by Nadia Murad
It was getting late, and the women laid out a mattress for me in one of the rooms and asked me if I was hungry. “No,” I said. I couldn’t imagine eating anything. “But I’m very thirsty.” Nasser brought me some water, and as I drank it, he warned me not to go outside, ever. “This neighborhood is full of Daesh members and sympathizers,” he told me. “It’s not safe for you.”
“What has been happening here?” I wanted to know. Were there sabaya nearby? Did militants search homes when one went missing?
“We are living in a dangerous time,” Nasser said to me. “Daesh is everywhere. They rule the entire city, and we all have to be careful. We have a generator, but we can’t run it at night because we worry that if the American planes see the lights, they will drop a bomb on our home.”
In spite of the heat, I shivered, thinking back to the door I had first stopped at and decided not to knock on. Who was behind it? “Sleep now,” Hisham said. “In the morning we will think of a way to get you out of here.”
The room was stifling and I slept very little. All night I thought about the houses around me, full of families supporting ISIS. I thought of Hajji Salman scouring the roads in his car, searching for me, his rage keeping him up all night. I wondered what had happened to the militant who had let me escape. Would the promise of a five-thousand-dollar reward persuade Nasser and his family to hand me over? Had they been lying to me, pretending that they were compassionate and willing to help, all the while hating me for being Yazidi? It would be foolish for me to trust them just yet, I thought, even if they were from the Azawi tribe and even if Hisham did have Yazidi friends from his time in the army. There were Sunnis with closer ties to Yazidis who had betrayed their friends to ISIS.
My sisters and nieces who had been separated from me—they could be anywhere. Would they be punished because I escaped? What had happened to the women we left in Solagh, and the girls taken to Syria? I thought about my beautiful mother, her white scarf falling from her hair as she tripped off the truck in Solagh, and how she had laid her head on my lap and closed her eyes to block out the terror that surrounded us. I saw Kathrine being ripped from my mother’s arms before we were all loaded onto the buses. Very soon I would find out what had happened to all of them. When I did sleep, it was without dreaming, in total blackness.
Chapter 2
I woke up at five a.m., before anyone else, and my first thought was that I had to get out of there. It’s not safe here, I told myself. What are they going to do with me? What are the chances that they are good enough people to take the risk to help me? But it was morning, and the hot sun was already lighting up the streets, where there wasn’t even shade to hide me if I tried to leave. I had nowhere else to go. Lying in bed, I realized that my fate was in the hands of Hisham and his family, and all I could do was pray that they really meant to help me.
Nasser arrived two hours later, with instructions from Hisham. While we talked and waited for his father to join us, Maha served us breakfast. I couldn’t eat, but I drank a little coffee. “We will take you to stay with my sister Mina and her husband, Basheer,” he told me. “They live a little bit outside the city, and there is less of a chance of Daesh being there and seeing you.”
“We know that Basheer doesn’t like Daesh,” Nasser said. “But we are not sure about his brothers. He says they haven’t joined, but you never know, so you will have to be careful. Basheer is a good guy, though.”
With my niqab covering my face, I felt safe in the car with Hisham and Nasser. The neighborhood began to thin out as we drove to Mina and Basheer’s house, on the outskirts of Mosul. No one looked at us as we walked from the car to the front door, and I didn’t see any neighboring houses flying Islamic State flags or that had been spray-painted with Islamic State graffiti.
The couple met us in the entranceway to the house, which was larger and nicer than Hisham’s and reminded me of the houses my married brothers had been building slowly in Kocho, with their life savings. It was concrete and built to last, with tile floors covered with green and beige carpets, and couches with thick cushions in the living room.
Mina was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had a pale round face and bright green eyes like jewels, and she was shaped like Dimal—not too thin. Her long hair was dyed a rich brown. She and Basheer had five children, three boys and two daughters, and when I arrived, the whole family greeted me calmly, as though Hisham and Nasser had already answered all the questions they had about me. No one tried to comfort me. Other than Nasser, who seemed curious to know all the details of what had happened to me, the family treated me like I was a duty to fulfill, and I was grateful for that. I wasn’t sure yet that I could return their affection if they offered it. “Salam alakum,” I said to them. “Alakum asalaam,” Basheer replied. “Don’t worry, we will help you.”
