Get ready for a story that will stir your soul and challenge your perspective.
Today’s powerful testimony comes from Mariam, a 42-year-old widow from a quiet Syrian village now living in Beirut, Lebanon.
Once a devoted wife and mother in a peaceful Christian community, her life shattered when ISIS raided her home in 2014, [music] killing her husband, Yousef, and imprisoning her family.
Yet, in the darkest night, a miraculous escape changed her path forever.
From loss and captivity to hope and resilience, Miam’s journey proves no one is [music] beyond redemption.
This isn’t just a story.
It’s a testament to faith burning brighter than hate.
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My name is Miam.
I am 42 years old, though I feel much older now.
I sit here in a small apartment in Beirut, Lebanon, watching the Mediterranean Sea through my window.
And I wonder how I came to be here.
How does a school teacher’s wife from a quiet Syrian village end up a widow in a foreign land? How do children who once played soccer in dusty streets end up scattered across the world carrying wounds no child should bear? But I am getting ahead of myself.
To understand where I am now, you must first understand where I came from.
You must know what we had so you can understand what was taken.
You must see the light so you can comprehend the darkness that followed.
I need to tell you this story not because I want to relive it.
God knows I have relived it enough in my nightmares.
I tell it because the world needs to know.
Because my husband’s blood cries out from the ground.
And I am the voice that must answer.
Because there are thousands, perhaps millions of stories like mine that will never be told.
And someone must bear witness.
So, let me take you back back to 2013 before the word ISIS meant anything to us.
Back when we were still naive enough to believe that evil could be kept at bay by good intentions and prayers.
Back to our village.
We lived in a small Christian community about 30 km from Aleppo.
I will not tell you the exact name.
Some of my relatives still live in Syria.
And even now, even after everything, I must protect them.
But picture a place where everyone knew everyone, where church bells marked the hours of the day, where the smell of fresh bread from the communal oven mixed with jasmine from the gardens, where children ran freely through narrow streets, and neighbors left their doors unlocked.
Our house was modest.
two bedrooms, a kitchen, a small courtyard where I grew tomatoes and herbs.
The walls were thick stone, whitewashed every spring.
My husband, Yousef, had built wooden shutters for the windows with his own hands, painted them blue like the sky.
We had a wooden cross hanging above our doorway, carved by his grandfather.
I used to touch it every time I entered or left the house.
a habit, a blessing, a reminder of who we were.
Yousef taught mathematics and science at the local school.
He was a gentle man.
My Yousef, soft-spoken, but firm in his convictions.
He had these reading glasses that he wore perched on his nose, and he was always adjusting them when he got excited about explaining something.
The children loved him.
Even the Muslim children from the neighboring village whose parents sent them to our school because it was the best in the area.
They loved him.
He never preached at them, but they knew what he believed.
He lived his faith quietly, consistently like a steady flame that never flickered.
I worked as a nurse at the village clinic.
Nothing fancy.
treating colds, setting broken bones, helping with births, caring for the elderly.
But it gave me purpose.
It let me serve my community, and the pay combined [music] with Yousef’s salary was enough.
We were not rich, but we had everything we needed.
Our daughter Rana was 16 then, beautiful with her father’s dark eyes and my mother’s high cheekbones.
She was in that age where she was becoming a woman but still held on to pieces of childhood.
She wanted to be a nurse like me but a real one.
She would say one who works in a big hospital in Damascus or maybe even Beirut.
She studied constantly, her nose always in a book.
She wore a small gold cross that Yousef had given her for her confirmation.
She never took it off.
Our son David was 14.
All energy and passion like boys at age are.
He loved soccer more than anything except maybe his family and God.
Probably in that order if I am being honest.
He played every afternoon with the other boys in the village square.
He had dreams of playing professionally one day.
Yousef would watch him play and shake his head with a smile, [music] knowing that those dreams would probably give way to more practical ones, but never discouraging him.
“Let him dream,” he would tell me.
“Dreams are free.
We were happy.
Is it wrong to say that?” We were happy.
Not every moment, of course.
We had arguments like any family.
Money was sometimes tight.
The children bickered.
I worried about things the way mothers do.
But underneath it all, we had love.
We had faith.
We had each other.
Sundays were special.
The whole village would gather at St.
George Church, a beautiful old building with stone walls and wooden pews worn smooth by generations of worshippers.
Father Bulos, our priest, was in his 70s with a long white beard and kind eyes.
He had baptized both my children.
He had married Yousef and me.
He knew every family’s joys and sorrows.
His sermons were simple but profound.
He never spoke for long, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, but his words stayed with you.
After church, families would gather.
We would share meals.
The women would bring dishes, stuffed grape leaves, roasted lamb, rice with almonds and raisins.
fresh bread, sweet pastries dripping with honey.
[music] The men would sit and talk about crops and politics and religion.
The children would play.
We would laugh.
We would sing hymns.
We would argue goodnaturedly about theology and soccer and everything in between.
This was our life.
This was our normal.
But normal was changing even if we did not want to see it.
The first signs came slowly like a distant [music] storm.
In 2011, the uprising started.
We heard about it on the news, saw it on our television.
Damascus, Halms, [music] Dra, cities far away.
It did not touch us at first.
We were in the north in our small bubble.
We prayed for peace.
We hoped it would pass.
Then the war spread.
government forces, rebel groups, so many factions we could not keep track.
The news became harder to watch.
Bombings, massacres, chemical weapons.
We started to hear stories of friends of friends who had fled.
We started to see refugees passing through, heading north toward Turkey.
[music] In 2013, we began hearing a new name, ISIS, [music] the Islamic State.
At first, they seemed like just another rebel group among many.
But the stories about them were different, darker.
They were not just fighting the government.
They were imposing their version of Islam.
Strict, brutal, uncompromising.
They began taking territory village by village, town by town.
And wherever they went, minorities suffered.
Yazidas, Kurds, and Christians, especially Christians.
The stories reached us like whispers at first.
A church burned here.
A family forced to flee there.
Then the whispers became shouts.
Entire Christian communities vanished overnight.
We heard about the ultimatum they gave.
Convert to Islam.
Pay a protection tax.
Leave or die.
Some families in our village began to leave.
The hadads went first to Lebanon.
Then the Mansours to Jordan.
Father Bulos held special prayer services asking God to protect those who stayed and guide those who left.
We did not judge anyone’s decision.
Fear is a powerful thing.
But Yousef would not leave.
His parents were elderly and could not travel.
His mother had diabetes and his father had survived a stroke.
They needed care.
And beyond that, Yousef felt rooted.
This was our home.
Our ancestors had lived as Christians in this land for nearly 2,000 years since the time of the apostles.
We would not be driven out by fear.
I remember one night lying in bed talking in whispers so the children would not hear.
I asked him if we should consider leaving just until things settled down.
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said that he had been praying about it.
[music] He felt God wanted us to stay, to be a witness, to show that faith does not run when tested.
I trusted him.
I trusted his faith.
I trusted that God would protect us.
Looking back now, I wonder if I was naive or if Yousef was or if we both were.
But faith and naivity can look similar sometimes, especially before you have been tested.
We believed God would shield us.
We believe that if we remain faithful, if we continue or pray, if we kept our eyes on Christ, we would be safe.
In early 2014, ISIS came closer.
They took a town 15 km away, then 10.
We could hear distant explosions sometimes.
At night, the horizon would glow orange from fires.
