On June 29, 2014, the terrorist organization IS (Islamic State)—formerly known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)—proclaimed the birth of a caliphate in the occupied territories of Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State was defeated in the Battle of Mosul, Iraq (2016-2017).
The interviews, conducted in May 2019, share the stories of Syrian women who lived under the ISIS caliphate and now live in Gaziantep, Turkey.
Interview 2: woman, 50 years old
“I have four sons and two daughters. We had a good life; we were neither rich nor poor. We were a normal family. But now my eldest son is in prison in Syria. He was 18 years old; now he is 26. He was walking down the street to go to work when a terrorist group kidnapped him in 2012. Being of legal age, he was supposed to become a soldier and fight. For an entire year, I had no news of him. I didn’t know if he was alive, if he was in prison, or if he was fighting in the war. That year, I tried to earn as much money as possible to pay people and find information about my son. Then, I finally found out that he was being held in prison, so I hired a lawyer to help me get him out.
But at that time, Aleppo was divided into two, with two armies fighting in the middle. My son and the lawyer were on one side, and I lived on the other. If I wanted to go to the lawyer or visit my son, I had to cross the ‘death line.’ But I couldn’t live knowing that my son was alive in prison and that I couldn’t see him, so I decided to risk my life by crossing the line several times. There were other women and men with me trying to reach the other side of the city. Bullets whistled over our heads… I don’t know how I can still be alive. One day, for example, there was a woman with me who was thrown several meters back by a bomb explosion. After a few weeks, it was full of corpses that were being eaten by dogs and cats.
I still remember when the first bomb fell near my house; it was the month of Ramadan. I lived on the third floor, and the house started to sway as if there were an earthquake, while cracks formed on the wall. Many of my neighbors died that day. When we went out to see what had happened, we found pieces of bodies scattered throughout the neighborhood—a finger, a foot, a head… We collected them, took them to the cemetery, and prayed. A fifteen-year-old who was returning from work went mad when he saw this massacre. Another day, an hour before ifṭār (the evening meal that breaks the daily fast for believers during the month of Ramadan), a missile destroyed four neighborhoods in one go. When the war intensified, they even started shooting doctors and blowing up ambulances, schools, and hospitals. So we started moving from one village to another, but when we reached a safe place, the war would start there the next day, too.
We were waiting for our death.
Thank God we are still alive, after everything. Thank God I am a strong woman. But my son is still in prison, and I dare not imagine the conditions. When I saw my son for the first time, he told me that each cell received only one bottle of water a day, for drinking and washing, and a glass of flour to prepare something to eat. All the money I earned, I gave to the lawyer so that my son could get out as soon as possible, but in the end, he just swindled me by stealing the money. Many people starved to death in prison, and if a prisoner tried to help another, he would be killed. I paid the police to try to help my son, but they kept more than half of the money.
Three years ago, I managed to go back to Syria to visit my son, and I paid a lot of money just to spend half an hour with him. When I saw him, I didn’t recognize him; his belly was swollen from hunger.
The police kept telling me, ‘this is your son,’ but I kept thinking: no, it’s impossible, what did you do to my son?
If I don’t pay 3,500 Syrian liras by the end of this year, they will give him another four years and six months. My son has already spent his entire youth in prison… I would do anything for him. My only wish is to see him again. I’m afraid of dying without seeing him one last time. My husband and my other children are fine; they are protected here, but I am missing half of my heart. If I saw him one last time and then died, I would still be happy. I would die happy.
I wouldn’t wish what I went through on my worst enemy.”