Former ISIS Child Soldier Abandons Islam After a SHOCKING Encounter with Jesus

My name is Yousef. I am 21 years old and I want to tell you a story that still feels impossible to believe.

My own story. Sometimes late at night when I cannot sleep, I close my eyes and I am back there.

Not in the nightmare years that came later, but in the before time. The time when I was just a boy.

When my biggest worry was whether I would pass my mathematics exam or if my mother would let me play football with my friends after I finished my chores.

Simple things, normal things, the kind of things every child should worry about. I need to tell you about that world first.

The world before the darkness came. Because if you do not understand what was taken from me, you cannot understand what was given back.

But I also need to tell you something else before I begin. There was a moment, a moment that changed everything.

A moment when I was certain I would die. When I wanted to die, when death seemed like the only escape from what I had become.

And in that moment, in a place darker than any darkness I had ever known, I saw light.

Not the light of the sun or a lamp or a fire. Something else, someone else.

A man dressed in white, brighter than anything I had ever seen. Yet the light didn’t hurt my eyes.

And he spoke to me. He knew my name. My real name, not the name they forced on me.

And he said words that broke something inside me. Broke it open like cracking open a prison I did not even know I was trapped in.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start where I should start. Let me start with home.

Hello viewers from around the world. Before Yousef continues his story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony. >> I was born in a small village outside of Raqqa in Syria.

If you have heard of Raqqa, it is probably because of the war, because of what it became.

And but before all of that, it was just home. My home. Our village was small, maybe 200 families, perhaps less.

Everyone knew everyone. The kind of place where your neighbor would scold you if you misbehaved and and your parents would hear about it before you even got home.

The kind of place where weddings were celebrated by the whole village, where funerals were mourned by everyone, where joy and sorrow were shared.

Because we were not just neighbors, we were family. Our house was simple. Concrete walls painted white with blue shutters on the windows that my father repainted every few years.

Two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a living room where we gathered every evening. There was a courtyard in the back where my mother grew tomatoes and mint and herbs that made our food taste like love itself.

I can still smell those tomatoes ripening in the summer sun. I can still see my mother’s hands stained green from the mint as she prepared tea.

My father owned a small shop in the village center. Nothing fancy. We sold basic things, rice, oil, sugar, tea, soap, batteries, notebooks for school.

Things people needed every day. My father knew every customer by name. He would ask about their families, their health, their lives.

Sometimes people could not pay, especially near the end of the month when money was tight.

My father would let them take what they needed anyway. He would write it in his little notebook and sometimes they would pay him back and sometimes they would not.

My mother would worry about this, but my father would just smile and say that God sees everything and that kindness is never wasted.

I love my father. He was not a tall man and he was not loud or commanding like some fathers, but he was steady, solid, like a tree that has roots deep in the ground.

He taught me to be honest, to work hard, to treat people with respect, no matter who they were.

He taught me to pray, not just with words, but with my life. He was a good Muslim, a good man, the kind of man who made you believe that the world was basically good, that people were basically kind.

My mother was the heart of our home. She sang while she cooked. Not loudly, just soft melodies that floated through the house like the smell of bread baking.

She made the best keba in the village. Everyone said so. She would spend hours preparing it, her hands moving with practiced ease, shaping the meat and bulgore into perfect ovals.

She would make extra, always extra because she knew my father would invite someone to to dinner who needed a meal.

And then there was Nor, my little sister. She was 8 years old, four years younger than me.

Nor means light and she was light, bright and laughing and always getting into my things.

She would follow me everywhere, asking a million questions, wanting to do whatever I was doing.

Sometimes it annoyed me the way little sisters annoy big brothers, but mostly I loved her.

I loved how she would run to the door when I came home from school.

How she would beg me to help her with her homework even though she was perfectly capable of doing it herself.

How she would fall asleep during family gatherings and I would carry her to bed.

I remember one evening maybe 6 months before everything changed. We were all sitting in the courtyard after dinner.

It was summer and the heat of the day was finally fading. My father was drinking tea.

My mother was mending one of Nor’s’s dresses. And Nor was playing with her doll in the corner.

I was studying or pretending to study, mostly just enjoying the peace of the moment.

My father looked at me and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I told him I wanted to be a teacher. Maybe an engineer. I was not sure yet, but definitely something where I could help people, where I could make a difference.

My father smiled, that quiet, proud smile that made me feel like I could do anything.

He told me I would make a good teacher, that I was patient and kind like my mother.

My mother laughed and said I would make a terrible teacher because I could never sit still long enough.

We all laughed then there in the courtyard with the stars coming out above us with the smell of jasmine from the neighbors wall with the sound of distant conversation from other families in their own courtyards.

That was life. That was normal. That was everything. I went to school in the village.

It was not a fancy school, just a simple building with concrete floors and wooden desks that were carved with the initials of students who had come before me.

But I loved it. I loved learning. I loved the feeling of understanding something new, of my mind expanding with knowledge.

I was good at school, especially mathematics and science. My teacher, Mr. Khalil, would sometimes keep me after class to give me extra problems to solve, harder ones, just to challenge me.

My best friend was a boy named Tariq. We had known each other since we were small children.

We played football together in the dusty field near the school, imagining we were famous players, that the whole world was watching us.

We were not particularly good, but we loved it anyway. The joy of running, of kicking the ball, of laughing until our sides hurt.

Simple joy, pure joy. On Fridays after prayers, groups of men and boys would gather to talk, to drink tea, to share news.

My father would take me with him. Sometimes I would sit quietly and listen to the adults talk about politics, about the drought that had hurt the farmers, about someone’s son who had moved to the mass Damascus for work, about the price of wheat, boring adult things mostly.

But I felt important sitting there with the men, being treated like I was growing up.

The call to prayer five times a day was the rhythm of our lives. It told us when to wake, when to pause, when the day was ending.

I would go to the mosque with my father, washing before prayer, standing shoulderto-shoulder with our neighbors.

I believed in God. I believed that he was merciful and compassionate like the Quran said.

I believe that if I was good, if I was honest, if I prayed and followed the rules, that God would take care of me and my family.

I believed I was safe. The first signs of trouble came slowly, like a storm building on the horizon that you can see but cannot quite believe will actually reach you.

It started with news from other places, from Aleppo, from homes, from Damascus. The uprising, the government crackdown.

Words like revolution and civil war that seemed too big, too far away to touch our small village.

We would hear about it on the radio or from travelers passing through. And my father and the other men would talk about it with worried voices.

But life continued. We still went to school. We still played football. We still had dinner together in the courtyard.

Then the refugees started coming. Families from other villages, other cities fleeing the fighting. They would pass through our village exhausted and dusty with everything they owned, packed into cars or carried on their backs.

My mother would always invite them in, give them water and food, let them rest in our courtyard.

I remember their faces, the fear in their eyes, the children who did not play or laugh, who just stared at nothing.

My father would ask them what they had seen. They would talk about bombs, about soldiers, about neighbors killed, about homes destroyed.

And then they would say something else. They would talk about new fighters different from the government soldiers, fighters with black flags, fighters who were brutal and strict and claimed they were building an Islamic state.

At first these these stories seemed almost mythical like something from another world. But then we started hearing the name more and more.

ISIS Dish the Islamic State. And we started hearing what they did. How they took over cities.

How they killed anyone who opposed them. How they destroyed shrines and churches and anything they considered unislamic.

How they enforced rules that seemed to come from centuries ago, not from the modern world.

And we heard that they were moving west toward us. My father tried to keep us calm.

He said we would be fine, that our village was too small to matter, that surely the government or the international forces would stop them before they reached us.

My mother was less certain. I would see her worry in the way she held Nore a little tighter, in the way she looked toward the road as if expecting something terrible to appear.

Some families began to leave. Not many at first, just a few who had relatives in Turkey or Jordan or Lebanon who had somewhere to go.

My father refused. This was our home, he said. Our village, our life. Where would we go?

How would we live? We had no money for such a journey. No connections in other countries.

And surely surely it would not come to that. Surely we would be safe. I want to believe him.

I needed to believe him. The explosions started in the summer of 2015. Distant at first, barely audible, like thunder from a storm far away, but they got closer, louder.

We could see smoke rising on the horizon. Sometimes fighter jets would scream overhead so loud they made the windows rattle.

At night we could see flashes of light in the distance. School became irregular. Some days we would go, some days the teachers would not come.

Some days we would be sent home early when the explosions got too close. Mr.

Khalil stopped giving me extra problems. He looked tired all the time, distracted. One day he did not come back at all.

We heard later that he had fled with his family to Turkey. Playing football became something we did less and less.

The joy had gone out of it. We were all too aware of what was happening around us.

Tariq’s older brother had been conscripted into the army. We did not know if he was alive or dead.

Nobody wanted to talk about it. My father’s shop had less and less to sell.

Supply trucks stopped coming. The prices of basic things climbed higher and higher. People stopped coming to buy because they had no money.

My father stopped writing in his notebook because there was nothing to sell anyway. I could see the stress on his face, the way he had aged in just a few months.

At home, we tried to maintain some normaly. My mother still cooked though the meals got simpler.

We still gathered in the evenings though the conversations were quieter, more forced, nor still played with her doll.

But even she seemed to understand that something was very wrong. She had nightmares. I would hear her crying at night and my mother would go to comfort her.

I remember one night lying in bed, listening to my parents talking in the next room.

They thought I was asleep. My mother was crying softly, asking my father if we should try to leave, if we should go to Turkey or Jordan, if we should at least send me and N ahead to safety.

My father’s voice was heavy with exhaustion and fear and stubborn hope. He said we had no money for such a journey.

He said we had nowhere to go. He said we had to have faith that God would protect us.

I want to believe him. But lying there in the dark, hearing my mother cry, feeling the house shake slightly from a distant explosion, I was afraid.

I was 12 years old and I was afraid. They came on a Tuesday morning in February 2016.

I remember it was Tuesday because we had been hoping school might start again that day.

It did not matter in the end. I woke to the sound of engines, heavy engines, like trucks, lots of them, and voices shouting.

I ran to the window and looked out. My heart stopped. A convoy of pickup trucks was entering our village.

Maybe 20 vehicles, maybe more. Men stood in the backs of the trucks holding weapons.

Black flags flying from the vehicles. The flags with white Arabic writing. The flags I had seen in the news reports and the stories from refugees, they were here.

They had finally come. People were already running out of their houses. Some trying to flee, others just standing in shock.

The trucks spread through the village with military precision, blocking the roads surrounding the central square.

The men jumped down from the trucks, weapons ready. They were dressed in black, faces covered with scarves, only their eyes visible.

They looked like death itself. My father grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me away from the window.

His face was pale, but determined. He told me to stay inside, to stay with N and my mother.

He was going to go see what was happening, to try to talk to them, to see what they wanted.

My mother begged him not to go. He kissed her forehead and told her it would be okay, that he would be back soon.

I watched from the window as my father walked toward the square with other men from the village.

The fear in their bodies was visible even from a distance. They moved slowly, hands visible, trying to show they were not a threat.

The ISIS fighters herded all the men and boys over the age of 10 into the central square.

I could see my father standing with our neighbors, with Tariq’s father, with the shopkeepers and farmers and teachers.

I could see the fear on all their faces. A man stood on the back of one of the trucks and began to speak through a megaphone.

His voice echoed through the village. He spoke in Arabic, formal and commanding. He said they were from the Islamic State.

He said they were here to establish true Islamic law. He said anyone who cooperated would be safe.