More families left.
Our congregation grew smaller every Sunday.
But still, [music] we stayed.
Still we prayed.
Still we believed.
Checkpoints appeared on the roads, not government checkpoints.
We were used to those.
These were different.
Men with black flags.
Young men with automatic rifles and hard eyes.
They stopped cars.
They asked questions.
Where are you going? Where are you from? What is your religion? That last question.
That became the question that mattered.
It had always been on our identity cards.
Everyone’s religion was listed in Syria.
But now it felt different, dangerous, like marking yourself as prey.
We stopped traveling.
Yousef stopped going to the larger town for supplies.
We bought what we could from local farmers and traders.
We kept to ourselves.
We hoped that if we stayed quiet, stayed small, we might be overlooked.
The children were afraid.
They heard things at school.
Older students had cousins or friends in areas ISIS controlled.
The stories filtered down.
Rana stopped wearing her cross outside her shirt.
She tucked it underneath, hidden.
It broke my heart to see her hide her faith.
But I understood.
I did the same.
David became quieter.
He still played soccer, but the games were shorter now.
Fewer boys came out.
Parents kept their children close to home.
The laughter that used to fill the village square grew muted.
One night in late July, Yousef gathered us in our small living room.
He had his Bible open on his lap.
He wanted us to read together from the book of Job.
I remember thinking it was an odd choice.
Job was not a comforting book.
It was about suffering, about loss, about faith tested to its breaking point.
But Yousef read it with such conviction.
He read about how Job lost everything.
His wealth, his children, his health.
How Job’s friends told him to curse God and die.
How Job refused.
How Job held on to his faith even when everything seemed lost.
[music] How in the end, God restored him.
Yousef looked at each of us.
He told us that hard times might be coming.
He said he did not know what God’s plan was, but he knew God had a plan.
He said that no matter what happened, we would stay faithful.
We would not deny Christ.
We would not trade our souls for safety.
I remember Reneia crying.
I remember David asking if we were going to die.
Yousef held them both.
He said he did not know the future, but he knew who held the future.
He said that death was not the worst thing that could happen.
Losing your faith was worse.
Denying Christ was worse.
I believed him.
We all believed him.
But belief in the safety of our home, surrounded by our family, with the smell of dinner still in the air and the warmth of lamplight on our faces.
That kind of belief felt easy.
We did not know yet how hard belief could become, how heavy faith could weigh, how much it could cost.
The last Sunday service we attended was August 3rd, 2014.
I remember the date because it was my birthday, 40 years old.
Yousef had baked me a small cake, just flour and honey and dates, simple ingredients, but made with love.
The children sang to [music] me.
We were happy that morning.
At church, there were maybe 40 people.
Once there would have been 200.
The building felt hollow, our voices echoing in the empty space.
Father Bulos preached about the Israelites in the wilderness, about how God led them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, about how they had to trust even when they could not see the destination.
After the service, we lingered.
We did not want to leave.
Something in the air felt final, though we did not speak of it.
People embraced longer than usual.
Mothers held their children tighter.
Father Bulos blessed each family individually, his hand trembling slightly as he made the sign of the cross over our heads.
When we walked home that afternoon, the streets were unusually quiet.
Even the birds seemed subdued.
Yousef held my hand.
We did not talk much.
We did not need to.
That evening, we ate dinner together.
A simple meal.
Lentil soup, bread, olives, cheese.
Rania helped me clean up while David and Yousef played back gammon.
Normal things.
Ordinary things.
the kind of things you take for granted until they are ripped away from you.
We went to bed early.
Yousef prayed with the children as he did every night.
I heard him in David’s room, his voice low and steady, asking God to watch over us through the night, to send his angels to guard us, to keep us in the shadow of his wings.
I fell asleep easily that night.
I was [music] tired.
It had been a long day, a long week, a long year.
I did not know it would be the last night of my old life, the last night of peace, the last night I would sleep beside my husband.
If I had known, would I have stayed awake? Would I have memorized the sound of his breathing? Would I have held him tighter? Would I have said things left unsaid? But we never know, do we? [music] We never know which ordinary moment is the last ordinary moment.
Which goodbye is the final goodbye.
Which kiss is the one you will replay in your mind a thousand times.
Wishing you had made it last longer.
I fell asleep in the world I knew.
I woke up in a nightmare.
The sound that woke me was not loud at first.
A vehicle engine voices.
But then the crash.
Our front door exploding inward.
Wood splintering.
Hinges tearing [music] from stone.
Shouting in Arabic, but harsh, aggressive words I could not process in my confusion.
Yousef was already sitting up, reaching for me.
The bedroom door slammed open, flashlights blinding us.
Dark figures, guns, hands grabbed me, rough, callous [music] hands pulling me from the bed.
I was in my night gown.
I tried to cover myself.
They did not care.
They dragged me into the hallway.
I could hear Rana screaming.
David shouting.
Yousef’s [music] voice trying to stay calm.
Asking what they wanted.
More men in the house.
All dressed in black.
Faces covered with scarves.
Only their eyes showing.
Hard eyes, cold eyes, eyes that looked at us like we were not human.
They herded us into the street.
Our neighbors were already there.
Dozens of families.
All the Christians who remained.
Children crying.
Women clutching each other.
Men trying to shield their families.
All of us in our nightclo.
All of us terrified.
The street was lit by vehicle headlights and flashlights.
The church was burning.
I could see flames leaping from the windows, licking at the wooden door frame.
Smoke rising into the night sky, years of history, decades [music] of prayers, generations of faith, all turning to ash.
They lined us up in the village square, the same square where David had played soccer just hours before.
They made us stand in rows, family by family.
There must have been 50 or 60 of them, young men mostly.
Some looked barely older than David.
All armed, all wearing black, all with the same black flag.
One of them, [music] clearly the leader, stood on the church steps.
The fire behind him made him look demonic.
He spoke in Arabic, his voice amplified by a megaphone.
He said that this area was now under the control of the Islamic State.
He said that Christians had three choices.
convert to Islam, pay the Jiza tax, or leave.
He said, “We had until morning to decide.
” But his words felt like a formality, like a script he had to read.
Because even as he spoke, his men were moving through the crowd, ripping crosses from necks, tearing religious icons from hands, taking Bibles and himnels and anything with Christian symbols.
They threw it all into the fire.
I watched as a soldier ripped Reneia’s cross from her neck, breaking the chain.
She cried out and reached for it.
He laughed and tossed it into the flames.
They separated us then.
Men to one side of the square, women and children to the other.
I tried to hold on to Yousef, but they tore us apart.
[music] I saw his face in the fire light.
I saw fear there, yes, but also something else.
determination, peace even.
He looked at me.
He looked at Rana and David.
His lips moved.
I could not hear him over the chaos, but I knew what he was saying.
He was praying.
That was the last time I saw my husband’s face.
Standing in that square with our church burning behind him, surrounded by men who wanted to erase everything we believed in, everything we were.
That is the image burned into my memory.
That is the face I see when I close my eyes.
They loaded us into trucks.
Large militarystyle trucks with canvas covers.
We were packed in like livestock.
No room to sit, barely room to stand.
The heat was suffocating even at night.
Children were crying.
Mothers were trying to comfort them.
Everyone was praying, some out loud, some in whispers, some in silence, their lips moving soundlessly.
As the truck pulled away, I turned for one last look at my village, at my home.
The fire had spread.
