Nurses rescued from IS recount their Iraq ordeal

Marina Jose, 43, sits behind the counter of her bakery in Kottayam’s Kodungoor village with a quizzical look on her face. The radio had informed her of the tragic death of 39 Indian workers in war-torn Iraq a while ago, but she is yet to come to terms with it.

The entire nation may be mourning the death of its citizens at the hands of the extremists, but few can understand what they must have gone through as acutely as Jose. She was, after all, one of the 46 Indian nurses rescued from territories held by the Islamic State after 23 days of captivity in 2014.

The extremists had abducted the nurses (45 Keralites and one Tamil) and the workers around the same time that year. While the nurses were taken hostage after an attack on a Tikrit hospital, the workers were abducted from a construction site in Mosul.

“We managed to escape from the jaws of death somehow, but it’s sad that our workers couldn’t make it. How could they kill innocent people who had gone there to work? This is nothing but savagery,” the senior nurse says.

Memories of Jose’s time in captivity make her shudder. “I still have nightmares of our ordeal in Iraq. Everything – the billowing smoke, charred vehicles and halfburnt bodies – is still fresh in my mind. There were times we lost all hope, and frustration made us yell at people back home who were working hard for our release,” she recalls.

The mother of two, however, points out that their captors never ill-treated them. “They held us hostage on the second floor of the hospital for many days, but never misbehaved with us. One of their leaders even said that Indian nurses are known for their service, and promised to never target innocent people like us,” she says.

Jose worked for nearly 10 years in places abroad (five years in Saudi Arabia, three in Malaysia and one in Iraq) before deciding to take a break and set up a bakery in her village. Last year’s award-winning Malayalam movie ‘Take Off’, starring actors Parvathy and Kunchacko Boban, was based on her Tikrit ordeal. She was even honoured at the recently held Loka Kerala Sabha in the state capital.

Life, however, goes on. Many of Jose’s colleagues have returned to work in Gulf .

Another returnee says that she owes her life to then Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy and Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. “Both the state and central governments toiled hard to ensure our release. We are really indebted to them,” she adds.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: