AMAL
One Yazidi girl’s story of hope and recovery after captivity and abuse
We followed Amel (fake name) a teenager who was held hostage by ISIS, on a journey of discovery from her home in a camp for displaced Yazidis to Lallish, the Yazidi holy centre and then to Mount Sinjar, on a road recently recaptured from ISIS by the peshmerga.
For Amel going to the mountain was a kind of homecoming and reminded her of everything she was forced to leave when she was taken last summer. ISIS, who still occupy her home town, killed her brother and hundreds of other Yazidis as well as kidnapping thousands of women and girls as they swept into Sinjar last August. Amel and her friend Jwan were taken to Fallujah and held by an ISIS emir as sex slaves. He raped them and forced them to convert to Islam. They escaped using a knife to pry open the locked door.
This is a story of hope (‘hope’ is also the word she chose as an alias in Kurdish) and recovery after captivity and abuse. Amel’s bravery, humour and sense of adventure are inspirational and our story follows this remarkable young woman as she deals with the stigma of sexual abuse and forced conversion, on a unique journey to take back control of her life.
Writer Cathy Otten (see work here: www.cathyotten.co.uk) and VII Mentee photographer Ali Arkady