VOA新闻杂志--在IS的奴役下，雅兹迪女子还没有回家

Enslaved by IS, Yazidi Woman Has Yet to Return Home

The Islamic State (IS) group enslaved Roza Barakat when she was a young Yazidi girl. IS has been defeated, but she still feels like a prisoner.

She was 11 years old when she was captured and enslaved. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were taken when the militants¹ overran northern Iraq in their cruel 2014 campaign.

Barakat was taken from her family in the town of Sinjar, the home of the ancient, religious Yazidi minority, to Syria. She was sold and sexually² attacked. She gave birth to a child, a boy she has since lost. Now, at 18, she speaks little of her native Kurdish language, Kurmanji.

Change your religion or be a slave

Eventually, her IS captors gave her a choice: Become a Muslim and marry an IS fighter or be sold again. She changed her religion, she says, to avoid being sold. She married a Lebanese man chosen for her. He supplied food and equipment for IS fighters.

"He was better than most," she said. At 13, she gave birth to a son, Hoodh. They lived for a while in Raqqa. As IS began losing control, Barakat fled with her husband. He later died in the fighting.

Barakat is one of many Yazidi women who came of age under the cruel rule of IS. Troubled and lost, many struggle to move on from the past. Iraq's Yazidi community has forced women returning to Sinjar to give up their children as a condition to return. Many of the children have ended up in an orphanage³ in northeastern Syria.

Faruk Tuzu is co-chair of Yazidi House, a group of Yazidi organizations in northeastern Syria. Speaking of the young women, he said, "After so much shock and abuse, they don't believe in anything anymore, they don't belong anywhere."

Fear being separated from children

Today, over 2,800 Yazidi women and children are still missing, said Tuzu. Some are building new lives outside the community, believing that if they return, they would be killed. Others fear being separated from their children, fathered by IS members.

"This is our mistake, that — we didn't allow the children to stay with their mothers," said Tuzu.

Barakat spoke⁴ to the AP from a safe house run by Tuzu's group.

"I don't know how I'll face my community," she told The Associated Press, speaking in Arabic.

By early 2019, as IS rule was failing, U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces surrounded Baghouz. Safe passage was offered to women and children.

At this point, Barakat could have stepped forward and identified herself as a Yazidi and sought safety. But instead, she held her baby, Hoodh, in her arms and walked out of the town with other IS wives.

Barakat went to a nearby village rather than going into a camp. With the help of IS sympathizers, she ended up in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, in a home for IS widows. She told the AP that Hoodh died after an airstrike in Idlib.

She found work at a clothing market and dreamed of a new life in Turkey.

Kurdish internal security forces caught her last month. She had been waiting to be taken by smugglers across the Syria-Turkey border.

She was held and questioned for days.

"I did everything to hide that I was Yazidi," she said.

One investigator⁶ held up an old photo found on her mobile phone — a young Yazidi woman in an IS slave market — and asked her to explain.

"The words just came out: 'That is my sister,'" Barakat said.

Once she told the truth, Barakat was taken to a safe house in Syria's Hasakah province, where the Yazidi community welcomed her.

"I was in shock to hear their kind words, and to be welcomed the way I was," she said.

She is not ready to go back to Sinjar. Her entire family was either killed or is lost.

What is there to go back to, she wonders. "I need time, for myself."

Words in This Story

orphanage – n. a place where children whose parents have died can live and be cared for

allow - v. to let, permit

smuggler⁵ – n. a person who moves (someone or something) from one country into another illegally and secretly

1 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

2 sexually   

adv.性别上地；按性别地；性欲地；两性之间地

参考例句：

• to be sexually promiscuous 性生活淫乱
• I was depressed,withdrawn and sexually frigid. 我郁郁寡欢，离群索居，没有什么性要求。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 orphanage   

n.孤儿院

参考例句：

• They dispensed new clothes to the children in the orphanage.他们把新衣服发给孤儿院的小孩们。
• They gave the proceeds of the sale to the orphanage.他们把销售的收入给了这家孤儿院。

4 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

5 smuggler   

n.走私者

参考例句：

• The smuggler is in prison tonight, awaiting extradition to Britain. 这名走私犯今晚在监狱，等待引渡到英国。
• The smuggler was finally obliged to inform against his boss. 那个走私犯最后不得不告发他的首领。

6 investigator   

n.研究者，调查者，审查者

参考例句：

• He was a special investigator for the FBI.他是联邦调查局的特别调查员。
• The investigator was able to deduce the crime and find the criminal.调查者能够推出犯罪过程并锁定罪犯。