Then Mom was discharged and the camp management gave us our own container. As we now constituted a family again we had the right to a little space of our own. Although all of us were painfully aware that we were no longer a complete family, we were at least the remains of a family. When I stood between my mother and brothers on the container steps at daybreak each morning to greet the first rays of the sun, I felt that my place was among them. I never wanted to be without them again.
But then I received some news I hadn’t been counting on. One sunny day Evin came running over to our container, waving papers she’d been given by the camp management. “Farida, Farida!” she cried. “We’ve been chosen.”
“Chosen for what?” I didn’t grasp what she was saying.
“You know, for the program in Germany. Don’t you remember? The thing we applied for.”
“Oh right!” To be honest, I was a little shocked. “Does that mean we can go to Germany now?”
“Yes, they’re going to send us tickets, maybe even this month. We’ve got to get passports as quickly as we can.”
“But . . .”
“No buts!”
“But my mom’s only just arrived!”
“Farida,” Evin said, taking my hand in hers, “this is our chance. The opportunities for us in Germany are so much better. There’s peace there. People are desperate to go. We have a duty to our families to take advantage of this opportunity, my uncle says.”
I thought long and hard about this. What did my friend mean by “duty”? I couldn’t imagine my family giving it the seal of approval if I planned to travel without them. That evening I talked to my brother Serhad and my mother. I was almost ashamed to put the idea to Mom. I was worried that she’d feel offended. But her reaction was unexpectedly composed.
“There’s no future for us in Kocho anymore,” she said. “How could we live there after all that’s happened? We’d never feel safe again.”
“Life’s meant to be better in Germany,” Serhad said. “All my friends dream of emigrating there. A few of them pay lots of money and make perilous journeys just to get there. If you’re handed the opportunity you can’t say no.”
I was quite bewildered. “What about you?”
“We’ll join you later,” Serhad said, half in jest, half serious. “It won’t take long.”
My mother nodded. “Yes, Farida, take this opportunity,” she urged me. “Maybe you can start a new life there.” She looked at me insistently. “There’s no fresh start here, you know that. People are too caught up in their old ways of thinking. And we’ll never make peace with the Muslims . . .”
I was unsure. Did she really mean that? Was she actually trying to convince me to leave my family, my homeland, the place where the Seven Angels met every autumn? “Are you really advising me to go?” I checked.
“Yes I am, Farida. I’m advising you and Evin and all the girls who were imprisoned to go.”
I lowered my eyes. Mother was talking about our stigma. Here in Iraq I knew it would follow us around forever. “Maybe I could finish school in Germany,” I thought out loud, “and study math . . .” Later, when Kocho was liberated, I could always come back and work there as a teacher.
“Go,” my mother said firmly. “The Lord will hold His hand above you and protect you as He has always done.”
Epilogue
Since summer 2015, I’ve been living in Germany. It’s only four hours by plane from Erbil, in the northeast of Iraq, a two-hour drive from Mosul. But the two countries inhabit different worlds: one at war, the other at peace. You’d think I’d have been delighted finally to go somewhere at peace. But adapting to this new, strange world has not been a simple process for me. Evin has found it similarly hard. And unfortunately, we weren’t assigned to the same town, which meant we couldn’t be together. But we call each other on the phone and frequently let each other know our news.
In Germany everything is different: the weather, the food, the smells, but particularly the people. The social workers who picked me up from the airport took me to a small town in this northern country. A pretty, but very unfamiliar town. To begin with I was housed with some other girls in a convent. It was very touching the way the nuns looked after us. And although their faith is very unlike ours, they didn’t object in the slightest to us performing our own religious rituals and saying our prayers. They even encouraged us in this, I expect because they know what a huge support religion can be. They signed me up for a German course and invited me to discuss my experiences with a psychologist. I wasn’t keen at first; I thought it would be better to forget what had happened. I wanted to leave all the horror in the past. But it haunted me in Germany too, for of course I carry it within me.
It was only after the first few sessions that I realized it did me good to talk, even if it wasn’t always pleasant. In some mysterious way the conversations unraveled a knot inside me. Finally I was able to cry. Finally I could mourn for my dead ones, and for myself. I mourn for everything I have lost and left behind. And sometimes I feel very tired, so tired that I don’t know whether I’ve got the strength to go on.