Several buildings were burning now.
The cross that Yousef’s grandfather had carved.
The one above our doorway that I had touched for luck every single day.
I imagined it burning, turning to ash like everything else.
We drove for hours.
The road was rough.
We were thrown against each other with every bump.
The canvas cover trapped the heat and the smell, sweat [music] and fear and diesel fumes.
Some people vomited, some fainted.
Time lost meaning.
All that existed was darkness and heat and terror and prayers.
When the truck finally stopped and they pulled back [music] the canvas, dawn was breaking.
We were at some kind of compound, a former school maybe, or government building, concrete walls, barbed wire, guards at every entrance, the black flag flying above it.
This was not a temporary holding facility.
This was a prison.
And we were now prisoners of people who believed our very existence was an offense to their god.
They unloaded us roughly, shouting orders, form lines, move faster, no talking.
I held on to Rana and David.
I would not let them take my children.
[music] Not yet.
Please, God, not yet.
But of course, they did.
Acts two.
The night everything changed.
The moment Yousef was pulled away from us in that village square, I felt something inside me tear.
Not physically, though my body achd from the rough handling, from being dragged from my bed, from the hours standing in fear.
No, this was deeper.
It was the tearing of the fabric that had held my life together for 20 years.
Marriage is like that.
Two people becoming one flesh.
The Bible says [music] when they are violently separated, it is not a clean cut.
It is a ripping.
I could still see him across the square in those final moments before they loaded us into the trucks.
He was standing with the other men, Father Bulos, old Mr.
Hadad who had decided to stay despite his sons leaving.
Young Peter who had just gotten married 3 months ago.
David’s soccer coach, the baker, the farmer.
Men I had known all my life.
Men who were fathers and sons and husbands [music] and friends.
Now just prisoners, just targets.
The truck journey was a special kind of torture.
They had packed us so tightly that moving was impossible.
Reneia was pressed against my left side, David against my right.
I kept my arms around them both, though my shoulders screamed in pain from holding the position for hours.
Other women and children surrounded us.
Mrs.
Hannah, who was 7 months pregnant.
[music] Little Sarah, only 5 years old, whimpering for her father.
old widow Miriam, who had buried three husbands and now faced this fresh horror in her 80s.
No one spoke much during that drive.
What was there to say? We were all trapped in our own private nightmares that had somehow become collective reality.
But we prayed.
Oh, how we prayed.
Some prayed the Lord’s prayer, the familiar words a comfort.
Some prayed the Jesus prayer, repeating it like a heartbeat.
[music] Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Some just cried out to God in wordless groans too deep for language.
I remember thinking about a sermon father Bulos had given months earlier.
He had talked about the Israelites [music] in Egypt suffering under Pharaoh.
He had said that sometimes God allows his people to enter the furnace not because he has abandoned them but because he is about to do something miraculous.
You must go through the Red Sea to see it part.
You must face Goliath to see him fall.
You must enter the lion’s den to see God shut their mouths.
I clung to that thought during that drive.
God has not abandoned us.
This is not the end.
This is just the Red Sea.
Deliverance is coming.
But faith is easier when you are listening to a sermon in a comfortable church surrounded by your family.
Faith gets harder when you are pressed into a hot truck.
When your children are terrified.
When you do not know if your husband is alive or dead.
Faith becomes work.
Then conscious exhausting work.
Every moment you have to choose it again.
Choose to believe.
Choose to trust.
Choose to hope.
When the trucks finally stopped and they pulled back the canvas, the morning light was harsh and disorienting.
We had been in darkness for so long that the sun felt like an assault.
They shouted at us to get out, move quickly, form lines.
Their voices were always shouting, always aggressive, as if normal speech was beneath them.
[music] The compound was surrounded by high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.
Guard towers at the corners with armed men watching.
The black flag of ISIS flew from a pole in the center.
The main building was three stories, ugly and utilitarian.
former government offices perhaps or military barracks.
The windows were barred.
The doors were metal.
Everything about it screamed prison.
They separated us into groups.
Younger women in one [music] line, older women and small children in another.
Teenage girls, Renia’s group in a third.
[music] They were evaluating us, categorizing us like livestock at a market.
The thought made my stomach [music] turn.
A woman in a full black nikob, only her eyes showing, walked [music] down our line.
She examined each person.
When she got to Reneia, she stopped.
She lifted [music] Reneia’s chin with her hand, turned her face side to side.
She said something in Arabic to one of the guards.
He nodded and made a mark on his clipboard.
My blood went cold.
I knew that look.
I had seen men look at women that way before, and it never meant anything good.
They marched us into the building.
[music] The interior was just as grim as the exterior.
Concrete floors, concrete walls, long hallways, and doors on either side.
The smell hit me immediately.
Sweat, fear, urine, despair.
This place had held prisoners before us.
It would hold prisoners after [music] us.
They put us in what must have once been a large classroom or meeting hall.
Maybe 50 women and children crammed into a space meant for half that.
There were thin blankets on the floor, but no beds, no pillows, one bucket in the corner for waste.
One small window too high to reach with bars across it.
[music] The door was metal and locked from the outside.
We collapsed onto the floor, exhausted.
Rania was shaking.
David kept asking where his father was when we would see him again.
I had no answers.
I just held them and stroked their hair and whispered that everything would be okay.
Even though I did not know if it would, the other women and I tried to organize ourselves.
We needed to stay strong for the children.
We divided the space so families could stay together.
We took turns at the window, breathing fresh air.
We rationed our energy, knowing we would need it for whatever came next.
That first day blurred into night.
They brought food once, stale flatbread, and lukewarm water.
Not enough.
Never enough.
The children cried from hunger.
The pregnant woman, Mrs.
Hannah was having contractions, but they were not regular yet.
We tried to help her to keep her calm.
What would we do if she went into labor here? I was a nurse, yes, but with no supplies, no clean water, no proper space.
The thought terrified me.
Night came.
The small window showed stars appearing in the darkening sky.
Stars that had watched over humanity since creation.
Stars that had guided wise men to Bethlehem.
Stars that looked the same whether you were free or captive, righteous or wicked.
They did not care about our suffering.
They just shown.
We slept fitfully that first night.
The concrete floor was hard and cold despite the heat of the day.
Children whimpered in their sleep.
Women cried quietly, some prayed aloud, their voices a constant murmur of petition and praise.
I lay between Rana and David, feeling their small bodies pressed against mine and tried to remember what normal felt like.
Morning came with a clanging sound.
Someone banging on the metal door with something hard.
The sound was designed to startle, to terrify.
It worked.
We all jumped.
Children screamed.
The door opened and guards entered shouting orders.
We were to line up.
We were to move to the courtyard.
We were to [music] be silent.
Anyone who spoke would be punished.
Anyone who disobeyed would be punished.
Anyone who resisted would be punished.
Punishment was their favorite word.
They said it constantly, wielding it like a weapon.
They marched us outside to a courtyard surrounded by the three-story building on all sides.
Other prisoners were already there.
Women and children we had not seen before from other villages, other raids, all Christians, all terrified.
There must have been 200 people in that courtyard.
[music] And then they brought out the men.
My heart stopped when I saw them.
They came from another part of the building.
chained together at the wrists.
They looked terrible, bruised, bloody, exhausted.
They had clearly been beaten.
But they were alive.
Yousef was alive.
I wanted to scream his name.