He said anyone who resisted would be killed. Then he listed the new rules. All men must attend prayers five times a day at the mosque.

All women must be fully covered. No music, no television, no smoking. Schools would be closed and reopened under their curriculum.

All government workers must report to them. All weapons must be surrendered. Anyone with connections to the Syrian government or the Kurdish forces or the Americans would be considered a spy and executed.

The word ex executed hung in the air like smoke from a fire. The man spoke for maybe 20 minutes.

The men in the square stood silent listening. What choice did they have? When he finished, he commanded all the men to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State and to their califf.

One by one, the men raised their hands and repeated the words, “What choice did they have?”

My father came home two hours later. His hand were shaking. He looked like he had aged 10 years.

He gathered us together, me nor my mother, and held us. He did not say anything for a long time.

He just held us. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow. He said things were going to be different now.

He said we had to be very careful. He said we had to follow the rules exactly no matter what.

He said the most important thing was that we stayed together, that we stayed alive.

That was the first day, the day our world ended. In the days and weeks that followed, our village transformed into something I did not recognize.

The ASIS fighters did not leave. They took over buildings for their headquarters. They posted guards on every street.

They enforced their rules with immediate and brutal violence. A man was caught smoking. They beat him in the street in front of everyone.

A woman’s face covering slipped while she was carrying groceries. They whipped her. A teenage boy was found with a cell phone with music on it.

They smashed the phone and broke his hand with a rod. The message was clear.

Obey or suffer. The mosque became mandatory for all men and boys my age and older.

Five times a day, every day, they would check to make sure you attended. If you missed prayers, they would come to your house.

My father and I went every time walking through streets that felt like they belonged to someone else.

Now, surrounded by armed men who watched us with suspicion, my mother and no rarely left the house anymore.

When they did, they wore full black coverings, only their eyes visible. I hated seeing my mother like that.

She had always worn a headscarf, always dressed modestly, but this was different. This was eraser.

This was making her invisible. Nor stopped playing. The light that was her name seemed to have gone out.

She would sit in the corner holding her doll, not speaking. Sometimes I would try to make her laugh, but she would just look at me with eyes that seemed too old for an 8-year-old girl.

My father’s shop never reopened. There was nothing to sell anyway. We survived on what little we had stored, supplemented by rations.

The ISIS fighters would distribute barely enough to keep people alive. My father aged before my eyes.

The strong, steady man I had known became thin and bent like a tree slowly dying.

At night, we would hear screams, sometimes gunshots. We learned not to ask what had happened.

We learned not to look. We learned to make ourselves small and quiet and invisible.

I stopped dreaming about being a teacher. I stopped thinking about the future at all.

The future had been cancelled. There was only now. The endless suffocating now of occupation and fear.

They started gathering the boys about 4 months after they arrived. Boys my age, 11, 12, 13 years old.

They would take us to special sessions at the mosque after regular prayers. They called it education.

They called it training. They said they were teaching us to be proper Muslim youth to be soldiers for the caliphate.

At first it was just religious instruction, long lectures about their interpretation of Islam, their rules, their vision of what the world should be.

They twisted everything he had been taught. They took verses from the Quran and used them to justify violence and hatred and cruelty.

They showed us videos, horrific videos of battles, of executions, of things no child should ever see.

They told us the things were good, holy, necessary. Some of the boys seemed to believe it.

Or maybe they just pretended to believe it because it was safer to agree. I did not believe it, but I learned quickly to nod my head, to repeat the right phrases, to look enthusiastic when they asked questions.

I looked around at the other boys, sometimes trying to see if they felt what I felt, the wrongness of it all, the horror of what we were being taught.

But everyone’s face was carefully blank. We had all learned to hide. Then came the physical training, running, marching, learning to hold weapons.

They started slowly, almost casually, but I could see where this was going. I could see what they were preparing us for.

I remember walking home from one of these sessions with my father. He had come to pick me up as he always did.

We walked in silence for a long time. Then quietly, almost in a whisper, he told me to stay strong.

He told me to remember who I really was. He told me that this would not last forever, that God would not abandon us, that somehow we would survive.

I wanted to believe him, but his voice shook when he said it. The night they came for me specifically, it was raining, a cold rain, unusual for that time of year.

I remember the sound of it on the roof, steady and relentless. There was a knock on the door.

Not a normal knock, a pounding, demanding. My father stood up, his face going pale.

We all knew what that kind of knock meant. He opened the doors. Three ISIS fighters stood there, water running off their black clothes.

The leader looked at the paper in his hand, then at my father, then at me.

He said, “My name, my real name.” He said, “I had been selected. Selected for special training, selected to join the Cubs of the Caliphate, the youth army.”

He said it was an honor. He said, “I should be proud.” My father stepped in front of me.

I will never forget that moment. This man who had become thin and bent and old.

This man who had lost everything somehow found the strength to stand between me and them.

He said, “I was too young.” He said, “I was just a boy.” He said, “Please, please, not his son.”

The leader did not even respond to my father. He simply nodded to one of the other fighters.

The man stepped forward and hit my father across the face with the butt of his rifle.

My father fell. Blood poured from his nose and mouth. My mother screamed. Nor screamed.

I moved toward my father, but the leader grabbed me by the arm, his grip like iron.

He told my father that he should be grateful that his son had been chosen for this honor.

He said that if my father interfered again, the whole family would be punished. He dragged me toward the door.

I looked back at my family. My father on the floor, blood on his face, trying to get up.

My mother holding no. Both of them crying. My mother’s eyes met mine. In that look was everything.

All her love, all her fear, all her desperate hope that somehow I would survive, nor broke free from my mother and ran to me.

She grabbed my hand, crying, begging them not to take me. One of the fighters pushed her aside, not violently, but firmly.

She fell to the floor. That image is burned into my mind forever. My 8-year-old sister on the floor reaching for me, crying as they dragged me out into the rain.

That was the last time I saw my family. That was the last time I was Yusf, the boy who wanted to be a teacher, who played football with his friends, who loved his mother’s kibbe and his father’s quiet strength and his sister’s bright laugh.

The rain poured down as they pushed me into the back of a truck. There were other boys there, maybe 10 of them, all around my age, all with the same look on their faces, terror and disbelief and the beckoning understanding that our childhoods had just uh ended.

The truck started moving. I looked back at my house growing smaller in the distance.

I could see the light from our doorway. Could imagine my mother trying to comfort nor my father getting up from the floor.

Then we turned a corner and they were gone. I did not know it then, but I would not see them again for more than 3 years.

By the time I did, but no, I am getting ahead of myself again. The truck drove through the rain and the darkness.

None of us boys spoke. What was there to say? We were 12 years old and our lives as we had known them were over.

Where they were taking us, what they would do to us, what we would become, we did not know, but we knew somehow that we were being taken into darkness.

A darkness deeper than the night around us. A darkness that would swallow us whole.

I pressed my face against the side of the truck and cried silently, the rain mixing with my tears until there were no more tears left to cry.

The training camp was 3 hours away from my village, though it felt like we had traveled to another world entirely.

We arrived before dawn. The truck stopped in front of a compound surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire.

Armed guards stood at the gate, their faces covered, weapons ready. The gates opened and we drove inside.

What I saw in the growing light made my stomach twist. This was not just a camp.

It was a prison designed for children. There were several long low buildings inside the compound.

A courtyard of packed dirt. No trees, no grass, nothing soft or living. Just hard earth and harder walls and the eyes of fighters watching us from every corner.

They pulled us out of the truck roughly. We stumbled exhausted from the journey and the fear.

They lined us up in the courtyard. There were maybe 30 other boys already there standing in silent rows.

They looked like we must have looked, scared, young, trying to understand what was happening to them.

A man appeared. He was older than most of the fighters I had seen, with a thick black beard and eyes that showed no warmth, no mercy.

He walked along our line, looking at each of us, evaluating us like we were animals he was considering purchasing.

When he reached me, he stopped. He stared at me for a long moment. Then he moved on.

He began to speak. His voice was cold, mechanical, as if he had given this speech a hundred times before.

He told us we were no longer the weak, spoiled children our families had raised.

He said, “We had been chosen for a great honor to become soldiers for the Islamic State, to fight for the caliphate, to establish God’s rule on earth.”

He said our training would be hard. Many of us would not succeed. But those who did would become something greater than we could imagine.

Then he said something that made my blood run cold. He said, “We no longer had our old names.

Those names belonged to our old lives, our old identities. Here we would be given new names, war names, names that reflected our purpose.”

He said, “Our families were behind us now. The Islamic State was our family. Our brothers were the fighters beside us.

Our father was the califf.” I wanted to scream that he was wrong, that I had a father, a real father who loved me, that I had a mother and a sister who needed me, that I was Yousef, son of Mustafa from a small village near Raqqa, and that no one could take that from me.

But I said nothing. I had already learned that silence was survival. They separated us into groups based on our age and size.

I was put with about 15 other boys, all around 12 or 13 years old.

They took us to one of the long buildings and showed us where we would sleep.

Thin mattresses on a concrete floor packed closed together, blankets that were rough and smelled of mold and sweat.

There was one bathroom for all of us, filthy and barely functional. They gave us uniforms, black clothes too big for most of us, black scarves for our heads.

We looked like miniature versions of the fighters. I hated putting those clothes on. It felt like erasing myself, like disappearing into their darkness.

They assigned us each a handler, an older fighter who would be responsible for our training and discipline.

Mine was a man they called a Abu Khaled. He was maybe 25 years old.

Though he looked older, his face was scarred, his eyes flat and dead. He spoke little, but when he did, his voice carried absolute authority.

I learned quickly that you obeyed Abu Khaled immediately and completely or you suffered. The routine began that first day and never varied.

We walk before dawn for prayers, then physical training, running, push-ups, climbing ropes, crawling through mud, carrying heavy stones, exercises that left us gasping and shaking.

Then religious instruction, hours of listening to their twisted version of Islam, memorizing their justifications for violence, watching their propaganda videos, then weapons training, learning to disassemble and reassemble AK-47s, learning to shoot, learning to throw grenades, then more physical training, then prayers, then a meager dinner, then sleep.

Every day was the same. The same routine, the same brutality, the same grinding attempt to break us down and rebuild us as something else.

The physical training was hard, but I was young and strong enough to endure it.

The religious instruction was horrifying, but I learned to nod and repeat what they wanted to hear while keeping my real thoughts hidden deep inside.

The weapons training terrified me. These tools of death in the hands of children. But I learned because the alternative was punishment.

The punishments were what truly broke some of the boys. If you failed at a task, if you showed weakness, if you hesitated, if you cried, they would beat you.

Sometimes with fists, sometimes with rods. Always just short of causing permanent damage because they needed us functional.

But the pain was real and the humiliation was worse. They would make the other boys watch, make them see what happened to those who failed to ensure we all understood the consequences of weakness.

I saw boys beaten unconscious. I saw uh boys with broken bones trying to continue training.

I saw boys who wet themselves from fear and were then beaten for that too.

I learned to push pain down, to ignore exhaustion, to become hard on the outside, even as something screamed inside me.

There was one boy in my group named Ahmad. He was from a town near Dez Zor, taken from his home just like me.

He was small for his age, thin with enormous dark eyes that still held something soft in them despite everything.

We never really talked, not in any meaningful way. Talking, forming connections, showing emotion. These things were dangerous.

They wanted us isolated, alone, dependent only on the structure they provided. But sometimes at night, lying on our thin mattresses in the dark, Ahmad would be crying quietly, trying to hide it.

