My village was half Yazidi and half Muslim.
I was in love with a boy from our village and we wanted to get married.
I don't know what happened to him after ISIS arrived.
At three in the morning we heard the first gunshots, then the sound of airplanes.
By morning we realized every Yazidi family was gone. Only Muslim families were left.
We ran to our neighbor and borrowed his truck to leave the village. We set off toward the mountains.
The road was full of corpses.
ISIS fighters caught up with us.
Many were Iraqis but also from Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
They separated us girls from the rest and took us to Baadj village in their jeeps.
My mum tried to stay with us, but they hit her with the butt of a gun and knocked her down.
We didn't eat for three days; we only cried.
They told us not to be afraid, that they wouldn't hurt us. They had a problem with the government they said, not with the people.
They then took us to Badush prison.
The prison was dark and packed with people. I found my uncle's wife but no traces of my mum.
I spent the night looking for her and finally found her in the morning.
I held her tight for those few hours before they took her away again. They separated the young girls from the rest and brought us to Mosul.
In Mosul we were kept in a two-story building, five thousand of us.
A sheik came in to convert us to Islam.
He had a stick in one hand and a book in the other.
We repeated the words he asked us to say and according to him we were now Muslims.
One morning at five they forced us to put on black abayas (chadors), chained our hands to each other, blindfolded us, and forced us onto a bus.
They drove for twelve hours. We were taken to a prison in Syria.
On the third day they took us to a mosque and horded us like sheep into the yard of the mosque.
The sheik called the men to choose between Yazidi and Christian girls.
The men did not want the Christians. They all wanted us Yazidi girls.
One man chose me and put me in his car.
I was in his house for three months.
At first he wanted to "purify" me from being Yazidi and forced me to give up my rings, my clothes and all those things that recalled my religious identity.
The television was always on religious channels, reciting the Quran all the time.
I did not eat their food, only bread and water.
One time, when I refused to shower, he hit me with his gun and told me that he would beat me to death if I did not wash myself.
But I didn't want to wash because if I did he'd sleep with me.
I did not wash for three months.
I once tried to escape, but soldiers caught me in the street and brought me back.
The man beat me hard and whipped me with an electric cable.
He told me that if I did not want to stay there and marry him he would sell me to somebody worse than himself.
He gave me three days to think about it.
The next day, when he was out, his wife came to me and offered to help me escape to a Kurdish family living in the neighborhood.
The Kurdish family was scared because even though they were Muslim, they were still Kurdish and in danger of being discovered.
My captor eventually found me there. He beat me and shaved my head.
I begged him to sell me to the Kurdish family.
I was sold for $1,500 and went to live in their house.
I cried when I saw the woman of the house because she reminded me of my mother. She cried too.
They said they bought me to save me, not to become their slave.
I stayed with them for five months. Then one day we were able to arrange a rendezvous with my father at the Turkish border.
The Kurdish man gave me his daughter's ID card and drove me to the border where I was finally rescued.
-Maysa
Identifying details of the girls' accounts have been omitted, their names changed, and identifying physical features and designs (such as tattoos) have been deleted in order to ensure their safety.