I wanted to run to him, but the guards had guns, and I had children to protect.
So, I stood there, every muscle in my body tense, and watched my husband shuffle into the courtyard in chains.
They lined the men up against a wall, made them stand there in the hot sun.
Then one of the ISIS leaders, a different one from the night of the raid, older with a long beard and cold eyes, began to speak.
He spoke in Arabic about Islam, about how the Islamic State was establishing the true caliphate, about how Christians were infidels who had corrupted the pure monotheism of Abraham, about how we had three choices, convert, pay or die.
Then he said something that made my blood freeze.
He said that each family would be brought forward.
Each would be given the choice.
Those who converted would be freed.
Those who paid could work for the Islamic State and might eventually be released.
Those who refused would face consequences.
[music] He called the first family forward.
The Nasars, a mother, father, and two young sons.
The father, George, stood straight despite his chains.
The ISIS leader asked him, “Will you say the shahada? Will you declare that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet? George was quiet for a long moment.
You could hear everyone holding their breath.
Then he spoke.
His voice was calm, clear.
He said that he was a Christian, that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Savior, that he would not deny him.
The ISIS leader nodded as if he had expected this.
He said something to the guards.
They grabbed George and dragged him away from his family.
His wife screamed.
His sons cried.
They beat him then, right there in the courtyard with metal rods.
They beat him until he collapsed, until blood pulled on the concrete, until his wife’s screams echoed off the walls.
But they did not kill him.
Not then.
They just left him lying there and called the next family.
This was the pattern.
One by one, families were called forward.
One by one, they were given the choice.
Some converted.
I cannot judge them.
I do not know what I would have done in their place.
Without the strength of my husband beside me, without time to prepare my heart.
They spoke the words the ISIS leader demanded.
They were taken away to another part of the compound.
I never saw them again.
Most refused, most stood firm, and most were beaten.
Men and women alike, [music] they did not spare women from the rods.
They believed they were doing God’s work.
That beating infidels into submission was holy.
When they called our family name, my legs almost gave out.
Reneia was crying.
David was rigid [music] with fear.
I held their hands and we walked forward.
Yousef was still standing against the wall.
Our eyes met.
In that glance, in that single moment of connection, he told me everything.
He told me he loved me.
He told me to be strong.
He told me that Christ was with us.
He told me that death was not the end.
[music] The ISIS leader looked at me.
He asked if I spoke for my family.
I said yes, my voice barely a whisper.
He asked the question, “Would we convert to Islam?” I opened my mouth to answer, but David spoke first.
[music] My 14-year-old son, who loved soccer and dreamed of playing professionally, who still looked like a boy, but was being forced to become a man, he said no.
He said we were Christians.
He said we would always be Christians.
The ISIS leader looked at David with something like curiosity.
He asked David if he understood what he was saying, if he knew the consequences.
David nodded, his voice stronger now.
He said that Jesus died for him and if necessary, he would die for Jesus.
I wanted to grab David to cover his mouth to take back his words.
But I also wanted to weep [music] with pride.
My son, my baby, my brave, foolish, faithful son.
The ISIS leader turned to Yousef.
[music] He asked if Ysef had taught his son this fanaticism.
Yousef said he had taught his son the truth.
The ISIS leader laughed.
A harsh mocking sound.
He said that soon we would learn what truth really was.
They took Yousef, then unchained him from the others, and dragged him to the center of the courtyard.
They made us watch.
They beat him as they had beaten the others with rods, with fists, with boots.
They beat him until he fell, [music] until blood ran from his nose and mouth, until I could see ribs breaking under their blows.
Rania was screaming.
David was trying to break free from the guards to help his [music] father.
I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but watch my husband being destroyed.
But Yousef never cried out.
He never begged them to stop.
He never recanted.
Between the blows, I could see his lips moving.
He was praying or maybe singing.
I could not hear, but I knew him.
I knew that even in agony he was worshiping.
Finally, they stopped.
Yousef lay motionless on the concrete.
For a terrible moment, I thought he was dead.
But then I saw his chest move.
Shallow breaths.
He was alive.
Barely, but alive.
They dragged him away.
Dragged us back to our place in line.
The next family was called forward.
The nightmare continued.
By the end of that day, every family had been questioned.
Every family had chosen.
Some had converted.
Most had refused.
All had paid a price.
They took us back to our prison room.
We collapsed onto the floor.
No one spoke.
What was there to say? We had just witnessed evil incarnate.
We had seen the cost of faith.
We had learned that persecution was not a story from the ancient church or a distant land.
It was here.
It was now.
It was us.
That night, I held my children and tried to process what had happened.
David kept apologizing.
He thought it was his fault that his father was beaten.
[music] I told him no.
I told him he had spoken truth.
I told him his father was proud of him.
But inside I was breaking.
I was angry at God.
How could he let this happen? How could he watch his children being beaten and do nothing? Where were the angels he had promised? Where was the deliverance? [snorts] An older woman, someone I did not know from another village, crawled over to me.
Her face was lined with years and now with fresh grief.
She spoke quietly so the children would not hear.
She told me that her husband had been killed in her village before they brought her here.
She told me that she had asked God the same questions I was asking.
She told me that God had not answered her questions, but he had [music] given her peace.
She told me that suffering was not evidence of God’s absence, [music] but of the world’s brokenness.
She told me that our job was not to understand but to endure, to remain faithful, to be witnesses.
I wanted to believe her.
I wanted that peace.
But all I felt was pain and fear and a grief so deep it seemed to have no bottom.
The days that followed were a blur of suffering.
They made us work, cooking and cleaning for our capttors.
The food they gave us was barely enough to survive.
The water was dirty.
Disease spread quickly in the cramped, filthy conditions.
Children got sick.
Old people grew weak.
Mrs.
Hannah went into labor on the fifth day.
We helped as best we could using torn cloth and dirty water.
She delivered a baby girl.
The child lived for 3 days before fever took her.
Mrs.
Hannah held the tiny body and [music] wept silently.
There was nowhere to bury her.
No way to honor her brief life.
She was just gone.
They separated Rana from us on the seventh day.
Took all the teenage girls to a different part of the compound.
I fought them.
I screamed.
I begged.
They hit me with a rod across my back and told me to be silent.
David tried to defend me and they hit him too.
We both fell to the floor while they dragged Rana away.
She was screaming for me, reaching back, her eyes full of terror.
I did not see her for 3 days.
When they finally brought her back, she was different.
She would not speak, would not meet my eyes.
She just lay on the floor facing the wall, curled into herself.
I knew God helped me.
I knew what they had done to her.
My baby girl, my innocent daughter who had dreams of being a nurse and helping people.
They had destroyed something in her that could never be fully repaired.
I wanted to kill them.
For the first time in my life, I wanted to commit murder.
I fantasized about it.
About getting my hands on one of their guns.
About making them pay for what they had done.
The hatred burned in me like acid.
But what could I do? I was powerless, trapped, helpless to protect my own children.
What kind of mother was I? [music] What kind of God did I serve? Who would let this happen? David changed, too.
The beating he received offending me left him with [music] a badly bruised kidney and a gash across his forehead that became infected.
Fever set in.
I cleaned the wound with what little water they gave us.
But without proper medicine, without antibiotics, I could only watch and pray as infection spread angry red tendrils across his skin.
He lay burning with fever while I pressed what remained of my shirt dampened with dirty water against his forehead.
