The Girl Who Escaped ISIS

by Farida Khalaf

  The other girls said nothing to us about what had happened with their first “owners.” And we didn’t talk about our experiences either. All of us found it embarrassing to talk about anything to do with sex. We couldn’t bring ourselves to do it, even in this very unusual situation.

  But Evin and I soon discovered that one of the girls here was having an even harder time than the rest of us: Nuhat. My shy, slightly chubby classmate with the pale button nose and long brown hair had been picked out by Abu Arram for his own use. After distributing the sandwiches and accompanying us to the bathroom, he would take her out while the rest of us remained sitting in our dark cell. Shortly afterward we’d hear her screams coming from one of the other rooms.

  “Poor Nuhat,” Evin said.

  “We’re not going to have it any better,” Revin said. Abu Arram had recently told her that he’d earmarked her for his friend Abu Hassan. “He’s a good man,” he said. “I hope you’ll prove worthy of him. Otherwise he’ll end up bringing you back to me!” With a laugh he’d slapped her on the shoulder while she’d stood there, petrified.

  When Nuhat returned to us in the prison after her time with Abu Arram she looked similarly shell-shocked. Sometimes she shed silent tears of fury too. But she never said a word about what he did to her. And we didn’t ask; the shame was too great.

  Abu Arram lived alone. I didn’t know where his family was; at any rate we didn’t hear any other voices in the house. Only once did he get a visit, from the Iraqi Eleas, who’d beaten Evin and me. The men were evidently friends and had arranged to meet for tea. Eleas did not arrive alone, however, but in the company of a woman, as we worked out from the greetings exchanged in the hallway. Then the door opened suddenly, the light went on, and we had a visitor too.

  In spite of what she was wearing, I knew the woman wrapped in black. It was the girl who’d lain beside me when I slit my wrists. “Lena!” I cried when she came in. “Is it really you?”

  Removing the veil from her face, she smiled when she recognized me. “Farida! You’re alive! Thank the Lord! You gave us all a terrible fright.”

  I gave an impatient shrug. “Are you still with him?”

  “As you can see,” she said, sitting down beside us on the mattress. I have to admit that she didn’t look that bad. However, the dazzling neon light suddenly flooding the room, which was normally pitch-black, unsettled me and the other girls. It was strange to receive a visitor in such surroundings.

  “What about your plan to kill him?” I asked.

  “It failed.” She told us how she had actually tried to smash the bottle over his head. But he’d overpowered her. This must have happened when Abu Haitham had driven Evin and me to the doctor’s house. She sounded despondent as she recalled that night. “I was terribly envious of you, Farida,” she said. “But I wasn’t as strong as you. He made me his wife.”

  “His regular wife? Does that mean you’ve become a Muslim too?” I probed.

  “Only a pretend one,” she assured us. “Only a pretend one.” Lena seemed embarrassed by what she was saying, for she could sense that the rest of us were rather affronted. “It’s just a strategy, you understand? At some point, when the time’s right, I’m going to escape from him.”

  “Everyone has to find the way that suits them,” I said, lost in thought, my gaze alighting on the windows. For the first time I had the opportunity to have a look in the light at how they were secured. I noted that Abu Arram had wound steel wire around the handle at the bottom of one of them. Behind the windows were permanently closed shutters. He’d probably secured them from the outside.

  “The most important thing is that none of us gives up our search for a way to freedom,” I told Lena. She agreed with me. Later I discovered that she did actually try to run away from Eleas, but was captured again. As far as I know she must still be living with him.

  WE TRIED TO flee the house that very same night.

  “Did you see?” I asked Evin and the other girls when Lena had gone and we were sitting in darkness once more. “That window is only fastened with wire.”

  The others understood immediately what I was getting at. “Do you think we’d be able to open it? And what about the shutter on the other side?”

  “We’ll find out,” I said. “Let’s try at least. In any case, the construction doesn’t seem particularly sturdy.”

  I felt for the handle and the wire. In fact, Abu Arram seemed to have tied it very skillfully, because I couldn’t find a beginning or end. Without any light it was hard to do, just feeling with my hands. Perhaps I’d been mistaken and his security system worked better than I’d thought.