But I could hear him, and I would feel my own tears burning behind my eyes, tears I could not let fall.

One night, maybe two months into our training, I whispered to him in the darkness.

Just a few words, so quiet no one else could hear. I told him we would survive this.

I told him to stay strong. I told him we would get home somehow. He did not respond, but I heard his crying stop.

And I felt for just a moment less alone. Ahmad became the closest thing I had to a friend in that place.

We did not talk much. It was too risky. But we would look out for each other in small ways.

If one of us was struggling during training, the other would try to help. If one of us was being singled out for punishment, the other would try to draw attention away.

Small acts of resistance against the isolation they tried to impose on us. I do not think I would have survived those early months without Ahmad.

Just knowing that one other person in that place was still human, still capable of kindness, still resisting in their heart, it gave me something to hold on to.

The indoctrination was constant and overwhelming. They were not just training our bodies. They were trying to reprogram our minds, our souls, our very understanding of right and wrong.

Every day for hours, they would lecture us. They told us that the world was divided into two camps, the believers and the infidels.

They said that anyone who did not follow their exact interpretation of Islam was an infidel deserving of death.

They said that mercy was weakness. They said that that doubt was sin. They said that our purpose was to fight and to kill until the entire world submitted to their caliphate.

They showed us videos constantly. Videos of their fighters in battle killing soldiers and civilians alike.

Videos of executions, beheadings, shootings, burnings, drownings. They made us watch as human beings were murdered in the most horrific ways imaginable.

The first time I saw these videos, I vomited. They beat me for that. By the 10th time, I had learned to watch with a blank face to show no reaction, even as something inside me screamed in horror.

They told us these things were good, holy, that the people being killed deserved it, that we should aspire to be the ones doing the killing.

They praised the fighters who were most brutal, held them up as examples. They told us that heaven awaited those who died in jihad, that martyrdom was the highest calling.

They twisted everything I had learned about Islam growing up. My father had taught me that Islam meant base, that God was merciful and compassionate, that the purpose of faith was to make you a better person, kinder, and more just.

But here they took the same Quran and used it to justify cruelty, murder, oppression.

They took verses out of context, ignored everything about mercy and compassion and created a religion of hate.

I was 12 years old. I did not have the theological knowledge to argue against them.

I did not have the strength to resist openly. So I did what I had to do.

I nodded. I memorized. I repeated their words back to them. But inside in a place I kept hidden even from myself sometimes.

I held on to what my father had taught me. I held on to to the memory of my mother’s kindness, my sister’s innocence.

I held on to the knowledge that what they were teaching was wrong, evil, a perversion of everything good.

But I could feel that hidden place getting smaller. I could feel the constant propaganda wearing me down like water slowly eroding stone.

I was terrified that one day I would wake up and discover that I believe them that I had become what they wanted me to be.

After 3 months of basic training they began to separate us. The boys who had shown promise, who had proven themselves strong and obedient, were moved to advanced training.

The boys who had failed, who were too weak or too defiant, I do not know what happened to them.

They disappeared one day and we never saw them again. We learned not to ask.

I was selected for advanced training. So was Ahmad. I was not sure if this was good or bad.

Advanced training meant we had survived, but it also meant we were being prepared for something worse.

The advanced training was everything the basic training had been but more intense. The physical conditioning became brutal.

Long marches carrying heavy packs, training in extreme heat with minimal water, combat exercises that left us bruised and bloodied.

The weapons training became more sophisticated, learning tactics, learning to work as a unit, learning to kill efficiently, and they began to test us in new ways.

They would put us in situations designed to break down our remaining humanity. They would make us punish each other for infractions.

They would stage scenarios where we had to choose between self-preservation and helping others. They were systematically destroying our capacity for empathy, for compassion, for any feeling except loyalty to the group and hatred for everyone else.

I saw boys change during this time. Boys who had arrived scared and crying gradually became hard, cold, empty.

The light went out of their eyes. They began to believe the propaganda or at least to act like they believed it.

They became eager to prove themselves, to show they were worthy of being fighters. They began to look forward to the day they would see real combat, real killing.

I hated them for giving in. But I also understood it was easier to believe to become what they wanted you to be.

The alternative was to live in constant internal conflict to carry the weight of knowing you were being forced to do evil.

It was easier to just let go, to surrender your conscience, to become a monster.

So you, if you or someone you know is having a difficult time, free support is available.

Find resources did not have to feel the horror of what you were becoming. I refused to let go.

I do not know where I found the strength. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was the memory of my father’s face when they hit him.

My mother’s eyes as they dragged me away, nor crying on the floor. Maybe it was Ahmad’s quiet presence reminding me that humanity still existed somewhere.

But the cost of holding on was enormous. Every day was a battle inside my own head.

Every time I followed an order I knew was wrong. Every time I repeated their words, every time I held a weapon and imagined using it, I felt myself dying inside, piece by piece.

Then came the day they told us we would witness our first execution. They announced it at morning assembly.

They said it was time for us to see true justice, to witness what happened to those who oppose the Islamic State.

They said it was part of our training that we needed to understand the reality of war, the necessity of punishment.

They marched us to the town square of a nearby city under ISIS control. There were hundreds of people gathered there, forced to attend.

The atmosphere was thick with fear and tension. Armed fighters lined the square, watching the crowd, ready to punish anyone who showed dissent.

In the center of the square was a man kneeling, hands bound behind his back.

He was maybe 40 years old, thin, wearing clothes that were torn and bloody, his face was bruised, his eyes swollen.

They said he was a spy, that he had been working with the Kurdish forces, that he deserved death under their law.

I do not know if he was actually a spy. It did not matter. They had decided he was guilty and their justice was swift and brutal.

They made us stand in the front row, made us watch, told us that this was what strength looked like, what righteousness looked like.

The executioner appeared. He spoke to the crowd, listing the man’s supposed crimes, quoting Quranic verses to justify what was about to happen.

The man kneeling in the center did not speak. I could see him trembling. I could see tears on his face.

I wondered if he had a family somewhere. If they knew what was happening to him, if they would ever know.

I do not want to describe what happened next. But I have to because if you are going to understand the darkness I lived in, you need to know what they made us see.

What they made us become numb to. They shot him. Not quickly, not mercifully. They shot him multiple times, deliberately, choosing non-fatal wounds at first, making him suffer.

The man screamed. The crowd stood silent, too terrified to react. The fighters watched us, boys, checking our reactions, making sure we were learning the lesson they wanted us to learn.

It seemed to last forever. The screaming, the blood, the smell of gunpowder and death.

And then finally, mercifully, it was over. The man was dead. His body lying in the dust of the square.

They made us walk past the body as we left. Made us look at it.

Made us understand that this was real, that death was real, that they had the power to do this to anyone at any time.

I walked past in a days. My mind refusing to process what I had just seen.

I looked at the other boys. Some were crying silently. Some looked sick. Some looked excited, energized by the violence.

And some looked blank, empty, like they had shut down completely inside. Ahmad was shaking.

I could see he was about to vomit or collapse. I grabbed his arm, steadied him, helped him keep walking.

Abu Khaled saw this and later beat me for showing weakness, for helping another boy instead of standing strong.

But I did not care. Ahmad was my friend, my only connection to humanity in that place.

That night, many of the boys had nightmares. I could hear them crying out in their sleep, reliving what they had seen.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling. The image of that man’s face burned into my mind.

The fear in his eyes, the suffering, the absolute helplessness. I thought about my father, about what would happen if they decided he was a threat, if they came for him the way they had come for that man.

I thought about my mother and nor about whether they were safe. I thought about whether I would ever see them again or if I would die here in this place, having become something my father would not recognize.

I wanted to pray, but I did not know what to pray for anymore. I did not know if God was listening.

I did not know if God existed at all, if he could exist in a world where this kind of evil was possible.

I was 12 years old and I had just watched a man be murdered and I knew, God help me.

I knew that this was only the beginning, that they would make me see worse, that eventually they would make me do worse and I did not know if I was strong enough to survive that without losing my soul completely.

After the execution, the training intensified. They said we had passed an important threshold that we were ready for the next phase.

The next phase turned out to be direct participation in their operations. They started using us for support roles at first guarding checkpoints, carrying supplies, standing watch during their raids.

They put us in uniform, the full black uniform of ISIS fighters, gave us weapons, and sent us out into the world as representatives of their caliphate.

I was 13 years old, carrying an AK-47, standing at a checkpoint, searching cars, questioning people who were as terrified of me as I had once been, terrified of the fighters who came to my village.

The irony was not lost on me. I had become what I feared. I had become the nightmare.

The people who passed through my checkpoint would look at me with such fear, such hatred.

They would see the uniform, the weapon, the black scarf covering my face. They would not see the terrified boy underneath, the child who was as much a victim as they were.

To them, I was ISIS. I was the enemy. I was evil. And maybe they were right.

I tried to be as kind as I could without getting caught. I would let people through without extensive searching.

When I could, I would not harass them unnecessarily. I would speak calmly instead of shouting.

Small acts of mercy that felt enormous in that context. But I was still there.

I was still part of the machine of oppression. I was still holding a weapon, still enforcing their rules, still complicit in their evil.

No amount of small kindnesses could change that fundamental fact. Some of the boys embraced their new roles.

They enjoyed the power, the fear they inspired, the authority they had over adults. They became cruel, testing the limits of what they could do, finding pleasure in the suffering they caused.

I watched boys I had trained with transform into genuine believers, into true fighters for ISIS, and I mourned what they had become, even as I feared I might become the same.

Ahmad and I were usually assigned to different posts, different duties, but sometimes we would see each other during prayers or during the brief rest periods.

We never spoke openly, too dangerous, but we would exchange locks that said everything. We were both still holding on, still resisting inside, still human despite everything they had done to us.

That look, that brief moment of connection was sometimes the only thing that kept me going.

The months blurred together. Summer turned to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring again.

I stopped counting days. Time lost meaning in the endless routine of violence and fear and the slow erosion of everything I had once been.

I witnessed more executions. I stood guard while they carried out punishments, whipping, amputations, stonings.

I saw things that no human being should ever see, let alone a child, and gradually, horribly, I became numb to it.

The first execution had made me sick. By the 10th, I could watch with a blank face.

By the 20th, I barely felt anything at all. This numbness terrified me more than anything else.

I was losing my ability to feel horror, to feel compassion, to feel anything except the dull weight of exhaustion and despair.

I was becoming exactly what they wanted me to be, a weapon, a tool, something less than human.

I tried to hold on to memories of home. My mother’s face, my father’s voice, Nor’s laugh.

But the memories were fading, becoming less sharp, less real. Sometimes I would try to remember my mother’s face and find that I could not quite see it anymore.

The panic I felt in those moments was overwhelming. If I forgot them, if I lost even the memory of who I had been, then they had one.

I would be truly lost. At night, when I could, I would whisper my real name to myself, Ysef, son of Mustafa, from a village near Raqqa, I would repeat it like a mantra, like a spell to keep myself from disappearing completely.

Yousef, Yousef, Yousef. But even my name began to sound strange to me, like something from another lifetime, another person who no longer existed.

In late 2017, we started to hear rumors, whispers among the fighters that things were not going well, that ISIS was losing ground in Iraq, that Mosul had fallen, that the coalition forces were advancing.

The commanders denied it. Of course, they said these were lies, enemy propaganda, that the caliphate was strong and would endure forever.

But we could see the truth. There were fewer supplies. The training camps received less support.