He was delirious, calling for his father, asking when we could go home.
I had no answers for him.
>> [music] >> I had no comfort to give.
I was empty.
On the 12th day, they brought news about the men.
Not directly.
They never told us anything directly.
But one of the guards was careless.
He was talking to another guard outside our door, loud enough for us to hear.
He was laughing about something, about executions, about infidels who had refused to see reason.
about bodies left in the sun as warnings.
My heart stopped.
I pressed my ear to the door, straining to hear more.
How many? Which ones? When? But they moved away, their voices fading, and I was left with only fragments, only terrible possibilities, only imagination filling in the blanks with horrors.
I asked about Yousef every chance I got.
When guards brought food, when they took us to work, I begged them to tell me if my husband was alive.
Some ignored me.
Some laughed.
One spit in my face and told me to shut up or join him.
The not knowing was its own torture.
Worse than the hunger, worse than the beatings, worse than the filth and disease.
Every day I woke up wondering, “Is Yousef alive? Is he suffering? Has he been killed? I clung to the belief that I would know if he died.
That somehow after 20 years of marriage, of being one flesh, I would feel it if his life was cut short.
That God would grant me that small mercy to know.
But God was silent.
The heavens were brass.
[music] My prayers seemed to bounce back off the ceiling, going nowhere, reaching no [music] one.
Father Bulos tried to help.
They had put him in our section after a few days, too old to be useful for physical labor, so they made him cook instead.
He moved among us like a shepherd, tending wounded sheep.
He whispered encouragements.
He prayed with those who [music] could still pray.
He reminded us that the early church had faced persecution, too.
That martyrs had gone singing to their deaths.
[music] that suffering for Christ’s name was counted as honor.
His words helped some, but they rang hollow to me.
I did not want to be honored.
I did not want to be a martyr.
I wanted my husband back.
[music] I wanted my daughter whole.
I wanted my son healthy.
I wanted to go home.
I wanted this nightmare to end.
Was that so wrong? Was it faithless to want deliverance? to want God to actually do something instead [music] of just allowing us to suffer for his glory.
On the 14th day, they came for me specifically.
A guard called my name, Mariam Aluri.
My stomach dropped.
They never called for individuals unless something was wrong.
[music] Unless you were being punished, unless you were being taken somewhere you did not want to go.
I stood slowly.
Reneia grabbed my hand, her first voluntary touch since they had brought her back.
David tried to stand too, but his fever made him too weak.
Father Bulos caught my eye.
He nodded slightly.
Be strong, his expression said.
Christ is with you.
They marched me through corridors I had not seen before.
upstairs past other prison rooms where I could hear crying [music] and praying to an office on the third floor, clean unlike the rest of the building.
A desk, chairs, windows without bars, maps on the walls showing ISIS territory spreading like a disease across Syria and Iraq.
An ISIS commander sat behind the desk, not the one from the courtyard, someone higher ranking.
His beard was neatly trimmed.
His clothes were clean.
He looked almost normal, which somehow made him more frightening.
[music] Evil should look evil.
Monsters should be easy to identify.
He gestured for me to sit.
I did.
My legs shaking.
He looked at papers on his desk.
My identity documents.
I realized they had taken them from our house during the raid.
He spoke in Arabic.
his voice conversational, almost friendly.
He said that I was a nurse, that I had skills the Islamic State [music] could use, that he was prepared to make me an offer.
I said nothing, just waited, trying not to show my fear.
He said that if I agreed to work in their medical facilities treating their wounded fighters, they would improve my conditions.
better food, a real bed, protection for my children.
He emphasized that last part, protection, as if they were not the ones my children needed protection from.
I asked about my husband.
The question burst out before I could stop it.
Where was Yousef? Was he alive? The commander’s expression did not change.
He said that my husband had made his choice.
that he had refused to see reason that he had paid the price for his obstinacy.
Paid the price.
Past tense.
The room tilted.
I gripped the arms of the chair to keep from falling.
[music] I asked, begged for clarification.
Was he saying Yousef was dead? The commander shrugged.
He said it did not matter.
What mattered was my choice now.
Would I work for them? Would I be sensible unlike my husband? Or would I choose to make things harder for myself and my children? I should have agreed.
I should have said yes, bought myself time, done whatever necessary to survive.
That is what a smart person would have done.
That is what a good mother would have done.
But I heard Yousef’s voice in my head.
I saw his face in the courtyard, bloody but unbroken.
I remembered David’s words.
We will always be Christians.
I thought about Reneia, what they had already done to her, what they would continue to do regardless of what I chose.
And I realized something.
I realized that survival at the cost of everything you believe in is not really [music] survival.
It is a slower kind of death.
Yousef had known that.
David had known [music] that.
Even Rana in her wounded silence knew that.
I told the commander, “No.
” My voice shook, but the word was clear.
“No, I would not work for them.
No, I would not help them.
No, I would not betray everything my husband had died for.
” The commander’s friendly expression evaporated.
He stood, walked around the desk, and slapped me hard across the face.
The force knocked me from the chair.
I tasted blood.
He said I was a fool like my husband.
That I would regret this.
That my children would suffer for my pride.
Then he kicked me [music] in the ribs.
Once, twice, three times.
Pain exploded through my chest.
I could not breathe, could not move.
He called for the guards, told them to take me back to make sure I understood the consequences of defiance.
They dragged me down the stairs, my ribs screaming, blood in my mouth, but also strange as it sounds.
Something like peace, or if not peace, then certainty.
I had made [music] my choice.
I had remained faithful.
I had not betrayed Yousef’s sacrifice.
Whatever came next, I would face it with my integrity intact.
When they threw me back into our prison room, Father Bulos and several other women rushed to help me.
They laid me down gently, felt my ribs, at least two broken, cleaned the blood from my face.
Rana knelt beside me, tears running down her cheeks.
She had not cried since they brought her back.
But now the dam broke.
She laid her head on my shoulder and sobbed.
David, despite his fever, crawled over.
He held my hand.
He said he was proud of me.
My sick, wounded, brave son said he was proud of me.
That night, Father Bulos told me what he knew about Yousef.
He had heard from another prisoner who worked in the men’s section.
Yousef had been executed 3 days ago, August 10th, along with several other men who had refused to convert.
>> [music] >> They had been taken to the town square in a village ISIS controlled.
They had been beheaded [music] in public as a warning.
The words should have destroyed me.
Should have shattered whatever remained of my sanity.
My Yousef, my gentle, bookloving, children husband.
Beheaded like a criminal, like an animal.
But I had no tears left, no screams left.
I was beyond that.
I was in some numb space where horror becomes abstract [music] because the human mind cannot process it all at once.
Father Bulos held my hand.
He prayed over me.
He said that Yousef was with Christ now.
That he had received his martyr’s crown, that he was in paradise, whole and healed and at peace.
I wanted to believe him.
I wanted that comfort, but all I could think about was Yousef’s last moments.
Was he afraid? Did he think of us? Did he pray? [music] Did he call my name? I would never know.
That not knowing would haunt me forever.
Later that night, when most people had fallen into exhausted sleep, I lay awake staring at the dark ceiling.
And I did something I had not done since childhood.
[music] I argued with God, not in prayer, in anger, direct, furious anger.
I told him that this was not fair.
That Yousef had been a good man, a faithful man, that he had served God his whole life, that he deserved better than to die in a dusty square at the hands of zealots.
That we deserved better than to be trapped in this hell.