  But then I felt something sharp: the end of the wire! In great excitement I traced its course with my finger. The wire was twisted around a number of times. Abu Arram had secured it very carefully, but still not carefully enough. With patience and by feeling with the tips of my fingers I was able to loosen the knots and free the handle.

  “I’ve done it!” I said softly. My heart was thumping euphorically. All my fellow prisoners crowded around me. In total darkness I pushed up the window and we breathed in the fresh nighttime breeze, which blew in through the gaps in the wood of the shutter. It was a massive moment. Now all that separated us from freedom was a window shutter!

  I felt the wood, to the bottom of which another metal handle was attached, and tried pushing the shutter up too. But it wouldn’t budge. I gave it a good shake. “Not so loud!” Evin warned me.

  “But I’ve got to get it open,” I said in my defense. “What else do you expect me to do?”

  I shook it even harder, and even more noisily. We heard the door being unlocked from the other side. Abu Arram switched on the light and saw the six of us gathered around the open window. We stared at him as if we’d seen a ghost. “What are you brats up to?” he yelled.

  “We just wanted a bit of fresh air. It’s so sticky in here,” Evin stammered.

  “Do you really think you can take me for a fool like that?” He gave my friend a resounding slap. But she didn’t wince. “You don’t behave like that with me, bitch! Do you understand?”

  Abu Arram was in a blind rage. He threatened to hit all the other girls too. But first he had a more important task. He fetched his drill and began to fortify the window as securely as possible, by mounting a bracket on the wall, which he connected to the window handle with a large padlock.

  “Right, that’s enough fresh air nonsense,” he said grimly. “And mark my words: if you try that again I’ll sell you to the worst men I know. The very worst.”

  Nobody said a word. We were all intimidated by his threat. But more crucially, yet another hope had been snuffed out.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY two men came to see Abu Arram: customers wanting to buy girls. In the room next door we heard heated negotiations and haggling.

  In our prison we grew increasingly nervous. We knew that the men would want to take someone away with them. It couldn’t be Nuhat, as presumably Abu Arram intended to keep her for himself. And supposedly Revin was already promised to his friend, although you never knew whether this was ultimately dependent on the price he was willing to pay. So theoretically, at least, that left Lavia, Khamia, Evin, and me. We pressed our ears to the wall, but couldn’t really make out what was being said. We only picked out scraps of the conversation: “young girls,” “sale,” “virgins,” “large breasts.”

  “Who are they talking about?” I whispered to Evin.

  “I don’t think they’ve made their minds up.”

  At some point the door opened. “Lavia, Khamia,” Abu Arram called. “Come with me!”

  The two girls crawled into the corners of the room. But of course there was nowhere for them to hide. I saw them shaking with fear and felt very sorry for them. I recalled how at school they’d always been bubbling with joy. But they’d been robbed of all this by their time as ISIS prisoners. Now they cowered there like scared animals. “I told you both to come with me right away!” Abu Arram ordered
, drawing out his words menacingly. “Hurry up!”

  Taking a step closer, he gave both of them a slap. They started crying. But Abu Arram grabbed each of them by the arm. “Why do you always have to make such a song and dance about it? What effect do you think it has on the customers?” the bald man grumbled, hauling them out of the room. “You’re behaving like children!” Yes, I thought. That’s what they are.

  When the door was closed again, Evin and I took a deep breath. It’s mean to say it, but of course we were relieved that it hadn’t been our turn this time. I expect the buyers had been put off by our ages. They always wanted very young girls, as had been the case at the slave market in Raqqa, where the youngest were always the first to go. At around fourteen years old, Lavia and Khamia were the youngest in our group. But maybe the price that Abu Arram had asked for Evin and me as virgins was simply not right for them.

  In the room next door we heard the whistles and lewd comments the potential buyers made as Lavia and Khamia were paraded before them. Seemingly they liked what they saw. A deal was reached and our two friends left the house, putting up the greatest possible resistance. But it didn’t help them one bit.

  Abu Arram came back into the house whistling, pleased as Punch. He must have struck a good deal.

