Painful family ties

Sisters Rahma and Ghufran ran away from home in 2014 to join IS, while their mother was working in domestic service in Libya. Later it emerged that Rahma had married Noureddine Ben Tahir Shoushan, the leader of the branch of IS based in the city of Sabratha on the Libyan coast. Olfa's fight for her two daughters had begun. 

Two years later, at the peak of fighting between the U.S.-backed Libyan militias and IS, the IS headquarters in Sabratha were targeted by an aerial attack in which 41 people were killed, most of them Tunisians. 

Rahma and Ghufran survived the attack; at this point, one of them had a five-month-old daughter. They were arrested, however, and their mother says they have been held in a Libyan jail ever since.

The film, with well-known Tunisian actress Hend Sabri in the lead role, won several prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Golden Eye Award for documentary films, the Positive Cinema Award, and a special mention from the jury of the Francois Chalas Prize, which is awarded by the Francois Calais Society during the Cannes festival. 

Qantara.de spoke to Olfa Hamrouni and her two daughters Aya and Tayseer Sheikhawi at a screening of the film in Berlin. 

Who is responsible?

Ms Hamrouni, this is the second time you have come to Germany with this film. What is different this time? 

Olfa Hamrouni: When I first visited Germany, it was for the film festival in Cologne, when the film was being shown there. Now, for the first time I've had an opportunity to meet a Tunisian official in person – Tunisia's ambassador to Berlin, Wassef Cheha – which means I get to share the responsibility that I've been carrying alone for 10 years, as a mother who made a mistake in the way she brought up her two daughters by being too hard on them, and who wants to bring her daughters back. 

I have spoken about what happened to the two of them many times before, though no one with any power has been there, and I do not deny that I made mistakes in how I brought them up. But the state also has a responsibility to protect them. After the screening I was able to speak to Ambassador Wassef Cheha. He expressed his sympathy and promised to bring up my case at the highest level. 

But how did you manage to get your appeals to the authorities turned into a whole film? 

Hamrouni: It all began with a mistake by the Tunisian ministry of the interior, which left me searching on my own for my daughter Ghufran. Ghufran ran away while I was working in Libya. She was lured away by the terrorist organisation IS. I asked for help to protect my daughter Rahma from the same fate, and I provided the authorities with all the information, but she too then went to Libya to join IS. 

Still I was ignored and left on my own. Then I met a journalist who reported on my story. And since then, I have been turning to the media to get my daughters back.

Filming for the documentary took place between 2016 and 2021 – it took years, then, before it was finished. What made you agree to the idea for the film, and why did it take so long to get it made? 

Hamrouni: I agreed because I hoped the film would help me to get my daughters back. When the director, Kaouther Ben Hania, came to us, we were not prepared for what was about to happen. But then she came regularly and experienced our family's difficulties, as if she were one of the family. My daughters Aya and Tayseer and I were living in Monastir (Tunisia) like outcasts, without any contact with the outside world. She saw everything, including our arguments, which she sometimes had to mediate. In 2021 she came to us to shoot the film. 

Kaouther Ben Hania said in an interview that you outsmarted her, so you could tell your story. How did that happen? 

Hamrouni: The director didn't actually want to show our past, or to dramatise it. What she had in mind was a short documentary about Rahma and Ghufran. Then I asked her: "Will people believe our story?" And she replied, "Maybe, they might believe it." Then I said, "No, we're completely normal people, so they won't believe us. But if we had real actors, people would believe the story." So she had the idea of hiring professional actors for the film. "Are you alright with that?" she asked me. And I said yes.

At first I didn't think I would be in the film myself. I thought I would tell the story and Hend Sabri would act it out. But then we did it together. 

Escaping a tragic reality

What was people's reaction to your story before and after the film? 

Hamrouni: Before the film was shown, I was regarded in Tunisia as a criminal, a guilty person. But then the film told my whole story, from beginning to end. It shed light on the whole truth. How the five of us suffered, the background to my daughters' radicalisation, which had less to do with real religiousness or extremism, and more with escaping from a tragic reality – the poverty we lived in, where everything was denied to them. And that has changed our image with the public in Tunisia. We have received a lot of sympathy, and at every screening I find an audience who supports me. The viewers come up to me and say: we believe you.

What was it like shooting a film? You and daughters were a part of it, weren't you? 

Hamrouni: It was very stressful. While the film was being shot, there were still arguments and problems between my daughters and me. Sometimes I lost control. In one scene with Nour Al-Qamri, who plays my daughter Rahma, I had to hit her so hard that I really hurt her. 

In the film, you are played by the well-known Tunisian actor Hend Sabri. Did she do a good job of portraying your emotions? 

