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 4: woman
“I was tortured by ISIS for four days. Days of death… my whole body is full of scars now. I was hanging clothes on the terrace, as always. When I went down to the kitchen, someone knocked loudly on the door, so I quickly covered myself with the burqa while my son opened the door, terrified. When the men came in, they pushed him so hard that he hit his head on the stairs and lost sight in one eye. When they kidnapped me, they stripped me and made me wear a flimsy all-black dress, while I cried because I had no idea what they would do to me. They tied my hands up high and started whipping me on the back and… no, that’s enough, I don’t want to talk about it.
They would kill children if they didn’t go to pray. They would cut off their heads and put them inside a gift box, which they would then deliver to the families. If they found out about a particularly beautiful girl, they would either kill her or disfigure her face. If a Quranic scholar mispronounced a part of the book, they would cut out his tongue. They took away our television, our radio, our money, everything. Even little girls who were just one year old couldn’t leave the house because they were female.
When the Islamic State was not yet very strong, my sister was walking down the street with her child, and an ISIS truck passed by. The child was screaming loudly, so my sister, to make him stop, told him: ‘Wallah (I swear to Allah)! Either you stop, or I’ll have these men take you away!’ I don’t know how they could have heard her, but they followed her home. A few days later, the child was playing in front of the house and they kidnapped him. The friends who witnessed the scene alerted my sister and her husband. A few days later, they received the remains of their dead son in a gift package with a note:
‘So that next time you don’t swear in the name of Allah.’
I pray to Allah that no one experiences what I have experienced and that He will one day repay us for all this suffering.”