“Umm Rafeef” her shoes in the face of ISIS Judge… cost her life

Story NO 7

Ahmed Damlakhy
Edited by: Lana Haj Hassan

In Manbij’s automated oven, Umm Rafeef operates silently and is deeply saddened. She gathers her courage to begin telling her sad story. From where to start, what are the most painful stops she has gone through.
Umm Rafeef is a woman from Manbij in her thirties, a mother of a child, who now works in an automatic oven, relying on herself to secure a living, there is no breadwinner except her job.
She starts the story by saying:
In the second year of ISIS’s takeover of Manbij and its countryside, I was living in a village in the western countryside of the city, in a house with my husband and my daughter, who was then about two years old.
The story began on a rainy day in September 2015, when ISIS entered its second year of controllin the city of Manbij. My husband was arrested on that day for his olive trees and had little to bear that year. The Zakat police came and arrested him for refusing to pay the Zakat and took him to an unknown location.
I was looking for him for a week and then I found him imprisoned in the cultural center, I tried to communicate with them to release him. He was suffering from congenital arteriosclerosis, but all attempts failed.

On one occasion in front of the court door as the judge with the Saudi origin entered, hinted Umm Rafeef and asked her why she was here. She explained his husband’s case in full, and asked her to come the next day to discuss the matter.

Umm Rafeef continues, “The next day I went to the court and went to the judge, who said your husband is refusing zakaah payment, and his sentence will be beheading and the sentence will be carried out within a week. These words were like a thunderbolt on me. I told him what to do if you kill my husband, to be the answer of the judge, who said he is going to marry me, I couldn’t control myself, so I took off my shoes and hit him on the head.

This act was enough to open the door of hell on Umm Rafeef, to begin her journey with the capture of ISIS.
“In less than half an hour, I was taken from the court on Al Rabta Street to al-Tabbah Street, and there I was taken down to the basement in one of the residential buildings. I was shocked by the horror of what happened. The words I heard from the elements said they would cut my head before my husband in The public square in the city, I was afraid, the city was afraid of such executions, which take place every period, how to me if I was within one of them and will execute me the judgment.

After I arrived in the cell where I would be imprisoned, one of the women was standing in front of it and holding the keys of her management in the door lock and asked the elements that were taking me what the charge, they answered rejecting the guardian( (the judge) and assaulted him, she smiled from behind the veil and said I think we will witness beheading of a woman this period, the elements laughed.

Their laughter was mixed with the echo in the basement of that building, and the prison guard pushed me into the cell.
There were five women who took their places near the door. The first hour passed in the cell and I did not talk to anyone. Then the silence broke with the sound of the door keys. The woman came in carrying water and a dish of food. I was not in a position to eat, but after she was absent, a prisoner came and asked me to join them. (You need to eat, your strength you need it for tomorrow, and we may move to a second place other from this prison.) I tried to calm myself and to hear her advice, and I ate a little.
Hours went by and the night came. The prisoner who invited me to the food the next morning came to ask me about my offense. I told her what happened. She said, ‘Don’t be afraid. They can’t kill you.’ Your judgment will be either flogging or being exiled from this city to another. “Many women passed as the same of your position, but without hitting the judge, so I know what your punishment will be.”
The first night was terrifying in the Black Ghraib prison, and the time was passing slowly. The whole world was in front of Umm Rafeef’s eyes. Her husband was detained and she did not know his fate and hers as well. And didn’t know how her two-year-old daughter was.

She says: We started the day with breakfast, followed by insults from the prison guard standing at the door, and during the afternoon I was taken to the court room, and there the judge was listening to a number of cases where the owners were in the room, and when my turn came, the Daeshi judge was speaking an Egyptian accent, where he asked me Why I was arrested and why I beat the Saudi judge in his room, I told him everything.
The ISIS Judge stopped talking for a short time, then said the verdict will be a hundred lashes in public, and the sentence will be carried out today after noon prayer in case you are ready, I told him no problem, but one of the elements spoke to the judge and told him that Abu Mughira (Saudi judge) had asked the sentence of her marrige to him to discipline her in the best way, the Egyptian judge rejected this ruling, and postponed the verdict for the next day.

The next day during Al Asir prayer, the verdict was executed on the roundabout of Al Koora Al Ardia, where a large number of people attended, and the execution of the verdict was filmed. I remember that after the executioner reached and started the punishment, the roundabout went silent except my voice, which I try to keep inside. I don’t remember the the number of lashes until I felt no pain. My whole back became a piece of fire.
I was pregnant with a child in the sixth month and after the execution of the full sentence, I fell to the ground and a pool of blood around me, I aborted.
I was taken to hospital for treatment, and there was a bleeding event that led to my loss of the fetus in my abdomen, and I could not protect it. ”
The story of “Umn Rafeef” did not end after leaving the prison. A new story began with her. She had to struggle to stand up to the society that started with her hostility, as she became with a criminal record according to the customs. The village began to treat her in a way that was incomplete, and the absence of her husband in ISIS prisons had a major impact on this.
She continued by herself in her home in the village. She did not dare to travel to the city, and sometimes she did not dare to leave the house. She heard a lot of words from her husband’s parents at first and from the neighbors in the village, so she relied on what she had for her day, where she ate with her daughter from the producer of her little orchard, which was in the confines of her home.
During the second month, the pleasant surprise she saw at the door of the house, where her husband was on the doorstep, his beard was long and his clothes were torn, was released after his health deteriorated, he told her about what happened, how he was tortured in ISIS prisons, and how The judge released him after an element intervened to recommend him.
The bereaved family of Umm Rafeef decided to flee, and a smuggler was agreed and things were going smoothly. Before her escape, her husband died of a heart attack during the night. His death was to her a disaster and everybody left her.
About the reality of her surrounding which she lived, “After the condolences and grief for my husband, my husband brother came and asked me to go out of the house, and not to take anything except the clothes of me and my daughter, and told me you have nothing left here you have to leave.
I went to my family with tears flowing out of my eyes. When I arrived my brother told me to leave the house and said to me “ you are prison graduate and you are no more of this family” I begged him to forgive me for a fault I have never committed, but no avail. People speech could find his place in my brother’s head. I returned to one of my friends from the city of Manbij to stay for a short time, she was a widow like me and no one but her mother, who lives with her in one house and a number of children, remained for nearly a year, and after liberating the city from ISIS I searched for a house for rent, but did not find in the city any appropriate house, where the rent payment became very expensive because of the presence of displaced people, I could find my target in the countryside, where I live today in a rural house just west of the city consisting of two rooms.
I started looking for work, worked in women’s clothing stores, worked as a cleaner in a private hospital as a short-term employee, and then I registered at the employment and work office in Manbij, from which I got my job today in an automated oven in Manbij.
I have improved during this period, but the community still rejects me strangely. I have no hand in what happened, especially my husband’s family. Today my daughter is in her sixth year, she entered school, and since the death of her father she has not seen any of her father’s relatives or mine.
We did not ask for anything and we will never ask for anything, all we need to be accepted in this society. ”
The harsh experience of Umm Rafeef in ISIS prison has taught her that women in this society are still not welcome and that it takes years to change the mentality of dealing with them. She stressed that education and work are the only guarantors of a decent life for women.