I spat at him.
“If you hurt me I’ll kill you,” I said slowly and in all seriousness.
“Farida,” he said, “it’s not what you think. I’ll marry you.”
“But I won’t marry you! Do you understand? I’m not going to marry any of you pigs! I don’t belong to you!”
I rushed for the weapon beside him. It was a sudden impulse that drove me. Azzad was completely taken by surprise and so couldn’t react quickly enough. I already had the rifle aimed at him. Because my father had shown me how to handle a gun, I had it ready in a flash.
Azzad was shocked. “Don’t be silly, Farida,” he said. “It’s not loaded anyway.” He came up to me, seemingly unconcerned that I might pull the trigger.
“Stay exactly where you are or I’ll shoot,” I hissed. He froze. So the rifle was loaded. I sensed a power that I hadn’t felt in a long time: the certainty of being in control of my situation.
“Farida . . .” Azzad said quietly. “I just wanted to . . . It’s not what you think . . .”
“Oh yes, it’s exactly what I think. But you can’t just buy me. And you can forget right now the idea that I’m going to become your wife!”
“I don’t want to force you to do anything,” he said. I didn’t believe a word he said. With his protestations Azzad was just trying to break my concentration and take the weapon off me. But he wouldn’t succeed. Before that happened I’d kill him and the entire camp, I swore to myself. I’d use every bullet in the magazine.
“Abdul Hamid!” I heard him shout all of a sudden. This was the name of Azzad’s neighbor, who lived in the room next door. The door opened and another ISIS man rushed in.
“What’s happening?” he cried.
I aimed the gun at him. “This is happening!”
“She’s mad!” Azzad said. “We’ve got to get the weapon off her!”
The two of them advanced from either side, which meant I no longer knew where to aim. Finally Abdul Hamid succeeded in wresting the rifle from me. Azzad tried to push me to the floor. But I knew his weak spot; he’d recently sustained a midriff injury in battle. I punched the wound as hard as I could. Azzad howled in pain.
“You’re out of your mind,” he yelled in fury. “You’re going to pay for that!”
The two of them then managed to get me to the floor and hold me tight. “You’re a loose cannon, Farida,” Azzad said, gasping for breath.
“If all the Yazidi men had fought like you, I bet we wouldn’t have defeated them,” Abdul Hamid said, amused.
“You didn’t defeat us,” I corrected him. “You took away our weapons and sneakily lured us into a trap. That was terribly cowardly of you.”
“Are you still so insolent?” Abdul Hamid said, threatening to beat me. But I knew that only my “owner” had the right to do this, so I ignored him altogether. I sensed that Azzad wanted to send the other man away. The weakness he’d shown—dealing with a woman—was deeply embarrassing for him.
“Will you be all right with her?” Abdul Hamid asked.
“Of course,” Azzad said, grimacing with pain.
“How about your wounds?”
Azzad didn’t reply. His mate understood. “I’ll call the doctor.”
“Farida, you’ve profoundly humiliated me. Why?” Azzad asked when we were alone. “Do you want me to sell you again? I’ll find the nastiest soldier in the whole camp, mark my words!”
Azzad was very angry. But I was surprised at him. Did he really think I wouldn’t offer any resistance if he tried to force me to do something against my will?
“I don’t belong to you nor to any other man,” I repeated. “I’ll never belong to any of you, no matter what you do to me.”
“Don’t you understand that the rules here are different from the world outside? You can’t change them. You’ll be punished for what you did just now; I’ll make sure of that.”
“So what?” I said. “I’ll never abide by your rules! And if there’s the slightest trace of honor left in your body, then you shouldn’t do that, Azzad.”
He said nothing. He couldn’t argue with me. And this pleased me. Perhaps I’d succeeded in planting a hint of doubt in his ISIS brain. Perhaps this seed would germinate one day.
The doctor arrived soon afterward, and was amazed to see the damage I’d done. “That looks very nasty,” he said to Azzad. “Did the girl really do that?”