That if God was truly sovereign, truly powerful, truly good, then how could he let this happen? [music] I did not hear an audible voice in response.
God did not [music] explain himself.
But as I lay there in my anger and pain, something shifted.
I remembered the cross.
[music] I remembered that God had not spared his own son from suffering.
That Jesus had been beaten, mocked, tortured, and executed.
That God understood pain.
that he had not remained distant from human suffering but had entered into it.
[music] I remembered Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane praying for the cup to pass from him.
I remembered his words on the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I remembered that even Jesus had [music] felt abandoned, had felt the weight of suffering, had questioned and somehow that helped.
Not because it explained anything, not because it made the pain less, but because it meant I was not alone in my suffering.
Christ had walked this road.
He knew what it felt like to lose everything, to be betrayed, to be tortured, to die unjustly.
I was not being asked to endure anything he had not already endured.
That thought gave me something to hold on to.
Not peace exactly, not joy, but the smallest thread of hope.
Thin as spiders silk, but stronger than I expected.
I would survive this night and then the next and then the next.
Not because I was strong, but because Christ had promised never to leave or forsake his children.
And if Yousef could remain faithful unto death, then I could remain faithful unto life for my children, for my husband’s memory, for the God who hung on a cross for me.
The days after learning of Yousef’s death were the darkest of my life.
Grief is a strange thing.
You think it will be one overwhelming wave that either drowns you or passes over.
But it is not like that.
It is a constant weight.
It is waking up each morning and remembering all over again.
It is phantom pain in your chest where your heart used to be.
It is functioning on the outside while dying on the inside.
[music] But I had no luxury of time to grieve properly.
We were still prisoners, still suffering, still [music] fighting to survive each day.
David’s fever finally broke on the 18th day.
His wound began to heal, leaving a jagged scar across his forehead that [music] he would carry the rest of his life.
But he was alive.
He was getting stronger.
Rania remained withdrawn.
She spoke when necessary, but volunteered nothing.
She had built walls around herself that I could not breach.
I understood.
Sometimes walls are necessary.
[music] Sometimes you have to protect the tender wounded parts of yourself until you are safe enough to let them heal.
We settled into a grim routine.
Wake to the banging on the door.
Eat whatever meager breakfast they provided.
[music] Work, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes in cold water.
Back to our room.
Another small meal.
Sleep.
Repeat.
But something was shifting in the compound.
I could feel it.
Increased activity.
More trucks coming and going.
Guards looking nervous, distracted, whispered conversations that stopped when we approached.
Then on the 25th day, a guard I had not seen before appeared at our door.
He was young, maybe 25.
He did not look at us the way the other guards did with contempt or cruelty or predatory interest.
He looked uncomfortable, almost guilty.
He called my name, said he needed to speak with me alone.
Here we go again, I thought.
Another beating, another threat, another attempt to break me.
But when he took me to a corner away from the others, he spoke in a low, urgent whisper.
He said his name was Ahmed.
He said he was not like the others.
He said he had been watching us, watching the Christians.
He said he had seen [music] how we loved each other, how we helped each other, how we prayed for each other, how we remained faithful even when tortured.
He said he could not reconcile [music] what he was seeing with what ISIS taught.
They said Christians were corrupt, evil, weak, but we were none of those things.
We were strong in ways he could not understand.
I did not know what to say.
Was this a trap, a test? He seemed to sense my suspicion.
He said he was risking everything just talking to me, that if anyone found out, he would be executed as a traitor.
But he had to know, was our god real? Was our faith real? How could we suffer like this and not curse God? I looked at this young man, this enemy who was asking me about Jesus, and I felt something unexpected.
Compassion.
He was as trapped as we were.
Trapped by ideology.
He was beginning to question, trapped by fear of what would happen if he voiced his doubts.
I told him, “Yes.
Yes, our God was real.
Yes, our faith was real.
” I told him about Jesus, how he loved us enough to die for us, how he offered forgiveness and new life, how following him meant taking up a cross, yes, but also receiving his strength and peace.
Ahmed listened, his eyes intense.
He asked how anyone could worship a god who died.
[music] Did that not prove weakness? I told him that the cross looked like defeat, but it was actually victory.
That Jesus died to break the power of sin and death.
That he rose again.
That because he conquered death, we did not have to fear it.
[snorts] We talked for maybe 10 minutes.
Then he heard footsteps and quickly said he had to go.
But as he left, he turned back and said something that I would replay in my mind countless times.
I wish I had your peace.
I did not see Ahmed again for several days, but his words stayed with me.
In the midst of all this suffering, someone had seen Jesus in us.
Someone had been drawn to the light even in this darkness.
Maybe Yousef’s death had not been in vain.
Maybe our suffering was bearing fruit we could not see.
It was a small comfort.
But sometimes small comforts are all you get.
and you learn to be grateful for them.
Act three, the valley of death’s shadow.
Three weeks became four, four became five.
Time lost meaning in that place.
Days blurred together in a haze of heat and hunger and hopelessness.
The only way I marked time was by changes in my children.
Reneia’s bruises fading.
David’s scar hardening.
my own broken ribs healing enough that I could breathe without sharp pain.
August gave way to September.
We knew only because one of the older women had kept track of days by making tiny marks on the wall with a stone.
September [music] 7th, September 15th, September 20th.
Each mark a victory.
[music] Each day survived a small defiance.
The work they forced us to do was endless and degrading.
We cooked for men who despised us.
We cleaned floors where our husband’s blood [music] had pulled.
We washed clothes for fighters who had killed people we loved.
And through it all, they never let us forget our place.
Infidels, demi, less than human.
They separated the women based on usefulness.
Younger women like Reneia were kept apart for purposes I tried not to think about.
[music] Older women and mothers like me did the heaviest work.
[music] Children were largely ignored unless they caused trouble.
Then they were beaten.
Little Sarah, the 5-year-old who had whimpered for her father that first night, grew silent.
Just stopped speaking entirely.
She would do what she was told, but never made a sound.
Her mother tried everything to get her to talk.
But Sarah had retreated somewhere deep inside herself where the horror could not reach.
I understood.
We all found ways to survive.
Some people prayed constantly.
Some people shut down emotionally.
Some people raged.
Some people became eerily calm as if they had already died and were just waiting for their bodies to catch up.
Father Bulos organized secret prayer services.
Late at night when the guards were lazier, drowsier, he would gather whoever was willing in corners of our rooms.
We would pray in whispers, share scripture verses from memory.
None of us had Bibles [music] anymore.
They had all been burned.
We clung to fragments.
John 3:16, Psalm 23, the Lord’s Prayer.
Words we had memorized in childhood that now became lifelines.
One night, Father Bulos recited Romans 8.
I had heard it dozens of times before, but that night in that place, it struck me differently.
He whispered, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or a sword? As it is written, we are being killed all day long.
We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us more than conquerors.
While held captive, while suffering, while watching loved ones die more than conquerors.
How could that be? How could we conquer when we had lost everything? But Paul had written those words from prison.
He had been beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, left for dead.
He knew suffering.
And yet he said we were more than conquerors.
Not because we avoided suffering but because we overcame it because we remained faithful through it.
Because suffering could take our freedom, our health, our lives, but it could not [music] take our souls.
That understanding gave me strength I did not know I had.
ISIS could imprison my body.
They could not imprison my spirit.
They could kill me.