The fighters seemed more stressed, more desperate. They started preparing us for actual combat, not just support roles.

They told us we might be called to defend the caliphate, to fight on the front lines, to become martyrs if necessary.

I was 14 years old and they were preparing to send me to war. Some of the boys were excited.

They saw it as their chance to prove themselves to become true fighters to achieve martyrdom and paradise.

I saw it as a death sentence. Not just physical death, but the final death of whatever was left of my humanity.

If they sent me into combat, if they made me kill with my own hands.

I did not know if I could come back from that. Ahmad and I talked about escaping.

Not openly, just hints and looks and a few whispered words in the darkness. But how?

Where would we go? The entire region was a war zone. We had no money, no contacts, no way to survive on our own.

And if we were caught trying to escape, they were they would execute us publicly as an example to the others.

But staying meant becoming murderers. Staying meant dying inside completely. We were trapped between impossible choices.

Then in 2018, the situation began to deteriorate rapidly. Raqqa fell to Kurdish and American forces.

ISIS fighters began retreating eastward toward the remaining territories they held. The training camps were evacuated.

We were moved multiple times, always eastward, always to smaller and more desperate locations. The structure began to break down.

The rigid routine of training and indoctrination gave way to chaos. Sometimes we went days without proper food.

Sometimes we had no clean water. The commanders were too busy dealing with the military situation to maintain control over OS boys.

And in that chaos, I began to see possibility in the breakdown of order, in the confusion and fear and desperation of our capttors.

There might be a chance, a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. I began to watch, to wait, to plan.

I was going to escape in or I was going to die trying because I knew now with absolute certainty that staying meant a death worse than any bullet or bomb.

It meant the death of my soul. And I was not ready to die. Not yet.

Not like that. Somewhere deep inside me, buried under all the trauma and numbness and horror, there was still a small voice saying that I want to live, that I wanted to go home, that I wanted to be Yousef again.

I held on to that voice. It was all I had left. By the fall of 2018, it was clear to everyone that ISIS was dying.

The caliphate that had seemed invincible, that had conquered vast territories and inspired fear across the world.

What was collapsing, we moved constantly during those months from training camps to safe houses to bunkers to temporary positions in shrinking pockets of ISIS controlled territory.

Each move took us further east toward the Syria Iraq border toward the last remaining strongholds.

And each move was more chaotic than the last. The discipline that had defined our training began to crumble.

There were not enough commanders to maintain control. Some fighters deserted, trying to disappear before the end came.

Others became more fanatical, more desperate, more brutal. They talked constantly about martyrdom, about how dying for the caliphate would guarantee them paradise.

They looked at us boys with new calculations in their eyes. We were no longer future fighters to be trained, but potential weapons to be expended.

The supplies dried up almost completely. We were often hungry, sometimes going days with barely any food.

The water was dirty and many of us got sick. There was little medicine. I saw boys dying from infected wounds, from dentery, from diseases that should have been easily treatable.

Their bodies were left behind. As we moved to the next location, barely even buried.

The air strikes intensified. Coalition aircraft flew overhead constantly and we never knew when the bombs would fall.

I learned to recognize the sound of different aircraft. Learned which ones carried the bombs that could turn buildings to dust.

The sound of them became the background noise of existence, like a constant reminder that death could come from the sky at any moment.

But in all this chaos and horror I saw my chance growing. The tighter their control had been, the harder escape would have been.

Now in the confusion and desperation of their collapse, maybe just maybe there was a way out.

We were moved to Bhus in January 2019. It was one of the last places ISIS still controlled.

A small area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River right on the Syrian Iraqi border.

It was less a town than a collection of buildings and tents swollen with fleeing fighters and their families with civilians caught in the chaos with foreign fighters who had nowhere else to go.

The situation there was desperate from the moment we arrived. The Syrian Democratic Forces backed by American air power had surrounded the area.

They were slowly tightening the noose, cutting off any chance of escape. We were trapped, maybe 15,000 people in an area of just a few square kilometers being bombed daily with no way out.

The commanders tried to maintain order, tried to organize defense positions, tried to convince everyone that we could still win, that reinforcements would come, that God would give us victory.

But everyone could see the truth. This was the end. We were all going to die here.

They started sending boys on suicide missions. Children strapped with explosives. Told that martyrdom was their destiny.

Sent to attack enemy positions with no hope of success. I watched boys I had trained with boys who were 13 and 14 years old volunteer for these missions.

Some genuinely believed they were going to paradise. Some were just so broken, so empty that death seemed preferable to continuing to live.

Ahmad and I were not selected for suicide missions, thank God. But we knew it was only a matter of time.

They were running out of volunteers, running out of options. Eventually, they would start simply assigning boys to these attacks and we would have no choice.

The air strikes were constant. The bombs would fall at all hours during the day.

During the night, with no warning and no pattern, buildings would explode. Tents would burst into flames.

Bodies would be scattered across the ground. The smell of death was everywhere, so thick you could taste it.

The screaming never stopped. People looking for family members, people trapped in collapsed buildings, people burning alive.

I had seen horror before. I had witnessed executions, had seen violence and cruelty. But this was different.

This was war, real war, and it made everything that came before seem almost manageable by comparison.

This was hell on earth and we were trapped inside it with no escape. Ahmad and I stayed close during those weeks.

We had given up pretending we were not friends. Given up hiding our connection. What did it matter anymore?

We were all going to die anyway. At least we could face it together. We talked really talked for the first time in years about our families, our homes, our lives before.

Ahmad was from a farming family. He had three sisters and two brothers. He loved to read, had dreamed of becoming a journalist.

He remembered his mother’s voice singing while she worked. He remembered his father teaching him to drive the tractor.

He remembered playing with his siblings in the irrigation canals during the summer heat. I told him about my father’s shop, about my mother’s cooking, about Nor’s laugh.

I told him about wanting to be a teacher, about playing football with Tik about the courtyard where we would sit in the evenings.

I told him things I had not thought about in years. Memories I had buried because they hurt too much to remember.

We were recovering our humanity in those conversations. Remembering that we had been real people once with real lives with families who loved us.

It was both beautiful and excruciating. Ahmad told me that if we survived and we both knew it was a big if, he wanted to find his family.

He wanted to hug his mother to tell her he was sorry for everything, to ask her to forgive him for what he had become.

His voice broke when he said this, and I saw tears in his eyes for the first time since the early days of the training camp.

I told him I wanted the same thing. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my father again to tell him I remembered his lessons that I had tried to stay strong like he told me.

I wanted to tell my mother I was sorry for all the pain I must have caused her.

I want to see nor to see what kind of person she had become to try to be her big brother again.

We made a pact there in the chaos of dying bugus. If we survived, if somehow we made it out, we would find our families.

We would try to put the pieces of our lives back together. We would not let ISIS win, would not let them steal our futures as completely as they had stolen our childhoods.

I do not think either of us really believed we would survive. But the pact gave us something to hold on to, some small hope in a hopeless place.

The siege tightened day by day. The SDF forces advanced slowly but steadily, clearing buildings and trenches, pushing us back into an ever smaller area.

The commanders ordered fighters to mount counterattacks, but these were desperate and futile gestures. We were outgunned, outnumbered, running out of ammunition and hope.

Civilians started trying to surrender, to flee toward the SDF alliance. Some made it, many did not.

The commanders shot people who tried to leave, calling them traitors and apostats. They put up checkpoints inside our shrinking territory to prevent people from escaping.

We were prisoners of ISIS. As much as we were their soldiers. But as the situation deteriorated, as the commanders became overwhelmed with just trying to survive, the checkpoints became less vigilant.

There were gaps, moments when no one was watching, when chaos provided cover. Ahmad and I began to plan our escape.

We studied the patterns. We watched where the checkpoints were, when they changed guard, where the gaps in surveillance appeared.

We listened to the sounds of battle, trying to determine where the SDF lines were, which direction we would need to go.

We hoarded what little food and water we could scavenge, hiding it for when we would make our attempt.

We knew it would be incredibly dangerous. If ISIS caught us, they would execute us.

If we made it past the ISIS lines, we would be in an active war zone with air strikes and artillery fire.

If we reached SDF lines, they might shoot us thinking we were attacking fighters. And even if we somehow made it through all that, we had no papers, no way to prove we were victims rather than willing participants.

But staying meant certain death, the suicide missions, the air strikes, the starvation and disease.

One way or another, Bhus was a grave. We had to try. The night we chose to escape was in early March 2019.

There had been heavy fighting all day. The air strikes had been particularly intense and large parts of our area had been destroyed.

In the chaos and smoke and darkness, we thought we might have a chance. We waited until after midnight.

Most people were trying to sleep, exhausted from the constant terror. The guards at the checkpoints were tired and distracted.

The night was dark, no moon, thick clouds, smoke from fires obscuring everything. Ahmad and I slipped out of the tent where we had been staying.

We moved slowly, carefully, keeping to the shadows. Every sound seemed impossibly loud. Our footsteps, our breathing, the rustle of our clothes.

My heart was pounding so hard I was sure everyone could hear it. We made it past the first checkpoint by crawling through a section of destroyed buildings.

The rubble provided cover, though we had to move carefully to avoid making noise. I cut my hands on broken concrete and glass, but I barely felt it.

All my attention was focused on moving quietly, on not being seen. The second checkpoint was harder.

There was no cover, just an open area we had to cross. We waited, watching, looking for the right moment.

The guards were talking to each other, distracted by their conversation. We moved during their moment of inattention, running low and fast, expecting at any moment to hear shouts, to hear gunfire.

We made it across. We pressed ourselves against a wall, breathing hard, unable to believe we had not been caught.

Then we kept moving toward the edge of ISIS territory, toward the sounds of SDF positions, toward freedom or death.

We made it past the last ISIS checkpoint using a gap created by a collapsed building.

We crawled through the rubble through spaces barely big enough for our bodies, emerging on the other side, covered in dust and blood, but alive.

And then we were in no man’s land, the space between ISIS and SDF lines, a killing field where both sides shot at anything that moved.

We could hear fight nearby, gunfire, explosions, shouting. We could see tracers lighting up the sky.

We lay flat on the ground, trying to become invisible, trying to decide which way to go.

Ahmad grabbed my arm and pointed there. In the distance, we could see lights that looked different from ISIS fires.

SF positions maybe, or maybe something else, but it was a direction, a goal. We started crawling toward the lights.

It took hours. We moved slowly, stopping whenever we heard sounds nearby, pressing ourselves flat when flares lit up the sky.

We crawled through mud and water and things I did not want to identify. We crawled past bodies of people who had tried to escape and failed.

We crawled until our arms and legs were shaking with exhaustion. And then I heard it, the whistle of incoming artillery, the sound that meant shells were falling, that death was coming from the sky.

I grabbed Ahmad and we dove into a crater, pressing ourselves against the earth as the world exploded around us.

The concussion from the blasts. Felt like being hit by a giant fist. Dirt and debris rained down on us.

My ears rang so loud I could not hear anything else. When the barrage stopped, I looked around.

I was alive. The cryer had saved us. I turned to Ahmad to tell him we had made it, that we were okay.

He was not moving. There was shrapnel in his back. A piece of metal about the size of my hand buried deep.

Blood was spreading across his shirt, black in the darkness. I grabbed him, turned him over.

His eyes were open, unfocused. He tried to speak, but only blood came out of his mouth.

I pressed my hands against the wound trying to stop the bleeding knowing it was useless.