“Yes,” he said. “But she’s no normal girl. She’s at least as strong as a man.”
His comrades chuckled. Azzad gave the order for me to be taken back to the container. The camp chief would decide my punishment later. Despite this I secretly felt a sense of triumph when the ISIS soldiers took me away. I’d well and truly ruined Azzad’s desire for a conquest, for now at least.
MY FRIENDS TREATED me like a hero when I told them about my struggle. “You did wonderfully, Farida,” they cheered. Evin tapped me on the shoulder. “Azzad won’t be trying that again!”
I expressed my agreement, although I doubted she was right. “We must offer more resistance,” I said. “We’ve got to make life as difficult as possible for them. You can see it’s worth it.”
“Maybe it’ll mean they finally lose interest in us,” Besma said hopefully.
“We can definitely spoil their fun at any rate.”
All of us were in high spirits. My resistance seemed to have released unsuspected reserves of energy in my fellow prisoners. Besma showed us a pair of scissors she’d found while cleaning her “owner’s” container. “The next time he tries it on me I’m going to kill him,” she declared.
The others looked at her wide-eyed. “You’d really dare do that? Just be careful,” said Reva, who was always a little more timid than the rest of us.
Reva and Sumeya had made a big mistake. They thought they might be able to tease some news out of the ISIS men about where their families were, so they’d given the soldiers the names of their mothers and siblings. As our enemies were now armed with this information, the two girls were vulnerable to blackmail and so less inclined to create trouble for our captors than the rest of us.
But Evin was worried about Besma too. After all, she was still a child in many ways. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she warned. “The men are very strong, you know.”
But she couldn’t dissuade the girl from her plan. “I’m stronger than he is,” Besma said. “I’m going to kill him, you’ll see.”
“Or he’ll kill you.”
“I don’t care.”
Evin and I looked at each other, unsure what to say. We understood why Besma had to try. Even if she didn’t survive, at least she’d be saving her soul.
Which is why I said, “I’ll be very proud of you. And I’m absolutely certain you’ll succeed.”
{ Eight }
The Road Out of Hell
When they brought Besma back into our container, her “owner” had beaten her to within an inch of her life. Her face was red and swollen, while her back, bottom, and legs bore the bloody welts of the belt he’d thrashed her with. My little friend was crying. In spite of this, I had every reason to be proud of her. With her scissors Besma had actually tried to stab the man’s heart while he was raping her. “I did it,” she muttered beneath the tears as we attended to her wounds. “It almost worked.”
I stroked her hair and comforted her. “Poor little Besma,” I said. “You’re a heroine. Melek Taus will reward you for what you had the nerve to do. You’re a brave woman.”
She sniveled and smiled. “I’ll try it again,” she said.
“You’ve got to get better first, little heroine.” I held her hand and waited for her to fall asleep, exhausted from her exertions and horrific experience.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I told Evin and the others.
“You’re telling me, Farida. If there were the slightest opportunity we wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“We’ve got to create the opportunity ourselves,” I said. I was thinking about m
y own situation too. I knew it was only a matter of time before Azzad recovered and took revenge on me. What I dreaded far more than any beatings was the rape that inevitably awaited me. Incited by his mates, Azzad would try to claim what he considered to be his right. However diffident and kind he’d come across in the past, this man was now my enemy because I’d offended his honor. Although he’d assigned a colleague to bring us things to eat from time to time, to prevent us from starving, he would pay me back for my defiance.
I thought about this as we cleaned the containers. By now we were cleaning the entire camp. Our “owners” would send us in groups of three to look after the containers of all their friends and colleagues. As I mopped the floor with Evin and Sumeya, I could see that the soldier whose billet we were working on must have just returned from battle. His field backpack was standing in one corner of the room. I had an idea.
“Let’s search his backpack,” I said to my friends. “Maybe we’ll find something we can use!”
“I’d rather not,” Sumeya said. “If anyone catches us we’ll be in for it.”