But then I decide that my life will go on, in spite of all the terrors. I won’t give my tormentors the victory of having destroyed it. I’m back at school now; I really ought to be in year twelve, but as my German’s not perfect yet I’ve decided to repeat year eleven. I’m already the best in the class at math, but it’s easier for me because I know all the material already! The teachers and my classmates are all terribly good to me, but they live such a different life, so easy.
After I’d been in the convent for a few weeks Mom called me with some news that brought tears to my eyes: she and my brothers were coming over to Germany! They’d submitted applications and had been approved to emigrate. We have since been reunited. After my family arrived we were given a small apartment where we now all live together. I’m profoundly grateful to be able to be with my family again. The nuns were incredibly good to us, but nobody can replace your own flesh and blood. And I’m also delighted that we can cook for ourselves again. I don’t really like German food. Now my mother and I take turns cooking the dishes we know and love. The aroma of the spices brings a hint of home to our apartment.
But I don’t have much time for household chores. I’m now responsible for my family. And when I’m not at school or doing homework, I’m paying visits to the social workers. I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of German. I still find it difficult to talk, but if the other girls don’t speak too quickly and don’t use dialect, I can now follow their conversations reasonably well.
We refugees continue to be treated well by the authorities and we’re under a specific protection program. I don’t really like to think about what that means, but the places where we live are kept secret. We’re not allowed to tell anyone and the authorities don’t give the information out to anybody either. And this was even before the terrible attacks in Paris demonstrated that the men who tortured me and others, and who killed our fathers and brothers, are now murdering people in Europe too.
WHEN I’VE FINISHED school in Germany, I’ll study to become a math teacher as I’ve always wanted to. The fanatics who degraded us and treated us like objects are not going to stop me pursuing this goal. I survived to prove to them that I’m stronger than they are.
A Note from Andrea C. Hoffmann
It is early spring 2015, but a biting wind is still blowing through the streets in the Yazidi refugee camp near Dohuk. People live crowded together in containers, one family to each of these rectangular, single-room billets arranged in rank and file. Many of them house half a dozen people in twelve square meters. You can’t keep any secrets here. Certainly not from the neighbors, who are only separated by a poorly soundproofed wall. All the camp inhabitants know the stories that each of them would like to erase from their memory. But there is no forgetting here: forty kilometers from the territory still occupied by the Islamic State the trauma remains ever-present, hanging over the containe
r city like an invisible toxic cloud.
I have been sent here by the editorial department of my magazine to look for survivors of this nightmare. As a journalist I’m always interested in the viewpoints of women who get caught up in conflicts through no fault of their own: the stories of the victims of male violence. I want to give them a voice.
I learn of what happened to Farida from a social worker. When I ask after her in the camp it’s clear that people there know who she is. “Farida escaped captivity only a few weeks ago, together with a group of girls,” they say, pointing the way to her uncle’s container. By the door I meet a pale young woman whose hair is tied back with a scarf. Farida scrutinizes me with her serious brown eyes. Skeptically at first, I get the impression. But then she smiles. “No,” I think, “you can’t tell at first glance what this nineteen-year-old has been through.”
Farida invites me into her temporary home. Inside the container the gas stove gives out a little heat; I’m very glad to escape the wind outside. Several women are sitting on mattresses arranged in a rectangle along the walls: Farida’s aunt, her five-year-old cousin, a few neighbors, and her friend Evin. Farida serves me very sweet, hot tea and we quickly enter into conversation. After a few glasses, I venture to ask the young woman about her experiences as a prisoner of ISIS. Farida tentatively clears her throat. Then she starts talking, about the day her home village of Kocho was attacked and about her odyssey through the prisons of the ISIS realm. I can plainly see how difficult it is for her to articulate all this.
It’s a major effort for her to speak. Sometimes she really has to force herself to answer my questions. But she’s made her decision: she wants the world to find out what they did to her and the other girls. She wants to scream out the injustice. And yet she comes across as terribly distant. It seems as if she’s put up an invisible wall, a protective barrier between her and her experiences. The other women in the room appear absent too, betraying little emotion. Each of them is struggling with her own demons. Only occasionally do I hear one of them sigh, asking sadly, “How could that have happened?”