The shrapnel had gone too deep. He was dying. His hand grabbed mine. His eyes focused on me for a moment.

And in that moment, I saw everything. His fear, his pain, his sadness that he would not see his family again.

His hope that I would survive. His forgiveness for everything we had done and witnessed.

He died there in my arms in a crater between two armies. So close to freedom he could have touched it.

I held him for a long time. I do not know how long time stopped meaning anything.

My friend, my only friend, the one person who had kept me human through two years of horror was dead.

And I was alone. Eventually, I laid his body down gently. I closed his eyes.

I whispered a prayer. Not the prayers Isis had taught us, but the simple prayer my father had taught me as a child.

A prayer for the dead that asked God to have mercy on their souls. Then I kept crawling.

I kept moving toward those lights in the distance because Ahmad had died trying to escape.

And I owed it to him to finish what we had started because his death could not be meaningless because I had to survive.

I had to survive. I do not remember much of the rest of that night.

Exhaustion, shock, grief, they blurred everything together. I remember crawling. I remember the pain in my arms and legs.

I remember thinking about Ahmad, about his mother who would never know what happened to her son, about how he had died just yards away from freedom.

I remember the sun starting to rise, light slowly spreading across the devastated landscape. I remember seeing the SDF positions clearly for the first time less than 100 m away.

I remember standing up, too exhausted to crawl anymore, too numb to care if they shot me.

I remember raising my hands above my head and walking toward them. I remember soldiers shouting at me in Kurdish, in Arabic, voices harsh and commanding.

I remember dropping to my knees as they ordered, putting my hands behind my head.

I remember them surrounding me, weapons pointed at me, searching me roughly for explosives, for weapons.

I remember someone asking me who I was, where I came from. I remember trying to answer, but finding that I had forgotten how to speak.

My voice came out as a croak, barely intelligible. I remember them giving me water.

The bottle pressed to my lips, the cool liquid running down my throat, the most beautiful thing I had ever tasted.

I remember collapsing, the adrenaline that had kept me moving, suddenly draining away, leaving nothing but exhaustion and pain.

I remember being lifted, being carried. I remember looking back at the place I had come from at the smoke rising from dying bags at at the wasteland that had nearly been my grave.

And then I remember nothing. I passed out and the world went away. I woke up in a field hospital, a tent with rows of CS, medical equipment, the smell of disinfectant and blood.

I was lying on a cot with an IV in my arm. Someone had cleaned and bandaged my wounds, the CS on my hands and arms, a gash on my leg.

I had not even noticed the various spruces and abrasions that covered my body. My first thought was, I’m alive.

I made it. Ahmad and I made it out. Then I remembered Ahmad had not made it.

Ahmad was dead. His body still lying in that crater or buried under rubble or forgotten in the chaos of war.

I turned my face to the pillow and cried. Really cried for the first time since they had taken me from my home.

I cried for Ahmad for his family who would never know what happened to him.

I cried for all the boys who had not escaped, who were still trapped in bug hoos or dead under its rubble.

I cried for my own family whom I had not seen in 3 years. I cried for the child I had been who had died somewhere in that training camp.

I cried for everything that had been taken from me, everything I had lost, everything I had been forced to become.

A medic came over, a young woman with kind eyes. She spoke to me gently in Arabic, asking if I was in pain, if I needed anything.

I could not answer. I just kept crying. Great racking sobs that shook my whole body.

She sat beside my cot and held my hand. She did not say anything, just sat there holding my hand while I cried.

It was the first genuine human kindness I had experienced in years. And it broke something open inside me that I had kept tightly locked away.

Eventually, the tears stopped. I was empty, hollowed out, but somehow cleaner. The medic brought me food, symbol food, rice, and beans, and bread, but it tasted like a feast.

She brought me more water. She checked my bandages, gave me medicine for the pain.

Then the interrogators came. They moved me to a detention facility after a few days in the hospital.

It was not a prison exactly, but it was not freedom either. It was a place for ISIS fighters and sympathizers who had surrendered or been captured.

A place to hold us while they figured out who was who, who had committed crimes and who were victims.

The facility was overcrowded. Hundreds, maybe thousands of men and boys crammed into tents and prefabricated buildings.

The conditions were harsh, but not actively cruel. We got food and water, medical care for serious injuries, shelter from the elements.

But we were prisoners, not knowing what our futures held. The interrogations were extensive. They wanted to know everything.

Who I was, where I was from, how I had been recruited, what I had done during my time with ISIS, whether I had killed anyone, whether I had information about ISIS leadership or operations.

I told them the truth that I had been taken from my village at age 12, that I had been forced into training, that I had been used as a guard and support personnel but had never been in direct combat, that I had escaped from Bhus, that I was a victim, not a volunteer.

They did not believe me at first. Many ISIS fighters claimed to be victims, claimed they had been forced, claimed they were innocent.

The interrogators had heard every excuse, every lie. They were skeptical of everyone, especially boys my age who had been with ISIS for years.

But I was persistent. I gave them details. The name of my village, my father’s name, the date I was taken.

I told them about the training camps, about the commanders, about everything I had witnessed.

I told them about Ahmad, about how he died trying to escape. Slowly, over many interrogations, they began to believe me.

They checked my story against other accounts against their intelligence. They brought in a doctor who confirmed that the scars on my body were consistent with physical abuse, not combat wounds.

They looked at my age, my demeanor, the desperate sincerity with which I told my story.

Eventually, they classified me as a victim rather than a perpetrator. They moved me to a different section of the facility, one for children and non-combatants.

The conditions there were slightly better, the atmosphere less hostile, but I was still a prisoner.

I had escaped ISIS only to find myself in a different kind of captivity. I did not know how long I would be there.

I did not know if I would ever see my family again. I did not know if I would ever be truly free.

The nightmares started in the detention facility. Every night I would relive everything. The execution in the square, the training, Ahmad dying in my arms, the faces of people I had seen killed, the things I had been forced to witness, to be part of, to do.

I would wake up screaming, covered in sweat, my heart racing. The other boys in my tent understood.

Many of them had the same nightmares. We were all haunted by what we had seen, what we had lived through.

During the day, I tried to keep busy. I volunteered to help with tasks around the facility, distributing food, cleaning, whatever they would let me do, anything to avoid being alone with my thoughts.

But there was no escaping the weight of what I carried, the guilt, the shame, the horror.

Even though I knew intellectually that I was a victim, that I had been a child with no real choice, I could not shake the feeling that I was complicit, that I had participated in evil, that I was stained beyond cleaning.

I tried to pray sometimes the way my father had taught me, but the prayers felt hollow.

I did not know if God was listening. I did not know if God could forgive what I had done, what I had been part of.

I did not even know if I believed in God anymore. How could a merciful, compassionate God allow what I had experienced?

How could he let children be stolen and trained as weapons? How could he let Ahmad die just meters from freedom?

I was 15 years old and I had lost my faith, my family, my childhood, my friend and myself.

I had escaped ISIS, but I was still trapped. Trapped in my memories. Trapped in my guilt.

Trapped in a body that was alive, but a soul that felt dead. I did not know it then, but I was at my lowest point.

The darkest place I would ever be. The place where I was most lost, most alone, most certain that I was beyond redemption or hope.

And it was from that place, that impossible darkness, that the light would finally find me.

But I did not know that yet. All I knew was despair. All I felt was the crushing weight of everything I had lost and everything I had become.

All I wanted was for the pain to stop, for the memories to stop, for everything to stop.

I wanted to die. They transferred me to a refugee facility in the summer of 2019.

Baguz had fallen completely. By March, ISIS’s physical caliphate was gone, erased from the map.

But it’s survivors, fighters, family members, civilians who had been trapped under their rule and children like me.

We needed to be housed somewhere while the authorities figured out what to do with us.

The facility was massive, thousands of people in rows of white tents stretching as far as you could see.

There were sections for different groups, family units, single men, and accompanied children. I was placed in the section for teenage boys, most of whom had stories similar to mine.

The conditions were basic but adequate. We had food, clean water, medical care, shelter. Aid workers from different organizations moved through the camp providing services, trying to help.

It was not comfortable, but compared to Bugghus, compared to the training camps, it felt almost luxurious to have enough food and to know that bombs would not fall on us while we slept.

But having my physical needs met did not ease the weight I carried inside. The other boys in my section were like mirrors reflecting my own trauma.

Some were quiet and withdrawn, barely speaking, moving through the days like ghosts. Some were angry, getting into fights, breaking rules, acting out the rage they could not otherwise express.

Some cried constantly, breaking down at random moments when something would trigger a memory. Some seemed completely empty, like the part of them that felt anything had been burned away.

I was in the quiet, withdrawn group. I did not speak unless spoken to. I did not make friends.

How could I when my last friend had died in my arms? I did my chores, ate my meals, attended the mandatory sessions with counselors and aid workers, and otherwise tried to make myself invisible.

The counselors meant well. They talked about trauma, about healing, about how we were not responsible for what had been done to us.

They said we were victims, that we deserved compassion, that we could rebuild our lives.

Some of the boys seemed helped by these sessions, but their words bounced off me like rain of stone.

They could not reach the place inside me where the real damage left because the truth was I did not believe I deserved compassion.

I did not believe I could be healed. I carried too much weight. The things I had witnessed, the things I had been forced to participate in, the people I had failed to save, Ahmad’s death most of all.

We had made a pack to survive together, and I had lived while he died.

The guilt of that felt like it would crush me. The nightmares continued every night.

Sometimes I would dream of the execution in the square. Sometimes I would dream of the training camp of Abu Khaled beating me, of the videos they forced us to watch.

Sometimes I would dream of crawling through no man’s land, of finding Ahmad dead, of his blood on my hands.

Sometimes I would dream of my family, of coming home and finding them dead or finding them alive but unable to recognize me, afraid of what I had become.

I would wake up gasping, my heart pounding, unsure where I was or what was real, the line between nightmare and memory blurred.

Some nights I was not sure if I ever truly woke up or if I was still trapped in some endless bad dream from which there was no escape.

During the day, I moved through the camp in a fog. I was functional on the surface.

I followed routines, completed tasks, answered questions when asked, but inside I was dying piece by piece, day by day.

The weight was crushing whatever was left of me. I thought about my family constantly.

Were they alive? Were they looking for me? Did they think I was dead? Had they given up hope?

The Red Cross had programs to try to reunite families. But there were millions of displaced people, millions of missing persons.

The chance of finding them felt impossibly small. And even if I could find them, what then?

How could I face them after everything? How could I look my father in the eye and tell him what I had become?

How could I let my mother hold me knowing how stained I was? How could I be a brother to no again when I had lost the boy I had been?

The shame was overwhelming. Not just shame for what I had been forced to do, but shame for surviving when others had not.

Shame for failing to resist more. Shame for the moments when I had felt nothing while watching horror unfold.

Shame for still being alive when Ahmad was dead. I started to think that maybe surviving had been a mistake.

That maybe it would have been better if I had died with Ahmad in that crater.

At least then I would not have to carry this weight. At least then the nightmares would stop.

At least then I would not have to face the impossibility of continuing to live with what I had experienced.

The breaking point came on a night in August 2019. I had been in the refugee facility for about 4 months.

4 months of nightmares, of grief, of crushing guilt and shame. Four months of feeling myself slowly drowning in darkness with no hand reaching down to pull me out.

That day had been particularly bad. One of the aid workers trying to help had asked me about my family.

Simple questions. Did I have parents, siblings? Where were they? Did I want help trying to find them?

