WESTERN CANADA — Outside a tall apartment building we meet a slim, smiling woman dressed in a black shirt and jeans. She invites us inside, and we sit in a conference room, where she begins to tell her story.
We're not using her real name, or her home city, fearing her past could lead to repercussions. It's a past that led her into the arms of the Islamic State and brutal fighting in Syria. And to this day, she doesn't know how she survived.
She agreed to let us use her first initial, S.
She was born in Pakistan to Somali parents and raised in Canada since the age of two. She was a teenager when her brother was shot and killed by an acquaintance who was high on drugs. She was devastated and yearned for some kind of solace, some kind of peace.
"I turned to religion and God," she says in a quiet voice. "My family comes from a Muslim background. So I started practicing my religion more. And I started to become friends with other Muslim girls my age."
S. became more devout, trading her Western clothes for a veil — a hijab — and a long dress.
But it also made her a target for some.
"My family was picking me up from the train station, and I was attacked by a random group of people," she remembers."They sprayed me and my whole family with bear mace for no reason."
Not long after that, another incident.
She was on the train when she noticed two men staring at her.
"They were looking at me and making comments like, 'Maybe we should get on the next train in case this one gets blown up.'"
A crucial decison
Between high school and university, S. enrolled herself into a religious boarding school in eastern Canada, as she sensed Islamophobia all around her. And it's there that her life began to change, moving from devout to radical.
"I started to make friends with some girls, and one of them was a returnee from Somalia who joined a terrorist organization called al-Shabab." Al Shabab is a rebel group with ties to al-Qaida.
That Somali woman coached S. and urged her to leave for a Muslim nation. At first she was reluctant.
"I'm Canadian as it gets. So to me it was very frustrating and confusing. And then on the other hand, when I was hearing the Islamic scholars saying, 'Leave the West, you're going to be targeted, you're going to be attacked.' It was doing something to my brain that made me feel like running away from here and living in a Muslim country where I would fit in," she said.
At this point S. was also under watch by Canadian authorities for the company she was keeping.
"The intelligence agencies in Canada started to approach me at my job. They came to my house, they were calling me on the phone. And that made me feel very uncomfortable and scared because, you know, they were investigating her, but they were putting pressure on me," she said.
Before her freshmen year of college, S. returned to her family's home. Her parents, feeling the pressures of government inquiries, eventually asked S. to leave their home. And S. felt more and more the pull of that Somali woman, who agreed to pay for her passage to a Muslim country. So in 2014, S., barely out of her teens, made a crucial decision and flew to Turkey.
"I thought what I was doing was correct according to my religion, which was to go to a Muslim country, aid the Muslims, help the Muslims, live amongst Islam and practice my religion more freely," she said.
The Somali woman connected her with smugglers in Istanbul. And it was there, with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, that she hopped in a van with other ISIS recruits. They drove south into the darkness, until they reached a remote farmhouse.
"So we were driving and then abruptly stopped," S. says. "And they swung the doors open and told us to run. And they pointed to a house that was very far in the distance and they said, 'Go there.'"
She was welcomed by men with AK-47s, their pick-up trucks armed with machine guns. They took S.'s passports and those of all the other recruits.
Before long, S. and the others were loaded into a caravan headed for Raqqa in Syria, the center of the self-proclaimed Islamic State caliphate, which she believed would be her Muslim utopia — until she was on the outskirts and peered out the window for a gruesome sight.
"We're seeing heads cut off," she said.
It was a common tactic that ISIS began to employ. Severing the heads of captured relief workers and journalists. ISIS began to release videos of their beheadings. It became a kind of signature scene: A kneeling victim in an orange jumpsuit, with a masked man wielding a large knife and taunting the West.
Out of a safe house but not safe in this world
S. and the others were taken to an overcrowded guest house by the Euphrates River. A married couple were in charge of the group of Arab and Western women. They immediately urged S. to take an ISIS husband. She refused all four of their choices. The couple was angry, threatening to beat her, denied her clothes and showers and kept her confined to her room.
It was then that S. plotted her escape with another Canadian woman who was pregnant. At this point, both of them now regretted leaving their home country. They seized their chance when the couple left the house.
"So we went out the back door," said S. "And then we got in a random taxi and when we were leaving they were coming back. The cars passed each other and my heart stopped because I thought they were going to see us. But we just put our heads down and we went."
They went to a guest house run by an older woman whose husband and son were killed in the fighting. She had al-Qaida ties and was revered as the wife and mother of martyrs. The house had Internet access so for the first time in weeks, S. was able to call her family back in Canada, to inform them that she was in Syria after months of separation.
"But they were already told that by Canadian authorities," she said.
S. says her family was briefed by Canadian intelligence authorities, and on the call, her family pleaded for her to return home, explaining they were told she would face no repercussions for her actions: "They were telling me nothing's going to happen. The Canadians told us nothing's going to happen. Just come back."
S. says her parents still seemed stunned by it all.
"They were honestly very shocked. They didn't really see that coming at all. They knew that I was practicing Islam, but they didn't understand this version of Islam that led to that."
And what S. didn't realize she was trapped – out of a safe house but not safe in this world of few options.
A young Moroccan man helped out around the guest house, aiding the pregnant Canadian woman.
"I saw that he was kind because he was, you know, my friend was pregnant, and he was doing nice things for her and he asked me to marry him."
She had a choice, either marry him or return to the guest house. S. chose marriage.
"I agreed to marry him so I could leave," she said.
