The day is slowly drawing to a close. The dungeon under the old school lets in some of the last rays of sunlight through the blind windows just below the ceiling. Day after day I cling to it a little in this hole, dark, stinking of excrement and death. Will we die tonight? After eleven months in the hands of IS, eleven months as human shields, after murder, torture, humiliation, hunger and pain, the fear of death has become dull.

The small windows under the cellar ceiling allow snatches of conversation from the car repair shop opposite to reach us.

The last attempt to pass us off as Kurdish fighters in exchange for the release of a group of IS warriors has failed. Three times already we, still 65 people, the sad remnant of the 148 Kurdish civilians who were once picked up, from teenagers to old men, were blindfolded and tied up and driven to the exchange. They discuss what should happen to us.

What should we do with them, they’re useless, let’s shoot them! We know that these are not hollow phrases.

On the other hand, there was a fear of uncomfortable questions from Turkish officials, and the prisoners’ lists of names were regularly checked. Not that they were particularly worried about this and after three failed attempts at an exchange, the mood changed and food was in short supply. We are now worthless for their plan to get the captured IS fighters handed over in exchange for us.

But today was something else! Excited voices are talking about the West intervening soon with air support! The Arabic is difficult to understand, it could be Libyan IS fighters talking. There are fears that the school could be bombed by the Americans.

The three-storey school building in Manbij was an IS command center and training facility and has been our prison for more than five months. The young fighters, often still children, were housed upstairs in the building.

The first thing we heard was frantic shouting, IS fighters running back and forth, a short series of detonations, the first hit is huge!

I had never experienced anything like it, you couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear!

There were a few among us who were already familiar with such a situation. They slowly groped their way from man to man: “Are you still alive?”, all 20 people in our cell answered.

Muffled. As if behind pattering rain. I see them speak, see what they are trying to do, realize.

Three of them throw themselves against the cell door. Get out! We have to get out of here! They won’t be satisfied with half the building! Together we’ll somehow manage to get the heavy door to give way, get out of here!

Outside it’s sheer chaos, I can see IS fighters fleeing through the swathes, one body lying on the edge, obviously dead. We run!

None of us have had the chance to cut our hair for a year, we look like them with our beards and hair, like IS fighters. We run away in the hustle and bustle, the air raid is on, it doesn’t distinguish between IS fighters and civilians, we run as fast as we can in the last shreds of daylight, always towards the forest, always towards the border with Turkey!

When I meet Aladdin at the refugee aid coffee party, he arrives a little later, the well-attended coffee table greets him in unison with a big hello, laughter and pats on the back, the conversations around Aladdin get funnier! I’m lucky enough to be in the middle of it all and sit right across the corner from him. I tell him about my new portrait project and the idea of showing my portraits together with the people’s stories. Aladdin readily agrees with his open smile, only asking me if I really want to hear the whole story.

We meet in a café about two weeks later, each of us with a fruit slice in front of us, Aladdin begins his story about how he grew up in a farming family, his parents allowed him to study English literature, he started working as a teacher before his love of the language became his downfall, the language itself became his enemy in his own country.

When Aladdin wanted to leave the country because of this, he was caught up in an inscrutable maelstrom of civil war turmoil, prison, military service, escape to Lebanon, IS captivity, days of transportation in converted smugglers’ vehicles and finally his arrival in Germany. During our conversation, it becomes increasingly clear to me that I am sitting in front of a man who has never consciously wanted to achieve his goals by force of arms and who is always looking for peaceful solutions and a peaceful life.

I have retraced his escape from the IS prison for you here as an example, but Aladdin’s story itself is much longer and more complex! It stretches from Kobane to Damascus and Daraa, from Lebanon to Turkey and back to Manbij and later across Europe, his work as a translator for authorities and NGOs, via Romania and Bulgaria to Germany, with the English teacher, son of a farmer, right in the middle. As he sits in front of me and tells me his story, he always gives me the impression that he still wonders how he got into this mess through no fault of his own.

Through all his adventures, the joy of life has never left him. Of course he would like to have his wife, who is also an English teacher, and his three children here with him! But first he wants to keep fighting in his own way!

“Language is the key!”

Yes, I agree with him.

While I finished my fruit slice quite quickly, I noticed with increasing distress how Aladdin lost more and more interest in his piece of cake during our conversation, rummaging more and more intensely in memories. By the time we left, he had only eaten a few forks of his slice.