“Oh, come on, what can happen?” My fear of physical punishment had long vanished. “All they’ll do is give us another beating!”
Evin too thought we should give it a try. We asked Sumeya to keep watch at the door. “If we’re caught you can still say you weren’t part of it,” I reassured her.
She agreed. Sumeya stood by the door, unobtrusively watching the camp. Evin and I, meanwhile, rummaged through the backpack. It was mostly full of clothes, a few nuts and dried fruits, and—a cell phone!
I almost cried for joy. “Evin,” I whispered in excitement. “A phone!”
“Let’s see whether it’s got a SIM card first,” she said, checking my enthusiasm.
My hands shaking, I opened up the phone. It did have a SIM card.
“Calm down,” Evin said. “We’re only going to take the card.”
“What?”
“Yes, just the card,” she repeated firmly. “Don’t be stupid, Farida! The SIM card is the most important thing. He’d notice if we took his phone.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“No buts.” She pocketed the card and put the phone back together.
“But we need a phone if we’re going to do anything with the card!”
“We’ll have to get one from somewhere else.”
Evin stuffed the clothes into the backpack. However hard it was to swallow, I realized that her strategy was right. A working SIM card was the most important thing. We’d find a phone sooner or later in the camp. If we wanted to succeed we mustn’t rush. We had to act smartly and with consideration.
“Okay,” I said. We left the rest of the things in the backpack untouched, including the nuts that I really wanted.
The other girls too found it hard to temper their impatience when we told them the good news. “Why didn’t you take the phone?” asked Besma, who was still badly injured and close to tears again. “We could have called our parents!”
I shook my head. “Evin’s right. It would have been too dangerous. They’d have searched our container for the missing phone and we’d soon be without both the SIM card and the phone.”
Besma pursed her lips, unwilling to accept fully the explanation. “My mom will be very worried about me,” she said.
“I know. All our moms are worried. And we’ll get in contact with them as soon as we get our hands on a phone.”
Evin and I already had an idea where we might find the phone we so badly needed. There was a room where the ISIS soldiers stored items seized from the enemy: clothes, munitions, boots, backpacks, and—with a little luck—the dead men’s cell phones too. It was a sort of warehouse where the soldiers could help themselves. And in fact we were due to clean it soon.
Our hearts pounding, we entered the warehouse with our cleaning cloths for our next job. This time I was alone with Evin. Glancing hastily around the room, we immediately caught sight of three phones on a shelf. Would the soldiers notice if one was missing?
“We’ve got to risk it now,” I told Evin.
She nodded, and in a flash one of the cell phones had vanished beneath her cloak. We cleaned the room in record time and hurried back to the container.
Triumphantly we presented our booty to the other girls. They covered their mouths to stop themselves screaming in delight. “You two are the best! Three cheers for you both! God bless you!” they whispered excitedly.
But Evin put a finger to her lips as a warning. “Don’t get overexcited now,” she said, “or you’ll give us away.”
We waited until evening when it was quieter in the camp. Of course we could never be certain that one of our “owners” wasn’t standing by the door, ready to call for his girl, but at least the probability of this fell with every passing hour. To be absolutely sure that no one outside could hear us, Evin and I crept beneath a linen cloth with the cell phone. Then we dialed the numbers we knew by heart. I had a whole string of them in my head: our home number, my father’s and eldest brother’s cells, as well as those of some relatives. But we soon had to admit that it was pointless. All the lines were dead.
“Well,” I said, disillusioned, “I suppose it’s only logical. I mean, they collected up all the cell phones.” What had I been expecting? That the village was free again now and ISIS had returned all the phones? Secretly, I’d of course nurtured the hope someone had managed to take their SIM card into captivity, or wherever they were.
“We haven’t got anyone anymore,” Besma cried. “They’re all dead.”
“No, they’re not dead,” I countered. “They just don’t have their phones on them. We don’t have our phones anymore either, do we?”
