Aysha Muhammad Dib al-Awad
I was born in the Baba Amr area of Homs and I met Obeid when he was doing his military service there. We got married in 2005. We lived in the town of Kishkiyya in Deir ez-Zor province. During the early years of our marriage, I gave birth to two daughters. Then Obeid traveled to Saudi Arabia.
Our situation improved significantly. Our family grew to three daughters and one son. During those years, I managed to visit him in Saudi Arabia, and I performed the Hajj. I felt like I was living in heaven. Eventually, I returned to Syria for my daughters. Obeid would come home during Ramadan to spend the month with us before returning to Saudi Arabia. Later, he decided to come back and settle here, starting work in construction. This was the situation for two years before ISIS arrived.
Our area had experienced the presence of numerous factions, but we didn’t join any of them. Initially, ISIS presented a positive image of themselves by organising Quran memorization courses for young people in mosques and promoting women’s Islamic dress. We heard about them for two or three months, but they didn’t come to us until about a month before Ramadan in 2014. At that point, they began harassing people and restricting our movements. They besieged the village and prevented people from working. We even had to drink salty water from a well, which made the children sick.
This led young men to attempt to expel ISIS from the village, especially with the increased arrests and killing. They even arrested innocent people who had come from abroad to spend Ramadan with their families. Three days after Eid al-Fitr, they stormed the village and arrested around 50 men from their beds. We saw everything. ISIS returned to storm the town. The battle lasted for 12 days, with bullets raining down on us.
After that, ISIS imposed a deadline for people to flee Kishkiyya, and promised safety for anyone who left during that time. We left with some relatives and neighbors in a car that my husband used for work. We thought we would be gone for no more than three days.
From Kishkiyya, we headed toward the town of Bahra, where we spent three days outdoors under trees that offered no protection from the summer heat. Cases of illness and fainting rose due to thirst, lack of food, and heat. The situation worsened as ISIS raids began. ISIS is far removed from true Islam – if they were genuinely religious, they wouldn’t force people to sleep outdoors under trees!
Due to poor conditions in Bahra, we decided to sneak out at night towards Bukamal, and travelled there in small groups. The first group arrived safely. We were part of the second group, but were surprised by an ISIS checkpoint on Street 24, in the town of Shafa. They ordered us to stop the vehicles transporting us and forced the men to stand handcuffed against a wall with guns pointed at them, while they took the women into a school.
There were about 80 men. At one point, ISIS noticed wounds on one of the young men’s backs, which made them realize he was a fighter. They executed him immediately and then killed two others for the same reason. At 6:00 AM, vehicles arrived and transported the men elsewhere, including my husband and his son (from his other wife). As for the women, they detained us in a school as if we were livestock. They occasionally came in with knives to intimidate us, saying, “Women, like men, are sentenced to execution.”
When the people of Shafa learned about the detention of women in the school, some began throwing stones at two guards, who responded by firing their guns. Amidst the chaos, we escaped from the school with the children. The people of the town sheltered us until things had calmed down. They fed us, cared for us, and helped us bury the young men who were killed at the school. Although we didn’t know our men’s fate, we feared that they would be executed.
After spending three days in Shafa, we returned to Bahra and gathered again in a crowded place without water, bathrooms, or electricity. We stayed there for 15 days. However, our difficult circumstances forced me and my husband’s other wife – who suffers from health problems – to contact one of the people who had sheltered us in Shafa and ask for assistance. That man risked execution by coming to take us in his car, because we are from the Shaitat clan.
He took us to his home, and allocated a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom for us on the second floor. He gave us total privacy. We stayed at his house for about six months, until negotiations began for the return of the Shaitat residents. The residents of Gharanij returned first, after each had handed over a rifle and ammunition. Our return, on the other hand, was delayed by two months. Since we were widows facing a dire financial situation, some kind people donated money to help us purchase a rifle.
We returned to Kishkiyya only to find that our house had been destroyed. We resumed the search for my husband. Soon after, we found his body in one of the mass graves. He was identified by his ID card, but his money and mobile phone had been stolen. We didn’t hold a condolence ceremony. We just received some close relatives discreetly instead. As for my husband’s son – his body has not yet been found.
Since Obeid’s disappearance on August 8, 2014, we had held onto the hope that he’d been imprisoned, only to discover later that he had been killed and buried in a water channel in Kishkiyya. We wished he could return to Saudi Arabia and take us with him, and hoped he could care for his other wife who was ill.
I am his younger wife. I gave birth to three daughters and one son. His older wife gave him five sons and two daughters.
Later, ISIS continued to harass us, and attempted to force us out of our home so they could seize it. However, interventions from villagers on our behalf – because we were widows – prevented that from happening.