She had no time to recover before the Organization came knocking. “They told me that he was a martyr now, obviously he didn’t need a wife anymore, but that there was another fighter who did,” Aws said. “They said this fighter had been my husband’s friend, and wanted to protect and take care of me on his behalf.”

She agreed reluctantly, despite being one month short of her three-month waiting period. But things did not click with this new husband, an Egyptian who turned up at home even less than Abu Muhammad had. Everything about him — his personality, his looks, their sexual relations — she shrugged off with a sour expression and a single word: “aadi.” Regular.

When he ran off with his salary two months later, without even a goodbye, Aws was left abandoned, denied even the status of widow. Back at her parents’ house, she wandered from room to room, grieving for the life she had had before and stunned by how far away it seemed from where she had fallen.

Departure

To the outside world, the territory controlled by the Islamic State might seem to be a hermetically sealed land governed by the harshest laws of the seventh century. But until relatively recently, the routes into and out of Raqqa were mostly open. Traders would come and go, supplying the Organization’s needs and wants — including cigarettes, which some fighters smoked despite the fact that they were banned for Raqqa residents.

Dua, unable to bear another forced marriage, left first. Her brother made calls to Syrian friends in southern Turkey who could meet her on the other side, and the siblings boarded a small minibus for the two-hour ride to the Tal Abyad crossing early this year. The flow of refugees into Turkey was still heavy then, and the two passed through without being stopped.

When Aws decided to leave four months later, it was harder to cross the border because Turkey had started tightening security. She contacted Dua and was put in touch with the man who had helped Dua get out.

The man is part of a network in southern Turkey that has made a cottage industry of extricating people from Islamic State territory. When Aws got to the border crossing, one of the man’s colleagues was waiting with a fake identity card that showed her to be his sister if she should be questioned.