The plan was to get a fake ID made for me either in Safaa’s name or in Mina’s—whichever turned out to be easier—and then for one of the men, either Basheer or Nasser, to accompany me from Mosul to Kirkuk, pretending that we were husband and wife. Nasser had friends in Mosul who made IDs—once the standard Iraqi state ID and now the black and white Islamic State one—who would help us. “We will get you an Iraqi ID, not a Daesh one,” he told me. “It will seem more authentic and it will make it easier for you to get into Kurdistan, if we get through the Daesh checkpoints.”
“If we use Safaa’s information, then you will go with Nasser,” Basheer said. “If we use Mina’s, you will go with me.” Mina sat with us, listening but not saying anything. Her green eyes flashed in my direction when her husband said this. It was clear that she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t object.
“Will Kirkuk be a good place to leave you?” Basheer asked. He thought it might be the easiest entrance into Kurdistan beyond Mosul. If so, they would tell the ID maker to list my birthplace as Kirkuk and to give me a name common in that city.
“Is Kirkuk with ISIS?” I didn’t know. Growing up, I had always assumed that Kirkuk was a part of Kurdistan because that’s what the Kurdish parties said, but I’d gathered from conversations I’d overheard between Islamic State militants that the region was disputed, like Sinjar, and that it was now coveted not only by the Kurds and the Baghdad government but also by ISIS. The militants had taken over so much of Iraq, I would have believed that they controlled Kirkuk and all its oil fields by now. “I can ask my family. If it’s controlled by the peshmerga, then I can go there.”
“Fine.” Basheer was satisfied. “I will call Hisham’s friend in Sinjar to see if he can help you, and Nasser will get you your ID.”
That day I spoke to Hezni for the first time since escaping. For most of the conversation, we both managed to stay calm—there was a lot of work to be done if I was going to make it home alive—but when I first heard his voice, I was so happy I could barely speak.
“Nadia,” he said. “Don’t worry. I think this family is good—they will help you.”
Hezni sounded like he always had, confident and emotional at the same time. In spite of what I was going through, I felt sad for him. I supposed I might soon find out what it was like to be one of the saved Yazidis, and all the grief and longing that went along with it, if I was lucky.
I wanted to tell him how I’d escaped. I felt proud of how brave I had been. “It was so strange, Hezni,” I said. “After all that, everyone keeping such a close eye on me, this man left the door unlocked. I just opened the door and climbed over the wall and left.”
“It’s what God wanted, Nadia,” he said. “He wants you to live and to come home.”
“I’m worried that one of the sons here is with Daesh,” I told Hezni. “They are very religious.”
But Hezni told me I had no choice. “You have to trust this family,” he said. I told him that if he thought they were good, then I would stay with them.
Later I would learn about the smuggling networks that had been established to help Yazidi girls escape from ISIS, in part because from his container home in the refugee camp, H
ezni would help to arrange the escapes of dozens of girls. Each operation began in panic and chaos, but after the family of the victim managed to get enough money together, it would begin to unfold like a business deal, employing a system of smugglers. There are middlemen—mostly Arab, Turkmen, and Syrian or Iraqi Kurdish locals—who are paid a few thousand dollars for their part in the scheme. Some are taxi drivers, who smuggle the girls in their cars; others serve as spies in Mosul or Tal Afar, letting families know where the girls are hiding; others help at checkpoints or bribe and bargain with the Islamic State authorities. A few of the key players inside the Islamic State territories are women; they can more easily approach a sabiyya without causing alarm. At the head of the networks are a few Yazidi men, who, using their connections in the Sunni villages, set up the networks and make sure it all goes according to plan. Each team works in its own zone—some in Syria and some in Iraq. As in any business, competition has developed among them, since it has become clear that smuggling sabaya is a good way to make money during wartime.