Hamrouni: She portrayed my emotions exactly right. I could see myself; I saw the flaws in my personality. It was like she was holding a mirror up to me. When I wanted to hit my daughter, she seemed to be saying to me: "Stop doing that, it's a disgrace." 

"I'm not trying to absolve myself"

Did you get the sense you could have prevented what happened to your daughters? 

Hamrouni: Do you think I only recognised the dark side of my personality after seeing the film? My hard attitude towards my daughters is the result of my traditional upbringing as a conservative Arab woman (for instance, I believed that a girl's body belongs only to her future husband). As children, my sister and I were at the mercy of my bullying father. Then later, there was abuse by my husband and then my stepfather. 

So you might say that the two girls were escaping from a difficult family situation, from oppression and poverty, from a mother's cruelty – because I am not trying to absolve myself of guilt here – and a father's neglect. 

But at that time my daughters were also victims of a state that paved their way towards this ideology and made it easier for them to find it. After the Ennahda Movement, which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, won the election, the Islamists allowed Islamic groups to get a foothold in society and in the ministries, for example the ministry of the interior, the prime minister's office and the ministry for religious affairs, which was responsible for the imam in our local mosque. The girls started wearing the niqab. Then there was the presence of the Islamic Dawah Movement on the streets, which had police protection. 

Did Rahma and Ghufran ever make contact with you again after they ran away, and how are you doing now? 

Hamrouni: They have been communicating with me via SMS and WhatsApp since they went to join IS in Sabratha. I am still in touch with them, although they are in prison in Libya. When we started filming, the director was negotiating with the Libyan authorities to include them in the film. They agreed at first, but then later they didn't want any part in it. 

Today, of course, I feel great regret, but they wanted to rebel against the life they were living and dreamed of a better life with dignity, which the leaders of the extremist group convinced them they could have. When they reached IS in Libya, they found themselves in the hands of the organisation's leaders, who used them for their own ends. 

"The film will change reality"

In January 2022, both girls were sentenced to 16 years in jail and expelled from Libya. But the Tunisian government refuses to accept them back into Tunisia. And so I am calling first and foremost for the release of Fatima, Ghufran's daughter, who has been behind bars with her mother since she was five months old. 

Ghufran and Rahma must be brought back to their homeland. There is a justice system there that could put the girls on trial, and they could be punished there if they are found guilty. The state made it easy for them to leave, and it must also allow them to return. 

The film has been shown at film festivals and has won prizes – what has this all been like for you? Is the film bringing back the forgotten stories and the suffering of those who have fallen victim to extremist organisations? 

Hamrouni: Of course the film moves many groups, because it addresses a lot of problems and subjects. I am very sure it will change reality. 

Qantara.de also spoke to Olfa's daughter Aya about taking part in the film, and her relationship with her mother and sister: 

The film shows a mother-daughter relationship full of contradictions, that wavers between playfulness and violence. What kind of relationship does Olfa have with her four daughters like? 

Aya: Olfa is still fighting for the return of my two sisters. That is the best proof that she isn't a bad or a cruel mother. It doesn't matter how cruel people are, how much they talk, Olfa keeps fighting and she says, "I've heaped guilt on myself, but now I want to make amends and bring my daughters back." 

She wasn't like our father, who divorced her and left her penniless and having to bring up four girls. She was both father and mother to us, and took on responsibility for us. She went out to work twice a day to provide for us. Her parenting methods may have been wrong. But it was because she worried we might make mistakes. In the end, this hard upbringing also strengthened my character. 

And that's why Olfa also says in the film: "I've implanted strength in you, and you have turned it against me." How did your sisters end up rebelling against your mother and running away to Libya? 

Aya: My mother went to Libya to work in domestic service. At the time, Rahma and Ghufran were teenagers; Tayseer and I are the youngest. My big sisters started rebelling against that life and going out. Olfa decided to take us with her because she was afraid we would be left on our own at home. 

When we had been in Libya for three months, Ghufran ran away. My mother took us back to Tunisia and went to the police several times to report it. Her pleas to the government to help her get Ghufran back were not heard. Rahma soon ran away as well and joined Ghufran. She was lured away by young men and women belonging to IS. 

There is one scene in the film in which Rahma gives you and your younger sister a flogging because you were late saying your prayers, and there is also a scene about death and punishment in the grave... Why are these scenes in the film? 

Aya: Watching these scenes will shock audiences. But for us it was fun, or it was for our self-education, to motivate us to fast or pray. We were young, and it was almost like being in a video game. 

After your appearance in the film, do you want to become an actor? 

Aya: I don't actually like acting. I just wanted to get my voice heard, to draw attention to my sisters and all the people whose children are among the forgotten victims of IS, so that they can go back to their families and their country. 

Interview conducted by Mohammed Magdy

© Qantara.de 2024

Translated from the German by Ruth Martin