Avoiding sleep, I think about the other women and girls who were held against their will alongside me the last eighteen months. When we first arrived, there was a pregnant woman named Safiya who slept in a different room. She was probably about my age and had the most beautiful complexion. I guessed her to be Mediterranean. The fact that she was still forced to have s*x while pregnant was appalling to me. Then, three months into our capture, she went into labor and gave birth. None of us knew if it was a boy or girl because the baby was taken away from her. I can still hear her bawling and sobbing through the walls of the brothel. I saw her in the kitchen area a week or so after, and she looked very ill with dark ashen circles under her eyes. Men continued to r**e her, and I couldn’t imagi