  He went to the bathroom and then came in to see us, demanding Nuhat and Revin. The two of them were going to be taken immediately to another room, he said. Their heads bowed, they followed him out.

  I felt terrible. I could feel the pressure increasing in my head, which normally heralded an attack. But I tried to calm myself, for I knew that a clear head was the only thing that could help us. “Evin,” I said, “we’ve got to get out of here—urgently!”

  “Yes, I know,” she replied. Neither of us said what we were both thinking: now that Lavia and Khamia had gone, we would inevitably be the next ones that Abu Arram sold to some swine. Which meant time really was of the essence. Think, Farida, I commanded myself. There had to be a way out of this cursed hole!

  The only thing that occurred to me was the window again. I felt for the bracket that Abu Arram had screwed into the wall and gave it a shake. Perhaps it was loose and might come away from the wall. But it didn’t move one millimeter.

  “Maybe you could try the other window,” Evin suddenly suggested.

  I was thunderstruck. Yes, of course! There was the other window! In the heat of the moment Abu Arram hadn’t fixed a lock to that one. The handle must be behind the sofa. Why didn’t we think of this before?

  The two of us pushed the sofa forward a little. It moved with a grinding sound. “Not too loud!” Evin warned me. But this time we were lucky. At that moment Abu Arram was too busy with Nuhat to pay attention to other noises in the house.

  I felt for the handle. It seemed to be the same wire system he’d used on the other window. “Abu Arram must think we’re stupid!” I said in triumph, getting to work on the knot right away.

  “Maybe it’s him who’s stupid,” Evin giggled. “These men have only got one thing on their minds.”

  I’d soon dealt with the wire. Now opening the window was a piece of cake. All that remained was the rolling shutter. I tried pushing it up, and managed to move it a centimeter. But then it stopped as if there was resistance somewhere. “I think he must have secured it outside,” I said, disheartened.

  “Maybe it’s just stuck,” Evin said. “Let me try.”

  We joined forces and managed to shift it a few centimeters more. “The wood’s warped,” Evin said. She suspected that it had been exposed to the weather for too long. “Rain can have this effect.” So we kept trying, pushing and shoving as hard as we could.

  “We’ve got to do it, we have to,” I kept saying. I was convinced our lives depended on it. Not to mention our honor.

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t catch us a second time,” Evin said nervously. Taking turns, we finally managed to heave the stubborn shutter about twenty-five centimeters upward. We hadn’t opened up much more than a chink. Through it we could see the dark street—our freedom. Our chance to escape the horror.

  As soon as we were able to get our heads through the gap we tried to climb out. Evin went first. I kept pushing her, until she could support herself with her hands on the asphalt outside. Then she did a sort of flip and landed on her feet on the trafficker’s veranda. I chucked her our black cloaks.

  Then it was my turn. I couldn’t tumble out as acrobatically as Evin, as the scars on my wrists were still too raw to put that sort of strain on them. So Evin pulled me out by my arms and I landed on my belly. But I didn’t care; the main thing was that we were free!

  “We’ve done it!” I whispered, hardly able to believe it. “We’re out!” An overwhelming feeling of joy pulsed through my body. I swiftly put on the Islamic clothing so we wouldn’t be stopped and locked up again.

  “Quick, let’s go,” Evin urged. “Let’s get out of here before Abu Arram . . .”

  She got no further. For at that moment the Syrian appeared on his veranda in a dressing gown. He flicked his lighter to light a cigarette. As we knew, he liked to smoke one after abusing Nuhat.

  When he saw our shadowy figures by the window his eyes practically popped out of his head. “You damned devil children,” he bellowed. “Didn’t I tell you it wouldn’t end well? Stay right where you are!” But we scrambled away. “Stop them!” I could hear Abu Arram cry out behind us.

  We ran to the wooden fence surrounding his property. But we didn’t get far. Two ISIS soldiers who were keeping guard at the nearby crossroads ran toward us and stopped us in our tracks. Abu Arram caught up with us. “These are my Yazidis,” he wheezed.

  “Can you prove that?” the bearded men asked.

  “Of course,” he affirmed. “I’ve got the ownership papers.”

