Zahara Abdullah Muhasen sits next to a pile of second-hand clothes then suddenly wails, waving a handful of small change in the air.
As life in eastern Mosul starts returning to normal, clothes and mobile phones are the fastest-moving items at the market that's sprung up in Gogjali, on the city’s fringe. The phones replace those banned and destroyed by IS. And, after two-and-a-half years of mandatory black clothing, women are dumping the double veils, gloves, low-heeled shoes and robes, and buying whatever bright colours they can find.
But Zahara Muhasen is not here to shop, and her life may never return to normal. Once a prosperous, well-regarded woman, she has been turned into a beggar by IS.
Her husband and sons were both police officers and sheep farmers near Ramadi, in Iraq's west. As a police lieutenant, Zahara’s husband was already on an IS hit list when the group came to Ramadi two years ago. But he and one of his sons, also a policeman, sealed their fates when they tried to stop the militants stealing their sheep.
“So they took the sheep anyway and then cut the heads off my husband and both of my sons,” Zahara says. One son was 25, the other 16.
“Then they drove over their bodies in their cars.”
Zahara in the shop stall that is now her home with ID from IS but not the Iraqi government.
The IS fighters, who Zahara describes as “Sudanese and Syrians”, then turned on her. An “old Sudanese man” needed a wife, they told her, and they wanted to sell her to him. When she refused, two IS women from the fearful “hisba” punishment unit took her and beat her. They used hoses, Zahara says, the pair of them taking turns. It lasted for three days.
Then they took her from her home, drove her 400 kilometres north to Mosul and put her in a concrete shopfront once used for selling steel. No bed, no toilet and no door. It’s in a suburb called al-Karama, which literally means “dignity”.
Without friends, money or means of support, Zahara has survived in this box for two years eating food from the garbage and begging in the market for 250 dinar (25 cent) notes.
Her only identification is from IS. She has nothing from the Iraqi government, which means no way of travelling back through multiple checkpoints to Ramadi, even assuming her farmhouse remains intact.
“I am the only one left,” she says. “I am 45 years old. An old woman. I have no life left since my children were killed ... I hope I die so I can rest.”
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Dislocation, rape and enslavement: this was the fate of thousands of women. IS massacred members of the Yazidi minority in 2014 as it took over the Sinjar region. They sold the women as sex slaves for IS fighters then sold and resold them many times in the following years. It’s believed many remain in the IS-held western half of Mosul.
Repression of all kinds was routine. Conservative Islam might require modesty but IS demanded invisibility. Under strictly enforced clothing rules, it was virtually impossible for women to visit the public square – certainly not without a male relative.
“Everyone was looking at you, all the time. Everyone was watching your movements,” says mother of five Ayat*, at the Jada’ah camp near Qayyarah.
“We were too afraid to do anything ... so we stopped going out at all.”
Not wearing gloves, nor flat shoes, nor the double veil; even allowing a glimpse of flesh by lifting the veil a crack to check money at the market or to sip a drink – any of these breaches could lead to punishment. Some women were fined 50,000 ($50) or 100,000 dinars, others were whipped or hit with a wooden baton.
Farah was scarred and her sister killed when IS fighters used them as human shields.
Ayat’s daughter Farah* was 12 when two IS militants with rocket launchers fired at a helicopter then ran into the family’s home, using those inside as a human shield. The helicopters fired anyway, destroying the house. The IS fighters escaped but every member of the family was wounded. Farah's little sister, 10, bled to death from shrapnel injuries.
Farah had a piece of shrapnel embedded in her face. The family walked 16 kilometres to the nearest hospital, where doctors bandaged them up.
“But as Farah left the surgery ... some IS guys nearby shouted at her and scolded her because she was not wearing the veil over her eyes,” says father, Farouq*. “They said she was revealing her face.”
Punishments against women were usually administered by female IS fighters who were part of the infamous hisba moral police. These fearsome women were reputedly often Russian, possibly Chechen.
The most freakish of their punishments is said to have been an instrument known as “the biter”. Some describe a set of medieval pliers; others say it’s sharpened, iron teeth that fit over the punisher’s real teeth to allow it to penetrate flesh. Still others say it was electrified. All, though, claim that the biter caused wounds that often caused death. Everyone had heard the story but nobody we met had witnessed the punishment or knew anyone directly who’d suffered it.
But for married women, at least, it was usual for punishments to be inflicted on the husband.
He was required to hand over his ID card and then, when he went to pick it up, he was fined or whipped.
Some managed to avoid it. Yusuf Abbas was forced to hand in his card when his daughter was caught not fully covered as she hung clothes on their roof. Yusuf simply never went to claim it back, preferring to go without ID than be whipped.
At Khazer camp, a temporary home to 38,000 displaced people, it’s cold and many complain about small meals and a lack of medical care.
Farah (left), Maryam and Fatima celebrate their new freedom.
* Some names have been changed.
Fairfax Media was assisted to report from Iraq by Save the Children Australia.
To support Save the Children’s response to this crisis, visit www.savethechildren.org.au/mosul or call 1800 760 011
Fatima, by contrast, is milling about, laughing, with two friends. The trio recently arrived from the village of Badush, north-west of Mosul. They've seen people burned and stoned to death. They've lived on rice and potatoes for weeks as food ran out, and have been deprived for months of their sweet addiction: cups of sugary tea.
Today, each is made up like a debutante and dressed like a velveteen queen – Maryam in bright red, Farah in purple and Fatima in blue. Released from the repressive grip of IS, they can barely contain their delight.
“We suffered through two-and-a-half years. Things that the human mind can’t even imagine,” Farah says.
“We’ve been here three days,” says Maryam. “And we think we’re in heaven!”