Author- Lakshmi Subramanian

Soon Leyla and her family were made to board a van and taken to an office where ID cards are usually made. When Leyla reached there, her husband was taken away. Before her, there were more than 1000s of Ezidi women and girl children all shivering in fear. Women and girls were picked up by numbers and names by the ISIS fighters at gunpoint. At dusk, the remaining women and children were crammed into a small space in the building. At around 9 pm, the ISIS fighters came in again. This time with a lantern to look at the faces of the Ezidi women. When a fighter came near her, she fainted and so she escaped that night. The next day again, when the ISIS men came, she cuddled to protect herself. But all in vain. She was taken away by a fighter and was transported to a school, a makeshift prison in Tel Afar, 50 km from Sinjar.

She was again kept in a cramped room with other women, where there was just a ray of light. Every time, the men in black with guns would come, pick beautiful girls and go. Each time, the names and ages of the girls in the room was made into a list. One day, an ISIS fighter picked her and her children. They were taken 200kms away from Tel Afar, into Iraq. She was then made to sit in a market place in Iraq only to be sold to a man called Muhammed in Mosul. Leyla seeing Muhammed had a sigh of relief thinking that he would save her because he was known to her family. “He was our family friend. But he did not show any courtesy,” recalls Leyla.

Three days later he took her to the market place in Raqqa, the then de-facto ISIS capital. In the market, as the merchants walk down, the women were made to sit with dirty clothes with a price fixed for each of them. Leyla was sold by Muhammed to another man in Raqqa. “It was the month of Ramadan. I was forced to go on fast. I would do all the household work, fast, only to be tortured and harassed by my captor,” recalls Leyla. She recounts the days when she was forced to convert to Islam. A month later, this man again sold Leyla to a doctor. When Leyla asked him to sell him back to her family and that she would get him money as much as he wanted, he refused. This time she was sold to a cosmetic surgeon. “I was with this doctor separated from my kids, in the same apartment, for six months. Everyday she would wash the clothes of her children, change their clothes and leave them in a room. His name was Abdallah Al-Hashemi,” recounts Leyla. She was constantly beaten and raped by the doctor captor.

This was also the time when her son was sent to an IS school and to the nearby police stations and made to watch videos of beheading and guns. After his return, he would say, “I will slaughter you,” looking at his uncle and other men who did not follow Islam.

“My son is eight now. But I have undergone the most difficult times even after we were rescued. My son would only draw pictures of guns, he will call all of us, including my brothers and Yazidis as infidels. He would say Islam is right. He is changing slowly now,” tells Leyla, as rays of sorrow run through her face.

Ezidi24.com