MONTREAL—Saeeda was at work when she got the message: “Mama, I’ve left to join ISIS.”There are no words, Saeeda says, to describe how she felt on that November 2014 afternoon. It was as if her teenage daughter had just died and Saeeda’s life would now be defined in two acts: Before she learned her daughter left Canada for Syria, and after.“I, I cried out. I yelled,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. I started to slap my knees . . . I just kept doing it.” As concerned colleagues surrounded her, Saeeda went numb. But the next week, when her daughter called and sounded desperate, saying she regretted what she had done, another instinct clicked in. Rather than mourning what felt like a death, she realized she might be the only person who could keep her daughter alive.“I knew my daughter regretted everything . . . she realized from the beginning that what she had done was not good for her; she would pay for her mistake.” Saeeda embarked on what would become a three-year mission to get her home. She would not break down again until this past November, when she got word that her daughter had finally escaped ISIS territory. Her daughter, now 22 and a mother of two, is still in Syria, but in the custody of the coalition-allied Kurdish forces. Canadian officials are preparing to bring them home. “(When) I knew she was with the Kurds, that’s when it hit me. That’s when I cried. I screamed all over again,” says Saeeda.“Everyone thinks I’ve been strong and courageous. No, I haven’t been strong or courageous. It’s only because I was looking for a solution and I forgot the problem.”Saeeda’s mission to save her daughter and granddaughters — a journey that took her from Canada to Germany and Turkey and introduced her to Syrian militias, activists, dissidents, and Canada’s security establishment — is portrayed in The Way Out, a d ...
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