The girls were freed immediately. They asked who the men who arrested them were, but no one was able to provide an answer. Whether the rest of Raqqa will escape so lightly, the girls could not say. “Things will become difficult, that’s sure,” said Miss Rifaie, sitting in a coffee shop last week with her father, himself a human rights activist, the two girls the only women present. “The problem is with the people. Because of the regime, if someone speaks to them who has power, they just sit there. But my father has taught me to have opinions. So I cannot stop.”