Return to hell: Finding the family who sheltered us in Mosul

 

The last time I saw Mattar, she was running for her life, and she was angry.

Angry at the ISIS fighters shooting outside, angry at the soldiers hiding in her home, angry at her family's misfortune, to live in Iraq at a time like this.

And angry with me, for repeatedly telling her that back up units were on their way, though none had arrived.

 

Photojournalist Brice Lainé and I had embedded with a unit of Iraqi counter-terrorism troops as they pushed to take streets from ISIS in eastern Mosul. But things had gone badly wrong. Trapped in its maze of narrow, muddy side roads, our convoy was pinned down, our escape route blocked.

 

After our armored vehicle took a direct hit we dashed from house to house to get away from the encroaching ISIS fighters, eventually ending up in Mattar's home. There, the family, soldiers and journalists spent one of the most terrifying nights of our lives as explosions rocked the building and a deadly firefight raged outside.

 

Yet the family had fed us and the soldiers, made us tea, offered us blankets, and all the while Mattar had kept her sense of humor and her dignity.

 

 Just seven years my senior, Mattar had become my "Mosul mom" in those hours, though she'd joked how unfair it was that I looked so much younger, and had not gone gray.

"Look! This is what being Iraqi does to you," she said, showing me the roots of her hair.

Then, at dawn, when the firefight erupted again, worse than ever, and an airstrike on the house next door had her family screaming in fear under the stairs, they had fled in panic, barefoot and without looking back, amid a hail of bullets and grenades.

 

I had not even had a chance to hug her goodbye, to say thank you.

We eventually escaped, went home, enjoyed the luxury of feeling safe, but what had happened to them?

 

For two months, Brice and I had worried about the soldiers who were with us that day, about the civilians who sheltered us, about Mattar and her family.

We had to go back and find out.