When the plan for my own escape was being made, the smuggling network was just starting to develop, and Hezni was figuring out how he could participate. My brother is brave and good, and he wouldn’t let anyone suffer if he could help it, but so many girls had his phone number—all his female relatives had memorized it and passed it to sabaya they met along the way—that he was quickly overwhelmed by phone calls. By the time Hisham called him on my behalf, he’d already reached out to others for help and had been connected to KRG officials working on freeing Yazidis, as well as to local point people in Mosul and elsewhere in ISIS-held Iraq. Quickly, smuggling became his full-time—and unpaid—job.
Not knowing exactly what to expect when I was getting ready for my trip to Kirkuk, Hezni was worried. He wasn’t sure that having one of the brothers, Nasser or Basheer, come with me all the way into Kurdistan would work. It wasn’t easy for a Sunni man of fighting age to cross a Kurdish checkpoint, and Hezni knew that if ISIS found out that a family in Mosul had helped a sabiyya escape, the punishment would be severe. “We don’t want him to be captured because he tried to help you,” Hezni told me. “It’s our responsibility to make sure nothing happens to Nasser or Basheer when they come with you to Kurdistan. Okay, Nadia?”
“I understand, Hezni,” I told him. “I’ll be careful.” I knew that if we were caught at an Islamic State checkpoint, whoever was with me would be killed, and I would be returned to slavery. At a Kurdish checkpoint, the danger was that Nasser or Basheer would be placed into detention.
“Take care of yourself, Nadia,” Hezni told me. “Try not to worry about anything. Tomorrow they will get you an ID. When you get to Kirkuk, call me.”
Before we hung up, I asked him, “What happened to Kathrine?”
“I don’t know, Nadia,” he said.
“What about in Solagh?” I asked.
“ISIS is still in Kocho and Solagh,” he said. “We know that the men have been killed. Saeed survived, and he told me what it was like. Saoud made it here, and he is doing all right. We don’t know yet what happened to the women in Solagh. But Saeed is determined to go fight Daesh to liberate it, and I’m worried about him.” Saeed was in terrible pain because of his bullet wounds, and he had nightmares about the firing squad every night, which prevented him from sleeping. “I’m worried that he can’t cope with what happened,” Hezni said.
We said goodbye, and Hezni passed the phone to Khaled, my half brother. He had more information for me. “Yazidis aren’t on the run anymore,” he told me. “They live in extremely difficult conditions in Kurdistan, waiting for the camps to open.”
“What happened to the men in Kocho?” I asked, even though I had already been told. I didn’t want it to be true.
“All the men were killed,” he said. “All the women were taken. Have you seen any of the women?”
“I saw Nisreen, Rojian, and Kathrine,” I told him. “I don’t know where they are now.”
The news was worse than I expected. Even what I already knew was difficult to hear. We hung up, and I handed the phone back to Nasser. I no longer worried that the family was going to betray me, and so I let myself relax a little bit. I felt more tired than I ever had in my whole life.
I stayed at Mina and Basheer’s house for several days while the escape plan was worked out, and most of the time I kept to myself, thinking about my family and what was going to happen to me. If no one asked me any questions, I was happy to stay quiet. They were a very religious family, praying five times a day, but they said they hated ISIS, and they never asked me about my forced conversion or tried to get me to pray with them.
I was still very sick and my stomach felt like it was on fire, so one day they took me to the local women’s hospital. They had to convince me that it was safe to go. “Just put a hot water bottle on my stomach,” I told Nasser’s mother. “That’s enough.” But she insisted that I see a doctor. “As long as you wear your niqab and stay with us, you will be fine,” she assured me and I was in so much pain that I couldn’t argue for long. My head was spinning and I barely noticed when they took me to their car and drove me into town. I was so sick that now, looking back, the hospital visit seems like a dream that I struggle to remember. But after that I got better and stronger, and I waited quietly indoors for the day I would be told it was time to leave.