They could not make me deny Christ.
They could take everything from me.
They could not take me from Christ.
This was our resistance.
This was our victory.
Simply remaining faithful.
Simply refusing to hate as they hated.
[music] Simply continuing to love and pray and hope even in hell.
But faith is not a constant state.
[music] It es and flows.
Some days I felt strong, certain, peaceful even.
Other days I collapsed under the weight of it all.
Some moments I could pray with confidence.
Other moments I could barely whisper Jesus’s name before breaking down.
Rana had her first breakdown on September 30th.
They had taken her away again with the other girls.
When they brought her back hours later, something snapped.
She started screaming, clawing at her own skin, pulling her hair.
She kept saying she was dirty, unclean, ruined.
She wanted to die.
I held her while she thrashed.
I whispered that she was not dirty, that what they did to her was not her fault, that God still loved her, that I still loved her, that she was still my daughter, still precious, still valuable, still worthy.
She did not believe me.
How could she? When men treat you like an object, like property [music] to be used and discarded, how do you remember that you are made in the image of God? Other women gathered around us.
Women who had suffered similar violations.
They shared their own stories quietly, how they had felt the same way, how shame had nearly destroyed them.
But how they had learned slowly, painfully, that their worth did not come from what had been done to them.
Their worth came from who they were.
Daughters of the king, beloved by God, precious beyond measure.
Mrs.
Hannah, who had lost her baby, held Rana’s hand.
She told Rania that suffering did not define us, [music] that we were more than what had been done to us, that our stories did not end with violation, [music] that God specialized in resurrection, taking dead things and bringing them back to life.
It helped, not completely, not immediately.
But Rana’s screams became sobbs, [music] then whimpers, then exhausted silence.
She fell asleep in my arms, her face swollen from crying.
I stayed awake all night holding her, praying protection over her, asking God to heal what I could not.
David struggled in different ways.
The beating he had taken, the infection, the fever.
They had weakened him physically, [music] but worse was what they had done to his spirit.
He had been such a joyful boy, full of energy and enthusiasm and dreams.
Now he was angry all the time, bitter.
He would mutter under his breath about revenge, about making them pay, about killing them the way they had killed his father.
I understood his rage.
I felt it, too.
But I also knew that rage would consume him if he let it.
That hatred was poison that destroyed the vessel, containing it more than anything it was [music] aimed at.
One day, while we worked in the kitchen, David had been assigned to carry water.
I found him standing still, staring at nothing, tears running down his face.
I put down the pot I was scrubbing and went to him, asked what was wrong.
He said he kept thinking about his father, about the last time they played back gammon together.
about how his father had let him win because that was the kind of man he was, about how he wished he had told his father that he knew, that he was not fooled by the intentional mistakes, that he appreciated it anyway.
He said there were so many things he wished he had said, wishes he had told his father he loved him more, that he was grateful for everything, that he wanted to be like him when he grew up.
I told him that his father knew, that parents do not need to hear everything to know it, that Yousef had been proud of him, that he had died knowing his son was brave and faithful [music] and strong.
David looked at me with those eyes that had seen too much too young.
He asked if it got easier, if the pain ever stopped.
[music] I told him the truth.
No, it does not stop, but it changes.
It becomes part of you instead of overwhelming you.
You learn [music] to carry it.
You learn that grief is just love with nowhere to go.
So you redirect it.
You honor the dead by living well.
By becoming who they believe you could be.
He nodded slowly, then asked a harder question.
Did I really believe God was good after everything that had happened? I was quiet for a long time.
It was the question I had been wrestling with myself.
The question that kept me awake at night.
Was God good? Could he be good and still allow this? Finally, I told David that I did not know how to reconcile God’s goodness with our suffering.
That I did not have neat answers.
But I knew this.
God had not promised us easy lives.
He had promised his presence.
He had promised that nothing could separate us from his love.
He had promised that he would work all things, even terrible things, for good for those who loved him.
I did not understand how he would do that.
I did not see how any good could come from Yousef’s death, from Rana’s suffering, from our captivity.
But I had to believe it was possible.
Because if I stopped believing that, I would have nothing left to hold on to.
David absorbed this.
Then he said something that struck me.
Maybe our job is not to understand.
Maybe our job is just to trust.
Like Abraham when God told him to sacrifice Isaac.
Like Job when he lost everything.
Like Jesus in the garden when he said, “Not my will but yours.
” my 14-year-old son teaching me about faith, about surrender, about trust when nothing makes sense.
We went back to work before the guards noticed us talking, but his words stayed with me.
Trust without understanding, faith without proof, hope without guarantees.
This was the essence of what we were being asked to do.
The days wore on.
We heard news occasionally, smuggled in by guards or whispered between prisoners.
[music] ISIS was expanding its territory, taking more cities, enslaving more people, growing stronger.
The world was watching but doing little.
We were forgotten, abandoned, left to rot in this place.
Some people gave up hope entirely.
An elderly woman named Grace simply stopped eating.
She was too tired, she said, too broken.
She just wanted to be with her husband, who had been killed in the early days.
We tried to convince her to keep fighting, but she had made her decision.
She died on October 5th, quietly in her sleep.
We had nowhere to bury her properly.
The guards just took her body away.
We never knew what they did with it.
Her death affected everyone.
It was a reminder of how fragile we all were, how close to the edge, how easy it would be to just give up, to let go, to stop fighting.
Father Bulos called us together that night.
He said we had to make a [music] choice.
We could die slowly, giving in to despair, or we could live defiantly, choosing hope even when it seemed irrational.
He said that our survival was not just physical.
It was spiritual that we had to feed our souls as carefully as we fed our bodies.
He proposed that we each share something from our lives before captivity, something happy, something beautiful, something worth surviving for.
[music] He said we needed to remember that we were not just prisoners.
We were people with histories, with loves, with dreams.
We needed to hold on to our humanity because that was the one thing ISIS could not take unless we surrendered it.
So, we [music] did.
One by one, people shared memories.
Mrs.
Hannah talked about the day she met her husband, how he had tripped over his own feet trying to impress her.
Mr.
George, who had been beaten so badly that first day, talked about teaching his sons to fish, how peaceful the river was at dawn.
Young Mary talked about singing in the church choir, how the music had made her feel close to God.
When it was my turn, I talked about my wedding day, how Yousef had been so nervous he could barely speak his [music] vows.
How Father Bulos had to prompt him three times.
How everyone had laughed and it had broken the tension.
How we had danced at the reception until midnight.
Yousef stepping on my toes, but neither of us caring.
How he had told me as we walked home under the stars that marrying me was the best decision he would ever make.
Tears ran down my face as I spoke, but they were not entirely sad tears.
They were tears of remembering, of [music] honoring, of choosing to hold on to beauty even in darkness.
Rana shared, too, tentatively.
She talked about the last Easter before the war got bad.
How the whole village had celebrated.
[music] How they had dyed eggs and made special bread and worn their best clothes to church.
How everything had felt hopeful that day.
Like new life was possible.
Like resurrection was real.
David talked about playing soccer with his father.
How Yousef was terrible at it but tried anyway.
How they would play one-on-one in the courtyard and David would go easy on him just like Yousef went easy on David at back gammon.
How they had this unspoken agreement to let each other win sometimes because that is what love does.
These stories became our resistance.
Our way of saying we were people before you imprisoned us and we will still be people when we are free.
You can cage our bodies but not our memories.