She meant well. But the questions had ripped open wounds. I was trying desperately to keep closed.

I had told her about them, about my father and mother, about no. And in telling her, I had to face how much I missed them.

How desperately I want to see them again. How impossible that seemed. I had to face the fact that even if I found them, I could never could never be the son and brother they had lost.

That boy was dead. I was something else now, something broken and stained beyond repair.

After that session, I had gone back to my tent and lay on my C, staring at the canvas selling, feeling the weight of everything pressing down on me.

The other boys came and went, but I did not move. I barely eyed the dinner that was distributed.

I barely acknowledged anyone who spoke to me. As night fell, I felt something inside me finally cracking.

Not breaking open like when I had cried in the hospital. That had been a release, a cleansing.

This was different. This was collapsing. The weight I had been carrying was finally too much.

And I could not hold it anymore. The other boys eventually fell asleep around me.

But I lay awake, my mind racing, memories and guilt and shame washing over me in waves.

I felt like I was drowning on dry land, like I could not breathe, like invisible hands were squeezing my chest.

I saw Ahmed’s face the moment he died, the light going out of his eyes, his hand in mine.

I saw the man in the square being executed. I saw my father being hit, falling.

I saw my mother and no crying as they dragged me away. I saw all the faces of all the victims I had witnessed over 3 years of horror.

And I could not carry it anymore. I could not do this anymore. I could not survive another day, another hour, another minute with this weight.

The thought came clearly, calmly, with a sense of inevitability. I should die. I need to die.

Death is the only way this pain will stop. I was 15 years old lying in a refugee tent surrounded by other traumatized children and I was absolutely certain that I could not go on living that I should not go on living that the world would be better without me in it and I would certainly be better not having to exist in this broken painfilled way.

I thought about how to do it. I had no weapon, no rope, no pills.

But there were ways. I could wait until morning and find a way. Or I could simply stop.

Stop eating, stop drinking, stop taking care of myself, until my body gave up. And as I lay there making these plans, feeling the darkness close in completely, I did something I had not done in months.

I prayed. Not a formal prayer, not the prayers I Isis had taught me or even the prayers my father had taught me.

Just a raw, desperate cry from the depths of my soul. I did not even know who I was praying to.

I did not know if God existed, if he cared, if he could hear me.

But I prayed anyway because I had nothing left to lose. The words came out as barely a whisper.

If there is any god anywhere, if anyone can hear me, help me please. I cannot do this anymore.

I cannot carry this anymore. I am drowning. I am dying. If there is any help, any hope, any way out of this darkness, please, please, I cannot do this alone.

I meant it. It was the most honest, most desperate prayer I had ever prayed.

And I did not expect an answer. I expected nothing. I expected to lie there until morning and then find a way to end the pain.

But something happened. I fell asleep or into something like sleep. The transition was so smooth.

I did not notice it happening. One moment I was lying on my coat in the dark tent and the next moment I was somewhere else.

I was standing in darkness. Not the darkness of night, but something deeper. A darkness that seemed infinite that pressed in from all sides.

I could not see my hands in front of my face. I could not see anything at all.

I felt the fear rising, the same crushing despair I had felt moments before. This was death.

Maybe this was the nothing I had expected. This was and then there was light.

It started small just a point in the infinite dark but it grew rapidly spreading pushing back the darkness and it was not harsh or blinding like artificial light.

It was warm soft almost. It felt like the light had substance like it was more real than the darkness it was displacing.

The light surrounded me, enveloped me, and I could see I was standing in a space that had no walls, no floor, no ceiling.

Yet somehow I was standing on something solid. Everything was white, radiant, but not empty.

It felt full, rich, present. And then I saw him. A man was standing before me.

He had not walked up. He had not appeared suddenly. He was simply there as if he had always been there and I was only now able to see him.

He was dressed in white robes that seemed to be made of the same substance as the light around us.

His appearance was I struggle to describe fit even now. He looked like a man.

He had a face, hands, a body, but there was something more to him. Something that made him more real than anything I had ever seen.

It was like everyone else I had ever met was a faded photograph. And he was the only living full color three-dimensional reality.

His face, I cannot fully describe his face. I saw it clearly every detail. But when I try to remember the specific features, they slip away from me.

What I remember is the expression love. Pure absolute overwhelming love, but also authority, power, something that made me want to fall to my knees.

Holiness, that is the word. I was in the presence of holiness. But the most striking thing was his eyes.

They looked at me and I felt them seeing everything, not just my appearance, but deeper.

They saw every moment of the past 3 years. They saw the training camp. They saw the executions I had witnessed.

They saw the checkpoints I had guarded. They saw Ahmad dying in my arms. They saw every sin, every failure, every moment of shame and guilt I carried.

And I was terrified because if he could see all of that, if he knew what I had become, surely he would condemn me.

Surely he would turn away in disgust. But he did not turn away. His eyes seeing everything showed no disgust, no condemnation, no rejection, only love.

Seeing everything I was, everything I had done and failed to do and loving me anyway, I did not understand.

It made no sense. How could anyone see what I carried and not turn away?

And then he spoke. His voice was like nothing I had ever heard. It was gentle, but it filled the entire space.

It was quiet, but I felt it reverberate in my chest. He spoke in Arabic, my language, but with an accent I could not place.

His voice carried authority, but also tenderness, power, but also comfort. He said my name, not the kuna Isis had given me.

Not the number I had been assigned in the detonation facility, my real name, Yousef.

Hearing my name in that voice broke something inside me. I had not been truly called by my name in three years.

And here in this place, he knew it. He knew me. I tried to speak, but no words came out.

I was overwhelmed, unable to process what I was experiencing. This had to be a dream or death or madness.

It could not be real, but it felt more real than anything I had ever experienced.

More real than bug hoes, more real than the training camp. More real than my memories of home.

This was reality. Everything else had been shadows. He spoke again, his voice impossibly gentle.

Yousef, I know what you have carried. I know what was done to you. I know what you have done.

I see all of it and I’m telling you, you do not have to carry it anymore.

I found my voice tail and it came out as a broken whisper. How can you say that?

You see what I am. You see what I have become. How can you? I see what they tried to make you, but I also see who you really are.

I see the boy who tried to stay human in an inhuman place. I see the boy who tried to show kindness when everyone around him was cruel.

I see the boy who mourned his friend, who never stopped loving his family. Who refused to let them completely destroy his soul.

That is who you are, Ysef. Not what they forced you to do. Not the guilt you carry.

Not the darkness you were dragged through. Tears were streaming down my face. But Ahmad, he died.

He died and I lived. How can I? Ahmad’s death was not your fault. You loved him.

You tried to save him. And he is at peace now. Yousef, he is home.

He would want you to live. He would want you to be free. The way he said Ahmad’s name with such tenderness, such knowledge, he knew Ahmad.

He had been there in that crater. He had seen everything. And if he said Ahmad was at peace.

Who are you? I finally asked the question that was burning in my mind. He smiled.

It was the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. Full of warmth and joy and an invitation to something I could not quite name.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the one who can make you clean.

I am the one who can set you free from the darkness. You have been living in.

I am the one who has been calling you even when you did not know it.

And then simply clearly my name is Jesus Issa al-Masi and I died for you.

Jesus Isa the name sent a shock through me. I knew the name of course in Islam Issa is a prophet a good man but just a man.

But here in this place he was claiming to be something more. The way he said it, the authority with which he spoke, the sheer presence of him.

This was no mere prophet. This was God. Could that be? Could I be standing in the presence of God himself?

My mind raced with confusion, with theological questions, with doubt. But my heart knew some deep place inside me that had not been touched by ISIS’s ideology, some core of who I was, recognized him, recognized the truth.

I do not understand bust. I said, “I am a Muslim or I was. I do not know what I am anymore.

I do not understand any of this.” Jesus stepped closer to me. Yousef, religious labels do not matter to me.

What matters is your heart and your heart is broken. Drowning in guilt and shame and pain that you were never meant to carry.

I came here tonight because you called out for help. Because you reached the end of yourself.

Because you were ready to hear truth. What truth? That you are loved. Completely perfectly unconditionally loved.

Not because of what you have done or not done. Not because you deserve it.

None of us deserve it. But because I choose to love you. I have always loved you.

I loved you when you were a boy playing football in your village. I loved you when they took you.

I loved you through every dark day in those camps. I loved you when you felt most lost and alone.

I love you now and I will love you for all of eternity. I was crying harder now.

Great sobs that shook my whole body. But I have done terrible things. I have been part of terrible things.

How can you love someone like me? Do you think your sins are greater than my love?

Do you think there is anything you could do that would put you beyond my reach?

Yousef, I died for sinners. I died for the broken, the lost, the guilty. I died for you specifically.

I looked forward through time, saw exactly what you would experience, exactly what you would carry.

And I went to the cross in a way because you are worth it to me.

I do not understand how Alen, you do not have to understand. You just have to receive it.

All the guilt you carry. All the shame, all the pain, give it to me.

Let me take it. That is why I came. Why I died and rose again.

To take the burden you cannot carry. To give you freedom in place of slavery.

To give you life in place of death. But how? How can you just take it away?

It is part of me now. I am stained. Jesus held out his hands. For the first time, I saw them clearly.

There were scars on his wrists. Deep scars like someone had driven something through them.

Scars like wounds. Do you see these? He asked. These are from the nails they used to crucify me.

I bore wounds too, Yousef. I understand suffering. I understand pain. I understand what it means to be broken, to feel abandoned, to face darkness.

I went through it all and I did it for you. I stared at those scarred hands.

Hands that had suffered. Hands that understood. You suffered too. I whispered. You understand. I understand everything.

And I am telling you, give me your burden. It is too heavy for you.

It was always too heavy for you. Let me carry it. That is what those scars are for.

But I do not deserve. None of us deserve it. That is why we call it grace.

It is a gift freely given that you could never earn. You just have to receive it.

Something was breaking inside me. All my resistance, all my certainty that I was beyond help.

All my determination to carry my guilt alone. It was crumbling under the weight of his love, his presence, his words.

I want to believe you, I said, my voice breaking. I want to be free, but I don’t know how.

Jesus smiled again. You just did it. You admitted you need help. You acknowledged you cannot do this alone.

That is faith, Yousef. And faith is all you need. He reached out his scarred hands toward me.

Give it to me. All of it. Everything you are carrying, give it to me and I will give you peace.

I will give you freedom. I will give you a new life. And I did.

I do not fully understand how, but I felt myself releasing everything. The guilt over Asmad, the shame of what I had been part of, the horror of what I had witnessed, the rage at what had been done to me, the grief over my lost childhood, the fear that I could never be whole again.

All of it, everything I gave to him, and he took it. I felt the weight physically lifting off me, like chains falling away, like I was rising after being underwater for years and finally breaking the surface.

The crushing pressure that had been suffocating me disappeared. In its place was lightness, peace, space to breathe.

Jesus wrapped his arms around me. He held me the way my father used to hold me when I was small and afraid.

And I wept in his embrace. Not tears of despair this time, but tears of relief, of release, of coming home after being lost for so long.

You are free now, he whispered. You are forgiven. You are mine. And nothing can take you from me.

I do not know how long I stayed in his embrace. Time did not seem to work the same way in that place.

But eventually he stepped back, his hands on my shoulders, looking at me with those eyes full of love.

What do I do now? I asked. Where do I go? You go back, back to your life, back to the world.

But you do not go back alone. I will be with you always. In every moment, in every struggle, in every joy, you will never be alone again.

