Fatima al-Jasem al-Ghadir
My husband, Khalaf al-Nasser al-Zalan, was born in 1982, and was working in a cinder block factory when we got married. A few months after our wedding, he obtained a work visa for Saudi Arabia, where he would spend several months before returning home to Kishkiyya.
During the beginning of his time working in Saudi Arabia, he was able to perform the Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca), and, one year, took his parents along too. He gradually began building a new house so that we could live independently from his family. With each visit home, he completed different parts of it, such as finishing the ceiling and installing doors. However, when the Syrian Revolution began, he decided to leave Saudi Arabia and permanently settle here. He returned to work in a construction supplies factory, while I started looking for work as a seamstress.
Initially, when we started hearing about ISIS, some believed that they were a positive force. However, our perspective changed dramatically after a woman who had previously moved into our neighborhood from the town of Jazri (from the Bourahma clan) informed us that ISIS had executed her husband, who was a street vendor.
During Ramadan of 2014, the pressure from ISIS intensified. At the beginning of the month, they set up tents and distributed food to people, trying to project a positive image. However, by the end of the month, ISIS had begun arresting and executing people, which made us increasingly frightened by their presence.
During that period, ISIS members raided my uncles’ home, where my husband was staying, and arrested them all. After that point, we received no information about them. Soon after, clashes erupted between the Shaitat clan and ISIS, culminating in an attack by Shaitat members on the Kishkiyya municipality building. This successfully expelled ISIS from their base inside. In response, ISIS arrested those they had employed to operate the oilfields, then gathered their troops and returned to storm the town. We were besieged from all sides, with the sounds of gunfire echoing around us. We could not leave our homes.
During the siege, and after my husband’s arrest, my mental health deteriorated and I lost my appetite. All I wanted was for him to return. I heard that people had attempted to advocate for his safe release, but he was not among those released.
As the situation worsened, I began searching for a way to leave Kishkiyya with my children. Eventually, my brother-in-law transported us on a motorbike, but we didn’t have space for the clothes and food I had prepared. In Bahra, ISIS raids continued. My brother-in-law was forced to flee each time there was a raid, often sleeping outside. During this period, my family shared a room with four other families, living in miserable conditions. I was mostly absent-minded, not paying attention to what was happening around me, because my mind was preoccupied with thoughts about my husband.
Ten days or more after our displacement, a man approached us with the news that Khalaf would be released from a prison in Mayadin. Shortly after that, we were shocked to see footage of him looking extremely thin, almost skeleton-like, due to the torture and beatings he had endured.
Because of the frequent raids, we decided to move to the town of Sousa. However, the men were still not safe from ISIS patrols there, and we were all afraid to leave the house, even to visit a doctor or pharmacy. My daughter, for example, suffered from a breathing problem, but I could not take her to see a physician. Eventually I sought help from a neighbor in Sousa to accompany me to Bukamal so I could get treatment for my child. She needed an oxygen concentrator.
Around the time of Eid al-Adha, we heard that ISIS had killed the men they had previously arrested, including my husband, but we refused to believe it without concrete evidence. I felt compelled to go to Mayadin to inquire about him, so I traveled there with my uncle’s wife, whose husband was also detained.
Every time we attempted to go, ISIS members would force us to turn back, insisting that we needed to travel with a mahram (a male guardian). But how could I bring a mahram when they had arrested all of them? We tried a different route to reach Mayadin, and even asked the bus driver to act as our mahram, but that did not work either. Eventually, we managed to pass through and reach the prison to inquire about my husband, but we were told to return another day.
For an entire month, we kept asking about him in Mayadin, but to no avail. From there, we went to search for him at the Omar Oilfield in the desert, only to be stopped by a vehicle full of ISIS members. They were armed with weapons and large knives and looked terrifying. They questioned why we were there, expressing disbelief that we had come to search for missing relatives. One of them accused us of spying for the Americans and threatened to arrest us, but another intervened and convinced him to let us leave.
After a while, negotiations began to arrange our return to the Shaitat areas. Some people helped us to secure a rifle and magazines to hand over to ISIS, as this was the condition they had set for those wishing to return. In Kishkiyya, a man approached my brother-in-law and informed him that Khalaf had been killed. However, since we had not found his body, we refused to lose hope. Whenever we heard about a newly-discovered secret prison, we inquired about him and sent his name and photograph.
Eventually new ISIS videos surfaced confirming that my husband had been killed at the Jardi Bridge, alongside another man named Ghadir al-Obayyid. I do not know the exact date of his death, but he was arrested on July 25, 2024, just before the major battle (the attack on the Kishkiyya municipality building). While we have still not found his body, we lost hope for his survival after watching the ISIS video.
Khalaf had dreams of buying a car to work with and support our family. During Ramadan, he would spend long hours reading the Quran in the mosque. He was a religious man who performed the Haj in Mecca. He never angered anyone, and he did not join the fighting on any side.