  As Abu Arram concluded the formalities with the ISIS men, they put us in handcuffs and took us back to our prison. “Keep a closer eye on them in the future!” they advised him, laughing.

  The moment our “owner” was alone with us, he flew into a rage and started beating us. “So, think you can make a fool out of me, do you? I’d already heard about the two of you; you’re really insufferable. But now you’ll go somewhere that you’ll never escape from!”

  After giving us a sound thrashing, he whipped out his cell phone and dialed a number. “Emir Zeyad? Salam alaikum!” The men exchanged a few pleasantries. Then Abu Arram came to the point. “You told me to get in touch when I had some virgins for sale.” Evin and I exchanged worried glances. “Yes, two: eighteen and twenty-four years old. A little old? Ha ha, yes, I know, but they’re hot and feisty. Look, I’ll make you a special offer!” He darted vicious glances at Evin and me. “Perfect. See you in a couple of hours!” Abu Arram ended the call.

  “You’ll be begging to come back here,” he predicted.

  And unfortunately he was right, because Abu Arram had sold us to the chief of the Bater division in the Syrian desert.

  His unit was also known as the Beasts.

  { Six }

  With the “Beasts”

  Abu Arram no longer let us out of his sight. Evin and I had hoped that he’d send us back to the dark room where we’d sat for almost ten days. But he didn’t fancy taking any more risks with us. “Girls like you are bad for business; I should never have bought you,” he said, sitting across from us and keeping guard until we were picked up. Our wrists were still shackled. “I’m not playing Mr. Nice Guy anymore,” said the trafficker. “Now the two of you will realize where your stubbornness gets you.”

  After some time a car turned into the drive. Libyan ISIS men in military clothing got out. These were soldiers of Commander Omar Zeyad, who was also called the “Emir.” After they’d finished the business formalities with Abu Arram, they pointed their machine guns at us and ordered us into the military vehicle. Although we knew there was no point in putting up a struggle, we did make a last, desperate attempt to run away before they hauled us into the car. Evin and I both agreed that
anything was better than being handed over to their master; we’d far rather be shot. But they declined to do us this favor.

  The men caught us without much difficulty and shackled us to the backseat with our handcuffs. Then the car raced through the pitch-black night into the desert, leaving Raqqa behind. The air blew back to us through the half-opened windows. The men were listening to an MP3 recording of surahs from the Quran, totally indifferent to our whimpers and moans.

  At some point, perhaps around midnight, we reached the Euphrates and the city of Deir ez-Zor, which at the time was controlled by ISIS. We drove to a suburb; I saw “She-Hadad” written on a sign, identifying the place. There must be a local base here. Their chief, the Libyan emir Zeyad, was waiting for us in a dark, two-story building.

  The commander of the “Beasts” was talking to a group of subordinates when we were taken into his house. Zeyad was a not particularly tall man, with long hair and a beard streaked with gray. He had coarse facial features, a broad jaw, and wore the typical black ISIS uniform. From the outset his appearance frightened me. When he saw us struggling as we were led to him, a broad smile spread across his face. “That’s enough for today,” he said to his men.

  He ordered everyone apart from his deputy, Galib, and a few guards to leave the house and go to bed. For his deputy, a tall, dark-skinned type with short stubble, the invitation to stay was clearly an honor. He thanked his friend and superior profusely. “It’s time we had a little fun now,” Emir Zeyad told him.

  I can’t put into words what I felt at that moment. Obviously, I knew what their intentions were. I also knew that there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I saw me and Evin standing shackled before these two men, and yet somehow wasn’t present. I evaded their gaze, instead staring at a pot on one of the carpets, which contained some leftovers. It must have been what remained of a communal dinner. Who made it, I wondered. Another slave, maybe? Or one of their wives?

  I recalled the meals I’d cooked for my family back home. I wasn’t hungry; at that moment I felt no physical needs at all. I focused on the pot only because it was a sort of anchor point for me, connecting me to another world. A world in which rice was cooked and people sat down together in the evenings to eat in peace. Yes, that world did exist, I thought. And it still existed. At some point, however, I’d been expelled from that world and catapulted into another.