DUHOK, Kurdistan Region - From the humble home where she lives with her seven children in Duhok province Adiba Sado closely followed the defeat of ISIS in Baghouz, especially the news of rescued captives.
Adiba is a Muslim but several of her family members were taken captive by ISIS in the summer of 2014 when the group attacked the Shingal region.
Now desperate for any bit of information Adiba shows photos of her grey-haired husband Hussein Ilyas Silo and fresh-faced son Ali Hussein to everyone she can in the hope that someone will recognize them.
“I visit them with love and passion and hope. I go there, I take pictures with me…” Adiba’s voice trails off.
The same disappointment every time. No one recognizes the faces in her photographs. For four and a half years Adiba has had no news of Hussein and Ali.
The father and son were taken by ISIS in 2014.
“I have been everywhere. I have met many of those who survived. They said there are no Muslim captives,” she said. “I return home crying.”
Before the ISIS takeover about 80 percent of Shingal city’s 90,000 inhabitants were Muslim, and according to Sayid Saad Ahmed al-Aaraji, about 20,000 of those were Shiite.
Al-Aaraji is the Shingal representative of the Marja — the highest Shiite authority in Iraq.
The surrounding villages and rural areas of Shingal remained predominantly Yezidi.
Abdullah Hadi, from the statistics office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has record of 62 Shingal Muslims who are missing.
Nearly 30 Shiites were killed by ISIS militants, said al-Aaraji, among them his brother, sister, and brother-in-law. Al-Aaraji’s brothers, his mother, and sister also disappeared without a trace.
He said there are at least 20 missing Shiite Muslims from Shingal.
Adiba’s 12-year-old son Hor said that he and his classmates grew up in an environment of peace. They did not know of religious or ethnic differences. “We were thinking we were brothers and sisters.”
Adiba’s husband was a teacher of Islamic texts, but his real passion was poetry which he wrote at home often with his son Hor playing in the background.
The family worshipped at the Zaynab al-Sughra shrine in town.
“It was paradise,” said 21-year-old daughter Zaynab of growing up in her hometown.
Hussein Ilyas Silo’s family has not had any news of him since he was seized by ISIS militants from their home in Shingal on August 3, 2014. Photo: Hannah Lynch/Rudaw
At the crack of dawn on August 3, 2014, Adiba’s family were awakened by the sound of gunfire Confused and scared they clambered into a pickup truck and fled to a nearby village.
“I have done nothing wrong and I won’t go,” said the father Hussein. So he stayed.
About twelve hours later the family returned home and Hussein told them nothing had happened in their Hayi Shehidi neighborhood.
People did not know what the militants wanted. Most thought they would be safe as civilians and preferred staying to fleeing like thousands of others.
No sooner had they arrived home than a group of masked and fully armed militants broke into their house. They first caught 15-year-old Ali, bound his hands and threw him onto the back of a pickup truck.
Ali Hussein was 16 years old when he was seized by ISIS militants in Shingal on August 3, 2014. Photo: Hannah Lynch/Rudaw
Mohammed, then 20, escaped by jumping off the roof into the neighbour’s yard. He broke an arm.
The militants said Hussein would go with them because he was “a Kurd and a Shiite.”
“Take me, don’t take my father,” Zaynab remembers crying, grabbing the arm of one of the masked men.
She ran after the truck as it drove off and watched her father and brother vanish in a cloud of dust.
An hour later a call came from Hussein’s number, but it was an ISIS militant who told Adiba to leave the city or they would kill her daughters.
The family immediately grabbed their identity documents and a favourite painting of their father’s and fled south to the village of Qabusiya where a Sunni family took them in for nine days until ISIS militants were letting people slip through and Adiba’s Sunni hosts asked them to move on to a safer place.
They left for Duhok. But at a checkpoint in Tal Afar militants took Mohammed aside. Adiba cried and begged them to let her son go. All she got was a promise from the militants if their investigation came up clean he will be released.
Mohammed was taken into away and the rest of the family continued in their escape. By this point the family was torn apart.
A week later Adiba saw on TV that coalition jets had bombed the building in Tal Afar where the ISIS militants had taken Mohammed. She rang up an old friend from Tal Afar and asked him to look for her son. A few hours later Mohammed himself called. He was safe in the friend’s home.
The next morning the family friend brought Mohammed to a checkpoint manned by Kurdish Asayesh (security) where he reunited with his family.
Mohammed still carries the scars of his torture and the nightmare of his captivity. He is uncomfortable on a soft mattress. He sleeps on the hard floor. He has little use for his arm that was broken and healed without medical attention while he has to work long hours at a grocery to support his family.
While dealing with the pain of their father’s disappearance Hussein’s family reminisce about their father and the innocent times of childhood.
Anwar, 18, has filled a whole notebook with poems for her father.
My love, my father
How can I reach you
Greetings to you from your daughter
You carry my dreams
You raised me, you gave me joy
You carry with you the load of hard times
Young Hor has picked up his father’s passion for painting. “I want to be a painter like him.”
For Zaynab the militants’ brutal treatment of her father is as painful as his disappearance.
“If I find those who took my father, I would drink their blood,” she said. “How they hit and beat my father in front of our eyes, we will do the same to them.”
Anwar Hussein, 18, holds a notebook of poetry she has written for her father and a dried flower she keeps in hope that she will once more see her father and brother, seized by ISIS more than four and a half years ago. Photo: Hannah Lynch/Rudaw
Except for short trips to meet ISIS survivors, Adiba rarely leaves the house. She can’t face the constant question of what happened to her husband. “It hurts me,” she said.
The city of Shingal was retaken from ISIS in November 2015, but since then only 100 Shiite families have returned, according to the religious leader Aaraji.
The bitter memory of ISIS still keeps many people away. The Zaynab al-Sughra shrine where the Hussein family once prayed now lies in ruins.
“I am never without hope,” Anwar has written in her book of poems. “Like this flower - true it is dry, it is dead, but it still exists.”