Road from Raqqa

Fleeing ISIS, Syrians turn to traffickers to move them across a treacherous desert

Children climb over Fatema and Wadha as if they are just part of the wooden bench. Three young girls seem not to know which is their mother (Fatema) or whether the boys they jest with are brothers (they’re not.) “We met here and became family,” Fatema explains.

Family was a luxury she had forgotten before they arrived: The house you visit unannounced and the neighbors you ask for extra mint leaves. Here in Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, Fatema and Wadha, 35 and 40 years, wait in line together at the clinic and watch the the child they just met.

But war was lonely — like the highway from Raqqa they traveled 14 hours each of four days after the Islamic State of Iraq and greater Syria (ISIS) took their hometown. That road was hell, Fatema says, pointing to the sky the Syrian air force had criss-crossed during the trip.

Traffickers run the circuitous route. In the make-shift camps they passed each night, housing internally displaced, flies hovered in children’s eyes, clustering on their scabbed wounds. Her girls couldn’t live like this, Fatema kept repeating to herself. She spent every penny they had to keep moving. From Raqqa to Jordan, travelers pay about 15,000 Syrian pounds ($100) a piece, fellow refugees said. Everyone was broke; no one on that journey shared their bread.

“Those who had money could manage alright,” 35-year old Fatema recounts now.

When they reached Ruwaished, the Easternmost point where Jordan, Iraq, and Syria meet, criminals took what little they had left—even nail clippers vanished. Jordanian security forces ushered them across the border and onto a final, exhausting bus ride to Azraq.

“Here is ok. The things we don’t have, the camp promised to provide,” Fatema says.

Wadha nods and the women lean closer together, sisters for now.