You can silence our voices but not our stories.
Ahmed came back on October 12th.
Same corner, same fertive conversation.
He said he had been thinking about what I told him about Jesus, about the cross, about resurrection.
He said it made a kind of sense he had never considered before.
He asked more questions.
Why did Jesus have to die? Could God not just forgive people without the sacrifice? What did it mean to be saved? I answered as best I could with limited time [music] and in whispers.
I told him that sin was serious, that it separated us from God, that someone had to pay the price, that Jesus chose to pay it himself because he loved us.
that salvation was not about being good enough, but about accepting what Christ had done for us.
Ahmed was quiet for a long time.
Then he said something that sent chills down my spine.
I think I believe you.
I think I believe in your Jesus.
I stared at him.
This ISIS fighter, this enemy, this man who worked for the organization that had killed [music] my husband.
and he was telling me he believed in Jesus.
He saw my shock.
He said he knew it was impossible that he could never tell anyone that if anyone found out [music] he would be killed immediately.
But he could not ignore what he had seen in us.
The love, the forgiveness, the peace despite suffering.
He said Islam had given him rules but not peace.
Christianity, or rather Christ, offered something different, something he desperately wanted.
[music] I asked him what he was going to do.
He said he did not know.
But maybe if God was willing, he could help.
Maybe there was a reason he had been placed here.
Maybe his crisis of faith was God answering our prayers for deliverance.
Before I could respond, we heard footsteps.
Akmed quickly told me to get back to work.
As I walked away, I glanced back.
He was standing there looking lost and found at the same time.
An enemy becoming a brother, a captor becoming an ally.
I did not tell anyone about this conversation, not even Father Bulos.
It felt too fragile, too dangerous.
If Ahmed was genuine, telling others could expose him.
if he was not genuine, if this was some elaborate trap telling others could endanger them.
So I kept it to myself and prayed.
Prayed for Ahmed, prayed for wisdom, [music] prayed for deliverance, prayed for the impossible to become possible because I was starting to realize something.
We were not going to be rescued.
No army was coming.
No government was negotiating for us.
No international organization even knew we existed.
If we were going to get out of this place, it would have to be through a miracle.
And maybe, just maybe, Akmed was the beginning of that miracle.
October continued its slow march.
More prisoners [music] arrived.
More people died.
Disease and malnutrition took a steady toll.
[music] Our numbers dwindled.
Hope became harder to maintain.
But we kept going, kept praying, kept encouraging each other, [music] kept sharing stories, kept choosing faith over despair, kept believing that our suffering had meaning even if we could not see it yet.
I thought often about Yousef, about his last words to us.
Remember Daniel in the lion’s den? We were in the lion’s den, surrounded by creatures that wanted to devour us.
But like Daniel, we were still alive, still intact, still faithful.
And like Daniel, maybe God would shut the mouths of the lions.
Maybe he would deliver us in his time, in his way.
Maybe our story was not over yet.
I held on to that hope.
Fragile as spider silk, thin as a thread, but stronger than I had any right to expect.
Because hope, real hope, is not optimism.
It is not wishful thinking.
It is not pretending things are not as bad as they are.
Real hope is believing that God is at work even in the darkest places.
That he has not forgotten his children.
That the story does not end with suffering.
Real hope is choosing to trust when every rational reason says you should not.
Real hope is the decision to keep breathing, keep living, keep loving even when it hurts.
And so we hoped against all odds, against all evidence.
We hoped because what else could we do? Asked for the miracle of escape.
On October 21st, Ahmed approached me again, but this time was different.
His face was intense, urgent.
He barely let me get to the corner before he started speaking in rapid whispers.
He said he had a plan, a way to get us out, but it was dangerous.
It required perfect timing and a lot of luck, and he could only take three people.
My heart started pounding.
This was it, the moment I had been praying for, but also the moment I had been dreading because of that last detail.
three people.
I had two children.
That was three, including me.
But what about Father Bulos? What about Mrs.
Hannah? What about all the others? Ahmed saw my hesitation.
He said he was sorry, [music] that he wished he could save everyone.
But the plan only worked with a small group.
Anymore, and they would be caught for certain.
He said he had been praying.
Yes, praying.
He was trying to learn how and he felt that God wanted him to help my family specifically that there was a reason.
I asked what the plan was.
He explained quickly.
In 3 days there would be a transfer of prisoners to a different facility.
During the confusion of loading people into trucks, he would create a distraction.
He would leave a storage room unlocked with civilian clothes inside.
We would have maybe 2 minutes to get there, change, and slip out through a service exit he would disable the lock on.
From there, we would be on our own.
We would need to make [music] it to the Turkish border about 15 mi away.
He would give us a rough map, but he could not help beyond getting us out of the compound.
If anyone discovered his role, his own life would be forfeit.
I asked why he was doing this.
Why risk everything for people he barely knew? He [snorts] looked at me with surprising honesty.
He said that for the first time in his life, he felt like he was doing something that mattered, something good.
That ISIS had promised him purpose and paradise, but it had only given him guilt and nightmares.
that watching Christians suffer with such dignity had broken something open in him.
That if Jesus was real and he was starting to believe he was, then helping us was the least he could do.
That maybe this was his path to redemption.
I wanted to cry.
This young man, barely older than some of the prisoners, had been so twisted by ideology.
But underneath, he still had a conscience, still had a soul.
And that soul was crying out for truth.
I told him yes.
Of course, yes.
And I told him that what he was doing was not just [music] saving our lives.
He was affirming everything we believed about God’s love and intervention.
He was proof that no one was beyond reach, that even in the darkest places, light could break through.
He said he hoped so.
Then he told me the date, October 24th, 2 days before the transfer, he would pass me and cough twice.
That would confirm the plan was still on.
On the day itself, watch for him.
When he said the words, “The night is cold,” that would be the signal.
He would create the distraction immediately after.
He handed me a scrap of paper with a crude map.
I memorized it quickly, then gave it back.
Too dangerous to keep, he also gave me a small knife.
For protection, he said, or for cutting bonds if necessary.
I hid it in my clothes and prayed the guards would not search me.
Before he left, I grabbed his hand.
I told him that no matter what happened, God saw what he was doing.
That it was not too late for him.
That Jesus forgave even the worst sins.
That was the whole point of the cross.
That if he truly believed, he could have the same peace we had, the same hope.
Tears welled in his eyes.
He said he was starting to understand that.
[music] that for the first time in years he did not feel empty inside.
That even knowing he might die for this, he felt more alive than he had since joining ISIS.
Then he was gone, disappearing around the corner before anyone could see us together.
I stood there shaking.
This was real.
This was happening.
In 3 days, we might be free or we might be dead.
[music] But either way, the waiting would be over.
The hardest part was not telling anyone.
Not Father Bulos.
Not the other women who had become like sisters.
Not even my children.
Not yet.
The fewer people who knew, the safer everyone was.
If someone accidentally revealed something, if a guard overheard, the whole plan would collapse.
So I kept silent and tried to act normal.
[music] Tried not to let hope show too obviously on my face.
Tried not to think about what would happen to those left behind.
[music] That guilt was crushing.
How could I leave? How could I take my children to safety while abandoning everyone [music] else? What gave me the right to be saved while others suffered? Father Bulos found me that evening sitting alone in a corner.
He sat beside me without [music] speaking for a long time.
Then quietly he said that I looked troubled, that something had changed.