Sometimes I ate with them, and sometimes I ate alone; they urged me to be careful, to stay away from the windows and ignore the telephone. “If anyone comes to the door, stay in your room and don’t make a noise,” they told me. Mosul was not like Sinjar. In Kocho, when a visitor comes, they don’t bother knocking. Everyone knows everyone else, and we were all welcome in one another’s homes. In Mosul a visitor waits to be invited inside, and even a friend is treated like a stranger.
Under no circumstance was I to go outside. Their main bathroom was in an outhouse, but I was instructed to use the smaller one inside instead. “We don’t know if any of our neighbors are with Daesh,” they said. I did what they told me to do. The last thing I wanted was to be discovered and returned to ISIS and for Hisham and his family to be punished for trying to help me. I had no doubt that they would execute every one of the adults, and just the thought of Mina’s two young daughters, both close to eight years old and beautiful like their mother, being taken into Islamic State custody made me sick to my stomach.
I slept in the daughters’ room. We barely spoke. They weren’t scared of me—they just weren’t interested in knowing who I was, and I had no intention of telling them. They were so innocent. On the second day, I woke up to see them sitting in front of their bedroom mirror, trying to wrestle tangles out of their hair. “Can I help?” I asked. “I am very good at doing hair.” They nodded, and I sat behind them, running a comb through their long hair until it was soft and straight. It was something I used to do for Adkee and Kathrine every day, and doing it, I felt almost normal.
The television was kept on all day so that the kids could play with their PlayStation. And because the boys were so distracted by their video games, they noticed me even less than the girls. They were around the same age as Malik and Hani, my two nephews who were kidnapped and forced to become ISIS fighters. Before August 2014, Malik had been a shy boy, but smart and interested in the world around him. He loved us, and his mother, Hamdia. Now I had no idea where he was. ISIS had instituted an intense system of reeducation and brainwashing for the teenagers they kidnapped. While the boys were taught Arabic and English, they learned words of war like gun, and they were told that Yazidism was a religion of the devil and that their family members who wouldn’t convert would be better off dead.
They were taken at an impressionable age, and as I’d eventually learn, the lessons worked on some of them. Later Malik would send photos to Hezni in the refugee camp. They showed him in Islamic State fatigues, smiling and carrying a rifle, his cheeks red with excitement. He would call Hezni’s phone just to tell Hamdia that she should come join him.
“Your father is dead,” Hamdia would tell her son. “There is no one left to take care of the family. You have to come home.”
“You should come to the Islamic State,” Malik would reply. “You will be taken care of here.”
Hani managed to escape after nearly three years in captivity, but when Hezni tried to arrange Malik’s rescue, my nephew refused to go with the smuggler who approached him in a marketplace in Syria. “I want to fight,” he told him. He was a shadow of the boy he had been in Kocho and after that, Hezni stopped trying. But Hamdia would always pick up the phone if she saw it was Malik calling. “He’s still my son,” she would say.
Mina was a good housewife and mother. She spent her days cleaning and cooking for her family, playing with the kids, and nursing the baby. The days were tense, for her as well as for me, and we didn’t talk very much. Soon enough either her brother or her husband was going to make the dangerous trip with me to Kurdistan. It was a lot for one family to go through.
Once, passing each other in the hall, she commented on my hair. “Why is it red only at the ends?” she asked.
“I dyed it with henna a long time ago,” I said, examining the strands.
“It’s pretty,” she said, and moved past me, saying nothing else.
One afternoon after lunch Mina struggled to quiet the baby, who needed to eat and wouldn’t stop crying. Normally she wouldn’t let me help with the housework, but that afternoon when I offered to do the dishes, she nodded, grateful. The sink was in front of a window that overlooked the street, where someone might see me, but she was too distracted by her baby to think about whether we would be caught, and I was happy to have a chance to help her. To my surprise, she started to ask me questions.
“Do you know other people with Daesh?” she asked, cradling the baby against her chest.
“Yes,” I said. “They took all my friends and my family, and they separated us.” I wanted to ask her the same question, but I didn’t want to offend her.