When we meet the next time, the sun is shining on the living containers. Farida is pleased to see me again, pleased about my interest in her, and she greets me like a friend with a kiss on the cheek. She has agreed for me to write a book based on her account. Now she wants to tell me her story in all its details. But this time without anyone else present. She asks all her relatives to leave us alone in the container so we can talk undisturbed. Not even her mother, who herself has returned from imprisonment since my last visit, is allowed to stay. Only a young Kurdish girl of Farida’s age remains to help out with the translation.
Farida starts by talking about her village, Kocho, about her family and the beautiful house they used to live in. She has a dreamy smile on her lips and she revels in these memories. She finds it important to tell me about how her life was before the terrorists struck. Thanks to digital technology there are even a few photographs preserved from that time; on her cell phone Farida shows me her favorite brother, the eldest. “We were a perfectly normal family,” she says, faltering. All of a sudden tears flood her eyes, which seems to come as a shock to her; the first crack has appeared in her hard shell.
The longer we talk, the more distressing the interview becomes for Farida. Then we speak about places she associates with torture, and people who inflicted immeasurable suffering on her. It’s an extremely painful process to recall these monsters, utter their names, and describe them to me. Sometimes she reacts depressively, sometimes she gets furious. And time and again she complains about terrible headaches. Then she needs a break, and I go for a walk in the camp with the translator so Farida can be on her own. We only resume when she gives the sign that it’s all right. And so we painstakingly work our way through her memories, one agonizing step after another.
The horror of her story, and the pain that talking about it unleashes in her again, leaves its mark on me too. Thanks to her highly detailed account I am able to imagine vividly the sinister world she describes. Soon I’m tormented by nightmares. Dreams in which I can clearly picture the scenes which she must have experienced and suffered. I think Farida senses that I’m suffering alongside her, and I get the impression that this affords her some comfort.
After a few days Farida’s mood improves. Although talking has churned her emotions, it has also triggered an inner process of clearing up. Now she starts trying to reorder and reassess her experiences. I attempt to help her in this—I keep saying that in my eyes she’s a hero who has shown immense courage. Farida beams at this; she likes the idea. But in an environment where it’s constantly hinted that she ought to be ashamed at what was done to her, she finds it hard to acknowledge. The girl who defeated ISIS is struggling with herself. She’s struggling to accept her horrific experiences as a part of her past and at the same time walk through life with her head held high.
It’s going to take time. But I know that Farida will win this battle too. It is a great honor for me to be able to help her.
FARIDA KHALAF is from the Yazidi community of the small village of Kocho, Iraq. Farida was nineteen years old when ISIS descended upon her village and sold her and others into slavery. After making a daring escape, she reunited with her mother and brothers in an Iraqi refugee camp and was granted asylum in Germany in 2015.
ANDREA C. HOFFMANN is an author and a journalist. She specializes in the Middle East and the conditions of women in Muslim countries. She lives in Berlin, Germany.
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Copyright © 2016 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Köln
Translation © 2016 by Jamie Bulloch
Originally published in 2016 in Germany by Bastei Lübbe as Das Mädchen, das den IS besiegte
Published by arrangement with Barbara J. Zitwer Agency and Ariadne-Buch
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Interior design by Renato Stanisic
Jacket design by Donna Cheng
Jacket photograph © Jessica Lia/Millennium Images, Uk
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Khalaf, Farida, author. | Hoffmann, Andrea Claudia, author.
Title: The girl who escaped ISIS : this is my story / Farida Khalaf, Andrea C. Hoffmann.
Other titles: Mädchen, das den IS besiegte. English
Description: New York : Atria Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022449 (print) | LCCN 2016024958 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501131714 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501152337 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501131721 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Khalaf, Far
ida. | IS (Organization) | Yezidi women—Iraq—Biography. | Iraq—Refugees—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/ Women. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Political.
Classification: LCC HV6433.I722 I8558 2016 (print) | LCC HV6433.I722 (ebook) | DDC 956.7044/3 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022449
ISBN 978-1-5011-3171-4
ISBN 978-1-5011-3172-1 (ebook)
The Girl Who Escaped ISIS Page 21