In Qaraqosh, the old, the weak, and the sick were stranded. Aida Hanna Nour, forty-three, a mother of four, stayed behind to take care of her blind husband. “We were ten days in Qaraqosh. We stayed because we thought Daesh would leave. There was no electricity and no water. We were afraid. We asked for water and sometimes they gave it, sometimes not.

“After a few days, they asked us to convert or leave. Then they ordered us out by a certain day. If we refused, they would kill us. We were helpless. But we did not want to convert”.

“Some Daesh wore black cloaks. One was an imam from a nearby village. They pointed out who had money. On August 22, a mini-bus came. ‘We will treat you well,’ the people with rifles said. They were lying. They took everything, the gold, money, and documents, everything except the clothes we were wearing.”

“Then a man in black grabbed her three-year-old daughter,” Hanna Nour said, and burst out in tears. “He gave her to an imam, an old man with a long beard. The girl cried and cried. I said, ‘Why do you take her?’ He said, ‘If you come a step closer, I will shoot you.’ I went to the bus.” One young man, who was 20, and stayed to care for his parents, was also taken away.

“We were dropped at a checkpoint, then walked for seven hours. We crossed a river on foot and then the desert. I didn’t care. I just wanted my daughter. When we got to the peshmerga, they gave us water. They then let us pass.

“I heard that my daughter is with an Arab. They want $20,000. My brother-in-law is in touch with them. We will give the money if we can get it.”

Ghazala al-Najjar, eighty, was left alone with a sick and unmarried sister-in-law. “I’ve had five operations and my eyes are bad. We didn’t have much contact with our neighbors and so I woke up one day and discovered everybody’s gone. No one told us. The streets were empty. I went to the church, the door was locked. The shops were closed and I saw a Daesh man in black. I went back home. We stayed inside for four days. When our water ran out, we came outside,” she said.

Al-Najjar saw three Islamic State men and one in a Saddam military uniform. “They asked me, ‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you gone?’ They gave us water. We didn’t need food. The man in the uniform said we should go to the old people’s home in Mosul. Don’t be afraid.

“I said, if I am to die, I’d rather die here. Then three others from Daesh came. They were in Afghan uniform, but they were Arabs from Mosul. They had rifles and opened shops and stole everything. They filled cars with gas. For ten days, they pressured me to convert. I said dig a hole and bury me. I will never be a Muslim.

“ ‘You need to be Muslim to go to heaven.’

“ ‘I don’t want your heaven,’ I answered. “We prayed to Jesus and the men left. We found another stranded family. They had a disabled boy. They too were told to become Muslim. The mother of the boy told Daesh, if you bring your mothers here to be Christian, I will become Muslim.

“At 6:30, they took us to an Arab village. There, the Arabs treated us well and the village head asked a young man to take us to Kurdistan. We ran into a Daesh checkpoint. They asked our driver to bring all the gold from us.”

An old couple, Delailah, seventy, and Najib Daniel, seventy-five, who said they had lived in Qaraqosh “forever,” recounted a similar exit. “On August 20, they came to our house and told us to convert”. I said, ‘I don’t change religions.’

“They put us, ninety-three people, on a bus. I don’t know where they let us off, but then we had to walk for eleven hours. A boy carried me across a river. A woman couldn’t go on. Another boy carried her on his back for three hours”.

“My husband’s feet began to bleed. Dogs came and bit at them. We walked and walked and got to a Daesh checkpoint.”

At this point in her recollection, she began to weep.

“They took the thing I treasured. My earrings. I had worn them since my wedding. Since then I had never taken them off. It was fifty years ago.”