Trafficked Out 

by Sheryl A. Mendez 

Underage and trafficked out of Iraq, girls as young as 11 and 12 are sold as dancers in nightclubs and casinos, as virgin brides, and as prostitutes to the illegal sex markets in the Gulf, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. Organized criminal networks operating in the sex trade further jeopardize the precarious financial state of Iraqis at home and living abroad. 

When the body of her sister was dumped at the door of her Baghdad home, the life of Aishiq changed forever. It was 2003, and she was 12. Before the war in Iraq, she lived with her mother, sister, and brother. The family lived in a simple two-room traditional Arabic-style home in the Eastern part of Baghdad. Her father died two years prior from natural causes. The loss of the head of household dealt an emotional and financial blow to the family. With the future now uncertain and their home falling into disrepair, the remaining members of this small Shiite family moved from their Baghdad home to a $ 200-a-month rental apartment in the holy city of Karbala. Aishiq’s brother first found work as a day laborer in Karbala, and the family relied on the charity of Shiite and Sunni neighbors for any essentials not covered by the boy’s income. “After the death of my father, we were very poor, and even my brother’s money was not enough. We spent a lot of time without good food. My sister suffered from bad headaches, and my mother begged neighbors to feed us.” Financial struggles and stress complicated the mother’s health, leading to her death from heart failure while praying in the Imam Hussein Ibn Ali’s mosque in Karbala. The three siblings without parents managed to survive on the sole income of the son. With the aftermath of the war in Iraq, Aishiq’s brother found new work. It is one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in one of the world’s most dangerous countries: translating Arabic for the U.S. military in Iraq. Late one night, Aishiq found the body of her brother, shot in the chest, slumped against the door of their family home, murdered by non-Iraqi Wahabeen (followers of a radical and rigid branch of Sunni Islam). “There was a noise at the door; I opened it and found my brother shot in his chest. His eyes were open; I closed them.” 

Her sister would shortly suffer a similar fate. First beaten, raped, then murdered, the body was dumped at the family door this time by five local men. She was 15 years old. “They kidnapped her in front of our house. My sister told me she was going to study. She was at the front door, and five guys came and took my sister...”. Her voice starts to break. She knew the men who killed her sister: “These guys take pills.”

Scared for her life, Aishiq fled her family home to an uncle living in the same city. Yet, her uncle’s wife refused to take the girl into their home. Without a family, a home to return to, and her own life endangered, Aishiq joined a multitude of Shiite pilgrims congregating outside of the Imam Hussein Ibn Ali mosque in Karbala. It was the first night of Ashura, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a time of mourning and religious observance for Shiite Muslims. Exhausted and with few options before her, she lay down on the pavement alongside the mosque and fell asleep. She would not remain asleep for long. A woman shook her awake, “Aren’t you the daughter of Umm Saddam? Aren’t you Aishiq?” The girl nodded yes. Kissing both her cheeks, she told her, “Come home with me.” There were two young Iraqi girls in the woman’s home, and both girls were orphaned in the aftermath of the war. They told Aishiq that they were living in a Baghdad orphanage when this same woman and a man posed as prospective parents looking for children to adopt. Aishiq explains, “If someone goes there (to the orphanage) and says my wife cannot have children, they will give them a child. But they don’t know how the children will be treated.” She is visibly saddened when remembering the two young girls whom she describes as thin, one with green eyes, the other with hazel eyes. They were 11 and 12 years old at the time. The threesome would soon be trafficked out of Iraq. Aishiq was sent to work as a dancer in a Dubai nightclub, and the two girls would be married off to men in the United Arab Emirates. In the months that followed, Aishiq traveled three times between Dubai and Syria. The woman’s family was living on the outskirts of Damascus in the Sayyeda Zeinab neighborhood. During Aishiq’s stays in Syria, she worked as a dancer in nightclubs and casinos as she did in Dubai: “There were a lot of girls, but I was the youngest. The others were older: 16, 17, 18, 20…” 

This work did not last long, however, as these places are regularly checked by the Syrian police for girls working under the age of 18. The woman who first trafficked her out of Iraq and would today be the go-between for prostituting Aishiq decided to sell her most valuable commodity: the girl’s virginity. An elderly Saudi man living in Damascus entered into a temporary contract marriage with the young girl. Contract marriages, also commonly called pleasure marriages, are permitted in Shiite society, but there are conditions, as Aishiq explains: “The girl must be an adult, must have the agreement of the mother and the father, and cannot be a virgin but must be a widow. There are certain circumstances under which these pleasure marriages are allowed, such as war and similar situations”. The woman sold her off to the Saudi. The man paid 200,000 Syrian pounds (4,000 USD), the going price for a virgin. “When I married, I had no period. I was 12. I was a virgin.” The Saudi gave her gold bracelets and earrings. She says he took good care of her and she became fond of him. Yet, it was not long after the woman had received the money for selling Aishiq that she started to think how to get the girl back under her own roof. One day, while shopping in a local market in Damascus, two of the woman’s sons kidnapped Aishiq. “They put their hands over my mouth and forced me into a car,” she says. 

After the kidnapping, a doctor was brought to repair the girl’s virginity by reattaching her hymen. “I was crying; it hurt too much,” she says. Aishiq goes on to explain that men want virgins. Following her kidnapping, she was once again whisked away to Dubai alongside the woman, and the girl was put to work as a dancer once again in a casino. At work, she met a young Emirati man, and she says they fell in love. The woman arranged for a contract marriage between the Emirati and the girl. Aishiq lived with this man for 3 or 4 months. Again, it was not long before the woman who contracted this second marriage realized that losing the girl meant losing income. The woman threatened the young man that if he did not return the girl, she would call his family in the Emirates. The shame and dishonor would be too great to bear, so he agreed to return Aishiq. The young girl was sent back to Syria and forced this time into prostitution. In Syria, she lives with the woman who first trafficked her out of Iraq, the woman’s two daughters, both prostitutes, one of the woman’s sons, and his wife. The woman, now Aishiq’s pimp, has two other sons who live in a separate apartment nearby; one of the boys is the girl’s minder and accompanies her when she is sent to a client. She sees the second son every three days when he comes to force sex upon her. She says, “One time I refused, and he struck me; blood came out of my nose and mouth.” 

Aishiq’s body is a roadmap of torture. A knife cut across her chin, paired with a deep slice across the base of her thumb - punishment by her minder. Her arms and hands are riddled with scabbed punctures to her skin, some old, some new. 

“When this family punishes me, they bring nails, heat them, tie me and stick the nails on my hands and arms”, she says. We ask her when they punish her. “When I ask for money, the money I’ve earned. They become angry and punish me. They won’t give me money.” Aishiq sleeps in a small space between the bathroom and the kitchen on a thin mattress. “They provide me with a little food and a place to sleep. The woman sends my money to Iraq to build a house in Karbala.” She then pulls down her t-shirt and bares her scarred chest, mutilated by cooking oil thrown at her after she asked to buy a cream to sooth her itching skin. Aishiq explains, “They were cooking fish and threw the oil on my chest.” In the past, when her injuries were too severe to treat at home, she was taken to the hospital. In the hospital they would threaten her, “If you say something, we will kill you!”