Do you believe that? I looked at him, at the love in his eyes, at the scars on his hands, at the light radiating from him, and I knew with a certainty deeper than anything I had ever known that it was true.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe you,” he smiled. Then follow me, Yousef, not to a religion or a set of rules.

Follow me. Learn from me. Let me show you what love looks like, what freedom looks like, what it means to be fully alive.

Will you do that? Yes, I said again. Yes, I will follow you. He embraced me one more time.

And as he did, he spoke words I will never forget. I have called you by name and you are mine.

You are no longer a slave to fear, to guilt, to darkness. You are my child, my beloved son.

And nothing, not your past, not your pain. Not even death itself can separate you from my love.

Go now and live in freedom, live in light, and tell others what I have done for you.

The light around us grew brighter, warmer, and I felt myself being pulled away back towards something.

Though I did not want to leave, I wanted to stay in that place, in that presence forever.

Will I see you again? I asked, desperate. You will see me every day, Yousef, in creation, in other people, in your own heart.

I am always with you. And one day when your time comes, you will see me face to face again.

But until then, live. Live fully. Live freely. Live as someone who knows he is loved.

That is how you honor what I have done for you. And then the light became overwhelming, filling everything.

And I felt myself falling or flying or being carried. I woke up in my cot in the refugee tent.

The sun was just rising, dim light filtering through the canvas. The other boys were still sleeping around me.

Everything looked exactly as it had when I fell asleep. But everything was different. The weight was gone.

The crushing pressure that had been suffocating me for months, for years, was simply gone.

In its place was peace. Not the absence of problems or pain, but a deep solid peace that felt unshakable.

The kind of peace that does not depend on circumstances. I sat up slowly, almost afraid that the feeling would disappear, that I had just had a vivid dream and reality would come crashing back.

But the peace remained, the freedom remained. I looked at my hands. They looked the same.

The scars from Boo were still there. But somehow I knew in a way I cannot fully explain that I was different.

That something fundamental had changed in me. I had been dead inside and now I was alive.

I had been drowning and now I could breathe. I had been in darkness and now I was in light.

I had met Jesus the man in white and he had saved me not just from death.

I had not had not been in physical danger in the refugee camp. He had saved me from something worse from p from despair from guilt from the slow death of the soul.

He had given me back my life. He had given me hope. He had given me himself.

I stood up and walked out of the tent into the morning. The refugee camp looked the same as always.

Rows of white tents, people beginning to stir, the sound of generators, and distant conversation.

Nothing had changed outwardly. But I had changed. Everything had changed. I felt a joy bubbling up inside me that made no logical sense.

I was still in a refugee camp. I still did not know where my family was.

I still carried memories of trauma, but none of that could touch the core of peace and joy that now lived inside me because I knew something now that I had not known before.

I was loved completely, perfectly, unconditionally loved by the creator of the universe. And if he loved me, if he had forgiven me, if he had set me free, then I could face anything.

I had been found by the light and I would never be the same. The days after my encounter with Jesus were strange and wonderful and terrifying all at once.

I was living in the same refugee camp, doing the same activities, surrounded by the same people, but I was different in ways I could barely articulate.

The first thing I noticed was the peace. It stayed with me, a constant presence even when circumstances were difficult.

The nightmares did not stop immediately. But when I woke from them now, I did not feel alone in the darkness.

I felt a presence with me, comforting me, reminding me that I was safe, that I was loved.

The second thing I noticed was that I wanted to know more about this Jesus who had saved me.

I needed to understand who he was, what he taught, why he had come to me that night.

But I was in a refugee camp full of Muslims in a region where converting from Islam could be dangerous.

I could not exactly ask the aid workers for a Bible or announce that I had become a Christian.

So I kept it secret. I held the experience close to my heart like a treasure I was protecting.

But I also started watching, listening, looking for any opportunity to learn more. That opportunity came about a week after my encounter.

I noticed one of the aid workers, a woman named Sarah from somewhere in Europe, always wore a small cross necklace.

It was subtle, often hidden under her shirt, but sometimes it would catch the light and I would see it.

She was kind, always smiling, patient with everyone, even when they were difficult. There was something different about her, something that reminded me of the light I had experienced.

One day, I was helping her distribute supplies. We were working together, and I gathered my courage and spoke quietly so no one else would hear.

“That necklace you wear,” I said in English. I had learned some English in school before ISIS came.

It is a cross. Yes. She looked surprised, then cautious. Yes, it is. Why do you ask?

Are you a Christian? She studied my face for a moment, probably trying to determine if this was a threat or genuine curiosity.

Finally, she said very quietly, “Yes, I am. Why?” I looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to us.

I need to talk to you but not here. Is there a way? She understood immediately.

Come to the medical tent this evening after dinner. Say you are not feeling well.

I will be there. That evening I went to the medical tent as she had suggested.

Sarah was there along with a few other aid workers. She checked me over, pretending to examine me for illness while the others were occupied with other tasks.

“What do you want to talk about?” She asked quietly. “I did not know how to begin.

How do you explain an encounter with Jesus to someone you barely know?” “How do you put into words an experience that transcends language?”

“I met him,” I finally said. I met Isa Jesus about a week ago. He came to me, spoke to me, saved me, and I need to understand what this means.

Her eyes widened. You met in in a vision, a dream. I do not know what to call it.

More real than a dream. He was there. He spoke to me. He knew my name.

He told me he loved me. That he died for me. He took away everything I was carrying.

The guilt, the shame, all of it. He set me free. Tears filled Sarah’s eyes.

“Oh, Yousef,” she whispered. “This is this is incredible. Jesus appeared to you. You believe me?”

“Of course I believe you. This is exactly what Jesus does. He meets people where they are in their darkest moments and he reveals himself.”

Especially here in this part of the world, we hear stories like this often. Muslims who encounter Jesus in dreams and visions and come to know him.

Relief flooded through me. She believed me. She understood or I was not crazy. But I do not know what to do now.

I said, I want to learn about him. I want to understand, but I cannot tell anyone here.

It is too dangerous. Sarah nodded. I understand. Listen, I need to be very careful.

We are not allowed to procilitize in these camps, but if someone comes to us asking to learn, she smiled.

I happen to have a copy of the Inil, the New Testament in Arabic, and if you were to ask me for it because you wanted to read it on your own, that would not be against any rules.

I am asking, I said immediately. She gave me a small book worn and wellused, wrapped in plain fabric, so it was not obviously religious.

Read this, she said. Start with the b the book of John. And if you have questions, come back to me.

But be careful. Keep it hidden. And please pray before you read. Ask Jesus to help you understand.

I took the book like it was the most precious thing I had ever held and away it was.

Thank you, I said. Thank you for believing me. Thank you for helping me. It is my honor, she said.

Welcome to the family, Yousef. I read that New Testament like a man dying of thirst who had finally found water.

Every free moment I had, I would hide in a corner of the tent or find a quiet spot in the camp and read.

I started with John as Sarah had suggested. And from the very first words, I felt like I was reading truth.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

I read about Jesus life, his teachings about love, forgiveness, mercy, his miracles, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, the way he welcomed outcasts and sinners, the way he stood up to religious hypocrites, the way he treated women and children with dignity.

I read about his death, the betrayal, the trials, the torture, the crucifixion. And I understood now what those scars on his hands meant.

He had suffered all of that by choice, out of love, to pay for sins, my sins, everyone’s sins.

He had taken the punishment I deserved so I could be free. And I read about his resurrection, how he rose from the dead on the third day, how he appeared to his disciples, how he proved that death itself could not hold him, that he had conquered death.

And because of that, everyone who believed in him could have eternal life. It all made sense now.

The encounter I had experienced, the authority with which he spoke, the scars on his hands, the power of his presence.

He was not just a prophet. He was God himself come to earth in human form.

Come to rescue humanity from darkness. And he had come to rescue me specifically. Me, a child soldier, guilty and broken and lost.

He had come for me. I wept as I read, sometimes from joy, sometimes from the overwhelming sense of being loved, sometimes from grief.

Over the years, I had spent in darkness, not knowing this light existed. But always underneath everything was that deep peace, that certainty that I belong to him now, that I was his child, that nothing could separate me from his love.

I read the words of Jesus in Matthew. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

I had been so weary, so burdened and he had given me rest. I read Paul’s words in Romans.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. The guilt I had carried for so long, he had taken it all.

I was forgiven completely and perfectly. Not because I deserved it, but because he had paid the price for me.

I read in Revelation, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.

For the old order of things has passed away.” A promise of a future where all the pain would be healed, where everything would be made right.

A future I could hope for now because of what Jesus had done. The more I learned, the more I wanted to fully commit to following Jesus, but I did not know how.

In the camp surrounded by Muslims, there was no way to openly declare my faith.

I could not be baptized publicly. I could not go to church. I could not even tell most people what had happened to me.

I talked to Sarah about this during one of our secret meetings. I want to follow Jesus, I told her.

Truly follow him, but I do not know how to do that here. Following Jesus is not about external things, she said.

It is about your heart. You have already given your heart to him. Everything else flows from that.

But should I not be baptized? Is that not what Christians do? Yes, baptism is important.

It is a public declaration of faith, a symbol of dying to your old life and being raised to new life in Christ.

But Yousef, you are living in circumstances where a public declaration could be dangerous, not just for you, but for others.

Sometimes in places where Christians are persecuted, believers have to be secret followers for a while.

There are stories in the Bible of people like Nicodemus who came to Jesus secretly at first because he was afraid.

So it is okay to be a secret Christian for now. Yes, Jesus knows your heart.

He knows you belong to him. When the time is right, when it is safe, then you can be baptized publicly.

But for now, your baptism can be private. I can baptize you here in secret if you want.

Or you can wait. Either way, you are already his. The outward symbol does not make it more true.

I thought about this. I wanted to be baptized. I wanted that public declaration. Even if the public was just one or two people, I wanted to mark this change in my life in a tangible way.

I want you to baptize me, I said secretly. But I want to do it.

And so one night when most people were asleep, Sarah and another Christian aid worker took me to the water storage area of the camp.

There were large tanks of clean water there used for drinking and washing. We went to one of the tanks and in the dim light with just the three of us as witnesses, Sarah baptized me.

She said the words, “Yesef, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

And she lowered me into the water and brought me back up. It was simple.

There was no ceremony, no crowd, no celebration. But as I came up out of that water, I felt the significance of what had just happened.

I had died to my old life and been raised to new life. I had publicly, even if only to two people, declared that I belonged to Jesus.

I was a Christian now, a follower of Jesus, and nothing would ever be the same.

Living as a secret Christian in the refugee camp was difficult but also beautiful. I could not share my faith openly but I could live it out in small ways.

I started treating people differently. The peace and love I had received from Jesus overflowed into how I interacted with others.

I was more patient, more kind, more willing to help. When other boys were fighting or causing trouble, I tried to be a peacemaker.

When someone was struggling, I tried to help them. When someone was grieving, I tried to comfort them.

People noticed the change in me. They would comment that I seemed different, calmer, happier.

Some asked me what had happened, what had changed. I would tell them I had found peace, but I could not tell them the source of that peace.

Not yet, not there. But I prayed every day, multiple times a day, I would pray to Jesus.

Not the ritualistic prayers I had learned in in Islam, but conversations. I would talk to him like he was really there, really listening.

Because he was, I could feel his presence, especially when I prayed. I prayed for the other boys in the camp.

I prayed for their healing, their futures, their families. I prayed for the aid workers.

