'Take Your Portion': A Victim

Speaks Out About Rape in Syria

'During dark sessions over a period of 38 days, guards whipped her with a wire, strung her alternatively by her wrists and feet, and injected the crook of her elbow twice a day with a kind of drug that made her feel high, she says. The things Abdulrahman recalls the men saying as they allegedly raped her multiple times were so filthy she is loath to repeat them -- "it's too dirty and too low" -- although she remembers them saying, "Here is the freedom you wanted" (a phrase similar to ones other women have reported hearing while being raped in Syria). And she can summon up at least one face. And a couple of names.

"We were all blindfolded and raped and we would not know who was raping us," she says, tearing up for the first time in our interview. Before being blindfolded, she could see what she calls the "boss" sit in front of them, teaching them "exactly what to do and say to us."

"They were ordered to take this one, to take 'your portion,'" she says. "And they would take it."
The horrors she describes have positioned her to become the face of powerful women survivors in Syria. She says she has fought and killed; she also says she has done it for her country. She says she has endured torture and violation but that she is "capable of standing up against oppression." '