The attacks on Raqqa accelerated with U.S. warplanes aiding their Kurdish allies on the ground. The Kurds were hoping to carve out their own enclave in the northeastern part of Syria, and were now surrounding the city. In the midst of this, S. was pregnant with a little girl.
"We had to flee," S. said. "I gave birth to her while the hospital was being bombed."
Over time, her once-kind husband seemed to change. As their daughter became a toddler he became abusive, at times beating her and angry the child was watching cartoons. He claimed she was raising their daughter in Western ways.
"So I tried to leave him a few times and get a divorce, but it was almost impossible to get a divorce in the Islamic State," S. said. "So I went to a judge one time. They said to me, 'You think you are a free woman, but you're not. You are a slave to your husband. So you have to obey him. You have to do things the way that he says. And God is going to award you for that."
There were many close calls
We shift our interview to a local Middle Eastern restaurant, bustling with a loud lunchtime crowd, eating heaping lamb shawarma sandwiches and French fries. It's hard to hear her soft voice over the din.
She remembers as the attacks on Raqqa increased, the three of them hopped on a motorcycle and into the mountains. She had some food with her. Flour, olives and dates she could cook into bread.
They were luckier than most.
"People were literally eating grass, cooking it."
She was worried about her daughter, who was just two.
"She was malnourished. I was doing everything I could to keep her alive. So you know, just rationing the food as much as I could," she said.
S. looks back and wonders how she and her daughter survived. As they continued to flee south from the bombings, they ended up in the city of Baghuz, the last stand for the Islamic State.
There were many close calls.
On one occasion, Syrian troops opened fire on ISIS vehicles as they sped past on their motorcycle on one occasion, narrowly missing them.
And another time, the family was riding in a car when it flipped over. Her daughter was in the back, strapped into her car seat.
"The car stopped upside down. I thought she died because she wasn't making a sound," S. said. "She slept through the whole thing."
Now that ISIS was trapped, the Kurds offered a deal. Women, children and the wounded could surrender and find safe haven. While her husband decided to stay and fight, S. surrendered and walked with dozens of others to Kurdish lines.
"They gave the option to stay and fight and die or to leave. I obviously chose to leave with my daughter," she said.
They were loaded onto trucks, heading toward the Al Hol prison camp, a teeming stretch of tents provided by the Red Cross that would eventually hold thousands.
The one-time ISIS bride then made another fateful decision; she decided to work with the Kurds. S. became an informant, dressed by night in military fatigues, her face covered in a balaklava. She knew that some of the young girls at the camp were being groomed to be the next generation of ISIS.
"I didn't want to see the children growing up in a prison camp," said S.
Neither did former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith, who was assisting doctors, diplomats and law enforcement in tracking down ISIS children and returning them to their families.
"S. began to contact me," said Galbraith. "Initially she wanted a deal whereby if she helped provide information, she would get out. I said 'No deal.' But she could provide the information anyhow, and she did."
S. says she was in the lion's den. "If these women would ever suspect me of cooperating with Kurds, Americans, whoever, they would try to kill me," she said. "And they have done it in Al Hol. People were killed. The tents burned down within seconds."
S. aided in the release of an American child, Aminah, who was the child of an ISIS father and a young woman named Ariel Bradley from Chattanooga, Tenn. Both parents died in the fighting.
Aminah was among those children wearing a burqa inside a tent. S. in her disguise, pointed out the tent and the Kurds rushed in.
For her own safety, S. would have to leave the camp.
"They told me they were taking me to the Americans, but they ended up taking me to a Kurdish prison where I was put in solitary confinement with my daughter for weeks.
Then came good news. S.'s daughter could return to Canada, with the help of Ambassador Galbraith, who arranged for them to leave Syria and head to the Kurdish city of Irbil in Iraq. At this point, S. had earned her way by helping authorities in Canada and the U.S. track down and convict ISIS fighters and sympathizers.
S.'s sister arrived to take her niece back to Canada. She wouldn't talk with NPR but instead provided a statement. We are not naming her to protect S.'s identity.
"It felt surreal. I didn't think I would ever see [S.] after she left Canada. It was also bittersweet meeting my niece for the first time. I felt relieved to be able to bring her home to safety."
S. was heartbroken to part with her daughter, who was then four years old.
"But I told her, 'You're going to go first and then mommy is going to come after,'" she said. "So, you know, that was very emotional for me because I didn't think it was going to be real or true."
It was true — but it took a year before S. made it back to her family. She's now 35 and helps clients with skin care. She doesn't share her story with any friends or co-workers.
"I want to be a scientist or an astronaut."
S. understands some might argue she should not have been allowed to return to Canada. But she insists she does not keep in touch with anyone from that part of her past. "I'm actually helping governments by cooperating and testifying in court and helping them rescue children and all those things," she said. "So you know if somebody hears my story and they still view me in a bad light, they're free to do that."
We ask how her daughter is holding up. Does she remember her past life?
"She says stuff in a very innocent childlike way, you know? Well, like did we live in tents at that time? She doesn't really know all the details, but she sure remembers her friends and she asks about it."
As we wrap up our conversation at her apartment building, her daughter — now a fourth grader — comes bounding in, wearing a pale blue baseball cap and socks stitched with pink hearts.
We chat a bit and then we ask about her school and what she likes to study. Science, she says.
"I want to be a scientist or an astronaut."
As we leave we see her walking down the sidewalk, a typical nine year old, smiling and chatting with one of her classmates.
Copyright 2026 NPR
