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“Then finally he said you have to come, but I was studying,” she told CNN, saying that in Toronto she had been studying “English and Middle Eastern studies.”

“I didn’t know anything about ISIS or anything. He said just come and see. Come and see.”

“I didn’t really watch the news. No one liked to talk about it. I was really oblivious to what was going on. In the end I said fine, if I don’t like it, I’ll come back,” she said.

After Kurdish forces stormed Baghouz, she was moved to the refugee camp with her two boys, Mohammed and Mahmoud. CNN reported that the children’s faces were covered in dust when they met, and one boy wore no shoes.

“It was an easy life. It was a city. It was stable,” Ahmed said of the time, in 2014, when she had first gone to Raqqa, Syria. “You’re there and you’re eating Pringles and Twix bars. You’re just there. You don’t feel like you’re in a war.”

Asked about ISIL’s use of slaves, her answer was blunt:

“Well, having slaves is part of Sharia. I believe in Sharia, wherever Sharia is. We must follow whoever is implementing the way, the law.”

“No,” she responded when asked if she had any regrets over making the trip.

Photo by BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images

Amy

Another woman caught up in the mayhem as Baghouz was overrun was an Alberta woman who spoke to CTV News from al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria. There are some 1,500 foreign women and children at al-Hawl. In total, the camp hosts about 39,000 people.

She, too, insisted it was pressure from her partner that led her to the caliphate; her Muslim boyfriend had left for Syria and she, having converted to Islam, later followed him with their two boys.