I prayed for my family wherever they were. I prayed for wisdom, for strength, for help in living out this new life I had been given.

And slowly I began to heal. The nightmares became less frequent. The memories still heard, but they no longer controlled me.

I started to be able to think about the future without overwhelming despair. I started to hope.

Baru Sarah became my secret mentor. She taught me about the Bible, about theology, about what it meant to follow Jesus.

She answered my questions, encouraged me when I struggled, celebrated with me when I understood something new.

She also told me about something I needed to work toward, forgiveness. She said that Jesus had forgiven me, but that I also needed to forgive others.

Forgive ISIS for what they had done to me. Forgive the commanders who had abused me.

Even forgive myself for the things I felt guilty about. This was the hardest thing she ever asked me to do.

How could I forgive people who had destroyed my childhood, who had murdered my friend, who had turned me into something I never wanted to be.

But Sarah explained that forgiveness was not saying what they did was okay. It was releasing my right to revenge, releasing the bitterness and hatred that would otherwise poison me.

It was choosing to let God be the judge instead of carrying that weight myself.

It took months. It was not a single decision but a process. Something I had to choose again and again.

But gradually with Jesus’s help, I began to forgive. And as I did, I felt even more freedom.

The chains of bitterness that I had not even realized I was carrying fell away.

I was becoming whole slowly, painfully, is imperfectly, but truly becoming whole. In late 2019, I learned that I was being considered for resettlement.

Some countries were accepting refugees from the Syrian conflict, especially unaccompanied minors who had been victimized by ISIS.

There was a possibility I could be sent to Europe or North America to start a new life.

The process was long and complicated. There were interviews, background checks, medical examinations, more interviews.

They wanted to make sure I was not a security threat, that my story was legitimate, that I was truly a victim and not a perpetrator.

But eventually in early 2020, I was approved. I was going to be resettled. I was going to leave the Middle East, leave the war zone, leave everything I had ever known, and start over in a completely new country.

The day I found out, I felt a mixture of emotions, excitement at the possibility of a new life, fear of the unknown, and grief.

Because leaving meant giving up hope of finding my family anytime soon. How would they find me if I was on the other side of the world?

I talked to Sarah about this. She reminded me that God knew where my family was, that he could reunite us if that was his plan.

She said that I needed to trust him with this, to believe that he was leading me to where I needed to be.

Maybe she said, “God is taking you to this new country, not just for your sake, but so you can tell your story there.

So you can share what Jesus did for you with people who need to hear it.

Maybe your purpose is not just to survive, but to be a light for others who are in darkness.”

I had not thought of it that way, but it resonated with something Jesus had said to me in that encounter.

Tell others what I have done for you. Maybe this was part of that. Maybe this was my mission.

I left the refugee camp in March 2020 and arrived in my new country. I will not say which one for security reasons, but it was in the west in the middle of a global pandemic.

COVID 19 was spreading and the world was shutting down. It was a surreal time to start a new life.

I was placed with the foster family who had agreed to take in a refugee.

They were Christians, God’s perfect timing. And they welcomed me with such love and kindness that I sometimes cried at the dinner table just from the overwhelming sense of being cared for.

They helped me adjust to to this strange new world. Everything was different. The language, the food, the culture, the climate, the technology.

I felt like an alien who had landed on a different planet. But I was free.

Truly free. I could walk outside without fear of bombs. I could sleep without nightmares of being dragged back to a training camp.

I could go to church openly, worship Jesus without hiding, be baptized again in front of a whole congregation who celebrated with me.

That second baptism was one of the happiest days of my life. Standing in front of people who knew my whole story and loved me anyway.

Going down into the water and coming up while they cheered and sang. Being wrapped in towels and hugs and welcome being home.

I started school. It was hard. I was years behind academically and the language was difficult.

But I worked hard, stayed late for tutoring, studied every night. My foster parents helped me, encouraged me, believed in me.

I started trauma therapy, a Christian counselor who specialized in working with survivors of war and the violence.

She helped me process what I had been through, develop coping strategies, learn to live with the memories without being controlled by them.

She helped me understand that healing was not forgetting but integrating. That my past was part of my story, but it did not have to define my future.

And slowly I built a new life. I made friends at church, at school, in my new community.

I learned to laugh again. Really laugh. I discovered new interests, new passions. I was not the boy I had been before Isis.

But I was not what Isis had tried to make me either. I was something new, someone shaped by both the darkness I had been through and the light that had saved me.

In 2022, a miracle happened. The Red Cross contacted me. They had found my family.

They were alive. All of them. My father, my mother, nor they had survived the war, survived ISIS, survived everything.

They were living in a refugee camp in Turkey, waiting for resettlement themselves. I video called them that day.

Seeing their faces on the screen after 6 years, I cannot describe My father looked so much older, his hair gray now, his face lined with worry and grief.

My mother was crying before she even saw my face. And Nor, my little sister, was 14 years old now, nearly grown, but I could still see the 8-year-old I had left behind in her eyes.

We all cried. We talked over each other, everyone trying to say everything at once.

They told me what had happened after I was taken, how they had searched for me, how they had escaped the village when it became too dangerous, how they had spent years displaced, always hoping, always praying that I was alive somewhere.

I told them a version of my story. I left out the worst parts. They did not need to know everything.

But I told them I had survived, that I had escaped, that I was safe now.

And I told them about Jesus. This was the hard part. They were Muslims. They had raised me Muslim.

And I was telling them I had converted to Christianity. There was silence after I explained.

A long heavy silence. Then my father spoke. His voice was thick with emotion. He said that he was just grateful I was alive.

That whatever path had kept me alive, whatever God had saved me, he was thankful for it.

He said he did not understand and maybe he never would. But he loved me and nothing would change that.

My mother said the same. She said she would have questions and it would take time for her to process this.

But she was my mother and I was her son and nothing could change that.

Nor my beautiful sister just said she was proud of me. That I had survived something impossible.

And if Jesus had helped me do that, then she was grateful to him. It was not a perfect reunion.

There was still distance, still things we needed to work through, but it was a beginning.

They were alive. I was alive and we had found each other again. We are working now on bringing them to my new country.

The process is slow, complicated by politics and red tape and the pandemic. But there is hope, real hope, that someday, maybe soon, we will be together again.

Not in the same way as before. Too much has changed for that, but together nonetheless.

In 2023, I began sharing my testimony more publicly. First just at my church, then at other churches, then at conferences and events.

People wanted to hear about ISIS from someone who had been inside it. But more than that, they wanted to hear about Jesus, about how he meets people in their darkest moments, about how no one is beyond his reach, about how his love can heal even the deepest wounds.

I also started working with an organization that helps former child soldiers and victims of extremism.

I talked to other young men who have escaped from groups like ISIS who are struggling with guilt and trauma and the weight of what they have been through.

I tell them my story. I tell them about the man in white who came to me when I had given up hope and I watch their faces as they hear for maybe the first time that they are not beyond redemption.

Some of them have prayed with me to receive Jesus. Some have not. They are not ready or they are from other faiths and want to stay there.

But all of them I think are impacted by hearing that there is hope that healing is possible that they are not alone.

This is my mission now. This is why Jesus saved me. Not just so I could have a good life, though I am grateful for that, but so I could point others to him.

So I could be a light in the darkness the way he was a light for me.

Now in 2025, I am 21 years old. I am in university studying social work.

I want to professionally help people who have been through trauma, especially young people from war zones.

I want to combine my education with my experience to be able to offer both practical help and the hope of the gospel.

I am still in therapy. Healing is not a destination but a journey and I am still on that journey.

Some days are harder than others. Sometimes the memories come back strong and I have to work through them again.

Sometimes I struggle with survivors guilt, wondering why I made it when so many others did not.

But I am not alone in those struggles. Jesus is with me just like he promised.

My church community surrounds me. My foster family loves me. And my biological family, even though they are far away, supports me.

I have a life I never thought I would have. I have freedom. Safety, purpose, hope.

I have friends, family, opportunities. I can go to sleep at night without fear. I can wake up in the morning with joy.

I can look at the future and see possibility instead of darkness. This is what Jesus has done for me.

This is the life he has given me in place of death. If you are reading this, listening to this, hearing my story, I want you to know something.

The man in white who came to me is real. Jesus is real. His love is real.

His power to transform lives is real. Maybe you have never experienced anything like what I went to through.

Or maybe you have experience something even worse. Maybe you are carrying guilt, shame, trauma that feels impossible to overcome.

Maybe you have given up hope that you could ever be truly free, truly whole, truly clean.

I am telling you, you are not beyond his reach. If he could come for me in a refugee tent in the aftermath of ISIS, drowning in despair and ready to die, he can come for you wherever you are.

There is no darkness so deep that his light cannot penetrate it. There is no sin so great that his grace cannot cover it.

There is no brokenness so complete that his love cannot heal it. You just have to call out to him just like I did that night.

A simple honest prayer. Jesus, if you are real, help me. I cannot do this alone.

He will answer. Maybe not in the same way he answered me. He meets each person uniquely in the way they need.

But he will answer because that is who he is. That is what he does.

He seeks out the lost. He saves the perishing. He gives life to the dead.

To my fellow Muslims who might hear this, I am not asking you to abandon your faith out of obligation or pressure.

I am simply telling you what happened to me. Isa al-masi appeared to me. He saved me.

He claimed to be more than a prophet. He claimed to be God himself, the way, the truth, and the life.

And everything in my experience confirms that claim. I cannot deny what I have seen, what I have experienced, what he has done for me.

I respect where you come from. I was there too. But I invite you to be open to the possibility that Isa wants to reveal himself to you as well.

That he is not who we were taught he was, but someone far greater. Someone who loves you personally, who died for you specifically, who wants to have a relationship with you.

To Christians who might hear this, thank you. Thank you for the aid workers who risked their lives to help people like me.

Thank you for the churches that welcomed a Muslim refugee and loved him into the kingdom.

Thank you for being Jesus’s hands and feet in a broken world. Your faithfulness matters more than you know.

And I encourage you, never give up on anyone. Never write anyone off as too far gone, too damaged, too evil to be saved.

If Jesus could save me, he can save anyone. The former ISIS child soldier is now your brother in Christ.

What an incredible testimony to the power of the gospel. I close with this. Sometimes late at night, I think back to that moment in the refugee tent when I was certain my life was over.

When I was planning to die. When I prayed that desperate prayer for help, I think about how close I came to giving up.

How close I came to missing everything that came after my encounter with Jesus, my escape to freedom, my new life, my family reunion, my purpose and mission.

If I had given up that night, none of this would have happened. I would have died without knowing the love that was searching for me, the light that was about to break into my darkness.

And I think about others who might be in that same place right now in their own refugee tent, their own dark night, ready to give up because the pain is too great to bear.

I want to say to you, hold on. Just one more day, one more hour, one more minute because you do not know what is coming.

You do not know that the man in white might be about to step into your darkness.

You do not know that your story might be about to change completely. My name is Yousef.

I am 21 years old. I was a child soldier in ISIS. I saw and experienced horrors that still haunt me.

I lost my friend, my childhood, myself. But I was found by Jesus, the man in white, the light of the world.

And he did not just save my life. He gave me a completely new life.

He took a boy who was drowning in darkness and turned him into a man who walks in the light.

If he can do that for me, he can do it for anyone. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

That is what the Bible says and I can tell you from experience it is true.

No matter how dark your darkness is, the light is stronger. The light always wins and the light has a name.

His name is Jesus and he is calling your name right now just like he called mine.

Will you answer?