The others said nothing. It was a difficult moment for us all, as we realized that the catastrophe that had befallen our community was greater than we’d previously feared. Where were our families? Was there really nobody left we could ask for help?
“Maybe we have to bribe the boys who I heard saying they were in contact with people smugglers,” I thought out loud.
The other girls looked at me in horror. “What do you plan to bribe them with? We don’t have anything.”
I saw that it was an absurd plan. We really did have nothing to offer them. Nothing apart from ourselves. Did one of us have to offer herself up to pry from them the information we needed? I’m still ashamed today that such thoughts occurred to me. But desperation sometimes causes people to come up with ideas that are normally unthinkable.
“I’ve got an uncle who lives in Germany,” Evin said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Of course,” I recalled. “Your uncle Khalil, isn’t it?” I’d met her uncle and his family when they visited our village. He came once a year and had also accompanied us before on our pilgrimage to Lalish.
“Do you know his number?”
Evin screwed up her eyes and thought hard. But she had difficulty recalling it from her memory. “All I remember is that it begins 0049,” she said.
“Think,” I urged her. “You’ve got to remember it.”
“Yes, wait . . . The number used to be on the pin board beside the phone . . .”
“You mean the one in red ink?” I closed my eyes and tried to remember too. I’d been to Evin’s house often enough and I can recall numbers far more easily than names. All of a sudden I saw the sequence of digits in my mind. “I think I’ve got it!” I said.
By joining forces we reconstructed the number we thought was correct. Evin punched it into the phone. Would the credit on the phone be sufficient for an international call? A person answered but we didn’t understand what they were saying. It wasn’t Evin’s uncle. Disappointed, she hung up. “It’s the wrong number,” she said.
I thought about this. Where could the error be? I saw the number in my head again. Had I gotten a digit muddled? “Replace the seven with a one,” I told Evin.
She dialed the new number and suddenly we heard a familiar voice. “Is that Khalil Aziz? Uncle Khalil?”
Evin asked.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s Evin.”
“Evin! We’ve been so worried about you! Where are you?”
“Uncle, we don’t have much battery or credit left. So I’m going to be brief. Me and seven other girls were abducted and are being held captive in an ISIS military camp. The camp’s about an hour out of Deir ez-Zor, near the Omar gas field.”
“Heavens! Leave this with me,” he said. “I’ll try to find someone who can get you out of there,” he promised.
“Did you hear that? He’s going to send for help,” Evin said when she hung up, and we all embraced each other. We were almost bursting with confidence and rekindled hope. Finally we’d established contact with the outside world. Finally someone from one of our families knew where we were. Finally someone was looking after us. Now we were convinced that everything would turn out fine.
THE ANTICIPATION THAT Evin’s uncle was organizing our rescue from Germany gave us all a boost. The day after our phone call was one of the few in the camp when my friends and I had a smile on our faces. It wouldn’t have taken much for us to start singing as we went about our cleaning jobs.
Since our last encounter I’d heard nothing from Azzad. He was probably still nursing the wound on his midriff that I’d hit so fiercely. Hopefully it would keep him in check until Evin’s uncle had arranged everything. If he hurried, perhaps I’d never have to see Azzad again. I pictured him coming to our container to exact revenge on me, and me having already fled. Oh, how I’d love to see his face at that moment!
The following evening we sat around the phone, waiting for Evin’s uncle to call. I hope the battery doesn’t die beforehand, I thought.
He called an hour later. I beamed when I saw the German number; assured of success, Evin pressed the green button. “Uncle Khalil?” she whispered conspiratorially. All of us were crowded around so as not to miss a single word of this crucial phone call.
“How are you?” Khalil Aziz asked.
“Fine, and you? Any news?”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to the man who would be the one to fetch you.” From the tone of his voice I could already tell that the news wasn’t good. Evin and the other girls didn’t seem to have noticed. Their faces glowed in anticipation.
The Girl Who Escaped ISIS Page 16
