayer.”

  For the rest of that day I was on cloud nine. I stayed close to my uncle so as not to miss the call that would tell us when Mom had arrived in Dohuk. I checked several times to make sure his cell phone was charged and the volume set correctly. Everything was working perfectly. We were just waiting for the call. That night I also stayed close to the telephone, which, of course, my uncle hadn’t switched off. I couldn’t sleep a wink.

  “Perhaps you ought to call them back?” I suggested the following morning. But he didn’t have any credit. The much anticipated call finally came on the afternoon of the following day. A soldier informed us tersely that Mom had arrived at the hospital.

  We took the bus into town; it took around an hour. As I looked out the window and watched the barren, flat landscape of southern Kurdistan pass by, my mind went into a spin. What condition would I find my mother in? Would I see my brothers too? Or had ISIS snatched them? I looked over at Serhad, who was sitting beside me, still wearing that same grim expression. He didn’t say a word the entire journey.

  At Dohuk hospital we were checked by Peshmerga soldiers. There was a ward specifically to treat those returning from ISIS captivity. Glimpsing the people there gave me the creeps. Many of them were suffering from malnutrition and the consequences of terrible abuse. My uncle headed purposefully to a bed where a woman lay. It took me a moment to realize who it was.

  “Mom!” I cried, horrified. My mother was nothing but skin and bones. She looked terribly old and emaciated. Her dark hair was streaked with gray and deep furrows lined her face, even though she was only forty. A tube stuck out of her arm.

  “Farida, my child,” she said weakly. “Serhad. How lovely to see the both of you again.”

  Kneeling beside her bed, I took her bony hand in mine and kissed it. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Mom. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” she insisted. “It’s just that I haven’t had anything to eat recently.” She attempted a feeble smile. “I’ll be fine again soon. The most important thing is that the two of you are all right, my dear children.” She wept. Then, from the far side of the room two adolescent boys approached. They were my brothers: twelve-year-old Keniwar and Shivan, now fourteen. Both of them had grown quite a bit since I’d last seen them in the summer, when they were strong, energetic boys, full of mischief. Now they were skinny, and unable to look anybody in the eye. They were not the same naughty kids I once knew.

  “Is that you, Farida?” Shivan asked in what was now a deep voice. He shyly let me embrace him. But it felt as if I’d become a stranger to them over all these months we hadn’t seen each other. Keniwar too hugged me rather hesitantly. Gone were the strong and fierce boys I remembered playing soccer together, and in their place were two scrawny, fearful young men. Happily, they were less reticent about physical contact with Serhad.

  “What happened to Dad and Delan?” they asked him. “You were driven away with them, weren’t you?”

  Serhad shook his head sadly. “I wasn’t with them,” he said. “The last time I saw Dad was in the playground. But then they put me into a different truck . . .”

  “Where did they take you?” Shivan probed.

  Serhad swallowed. “They drove us to a field,” he said. “We thought they were going to let us free at first. But we had to get out and line up alongside a pond . . .” His eyes glazed over.

  “And then?” my mother asked.

  “Then they shot us. I felt a fierce blow and saw blood flowing from my chest. Abu Hassan, who was next to me, pulled me to the ground. He instructed me to lie there motionless and pretend I was dead.”

  My mother looked at him in horror. “You mean, they killed all the men in the truck?”

  Serhad nodded. “They even walked around to check if anyone was still alive. But I stayed absolutely still until they . . .” he said, faltering, “. . . until they brought the next truckload of men—and shot them too.”

  My mother let out a muffled scream. And I knew what this meant too: ISIS had systematically murdered all the men in our village.

  “At that moment I made a run for it,” Serhad continued. “Three others got up from the mountain of corpses at the same time. We ran for our lives.”

  My two young brothers looked at him, distraught. “So all the others were dead?” little Keniwar asked to make sure.

  “All apart from us four boys,” Serhad confirmed. It took the two of them a moment to register what his words meant. Then they started to cry. They’d been so excited about seeing their father and older brothers again. It was a terrible shock for them, and for my mother too of course.

  “My poor husband, my poor son,” she said over and over again, as tears ran down her sunken cheeks. I squeezed her hand and felt utterly helpless. “Oh, Farida,” she wept, “I’ve basically known this from the day those thugs separated us. But I’d always kept a tiny crumb of hope.”

  She told me how she herself had come to be imprisoned with the boys. “I was holding their hands when the men pushed us out into the playground. All of us were terrified because we’d heard the shots. We thought it was our turn next. The buses and pickups were already back outside the playground, waiting for us.”

  “An ISIS man pulled me away from you,” I recalled.

  “Yes, and you looked at me with such fear in your eyes. It broke my heart that I couldn’t do anything for you . . .”

  “He said he’d invite us girls to dinner . . .”

  “Yes, my poor child,” she said, remembering the incidents that took place right before they separated us in front of the school. “But we all knew he was lying, didn’t we?”

  She sobbed. And I couldn’t talk anymore either. Silent tears ran down my face. My mother gently stroked my head.

  “After they’d taken me to Tal Afar, they wanted to take Shivan away f
rom me too,” she said, eventually continuing her story. “All the boys were being groomed by ISIS for military training,” she told us.

  Sometimes he was away for several days and she’d been terribly worried about him. “They indoctrinated the boys. They tried turning them into Muslims. But whenever Shivan came back I told him he mustn’t believe anything these criminals said . . . Isn’t that right?”

  She looked at Shivan. He nodded and now took up the thread. “I kept asking, ‘Where’s my mom?’ And they replied, ‘Forget your parents; they’re dead. We’re your new family.’ But I knew they were lying.”

  “My poor brother,” I said.

  “They also forced us to read the Quran and pray to their God. But I only pretended to join in. I never really prayed to their God.”

  “You did wonderfully.”

  “Mom often said that Keniwar and I were ill, and couldn’t take part in the training.”

  “But then they said they were taking all the boys to Syria to fight,” my mother said. “And I knew that it was time to run away before it was too late.”

  One night when it was foggy they’d chanced an escape with some other women and their children. Together they got past the trenches ISIS had excavated around the village. They ended up in the middle of a battle zone where the Peshmerga fighters eventually rescued them. “For us women our own survival wasn’t important,” my mother said. “The key thing was that the boys escaped before they were killed on the battlefield.”

  “I’m very proud of you,” I said to all three of them. “I’m proud to have such a brave family.”

  MY BROTHERS SHIVAN and Keniwar came back with us to the camp and they also stayed with my uncle. On the advice of the doctors my mother was to stay in the hospital for the time being. She was still too weak and needed feeding. I visited her every day, because I didn’t want to be without her for another second. I was so happy to have a mother again.