Lori Foroozandeh grew up as a sexually and mentally abused child. She began to wonder what was normal in her life and if the “games” her family played with her were good or bad for her. As it always turned out, they were extremely mean to Lori. Her “tickling” episodes became much more than just tickling. The only reason she emphasized the abuse of her is so you can realize how much of the rest of her life became abuse. She got to the point where physical and sexual abuse was something she came to accept as normal.
Lori was originally married at the age of fifteen to a much older man when she felt she had to emancipate herself. That marriage did not last long. At seventeen she joined the army and fell in love with her recruiter and she immediately became pregnant. They got married after he went AWOL and was dishonorably discharged. Lori went to army training and was selected in a group to see how women would react in combat. Lori went AWOL several times and eventually decided that the military was not for her future. Several years later she was captured and separated from the army. Lori’s life had gotten pretty wild!
When she was twenty-seven, Lori met her next husband, Mohammad Foroozandeh, who also had children. He convinced her, or really, forced her to go to Iran, where she said things had changed so much for women and her wild record in the United States would end. Upon her arrival in Iran, she Lori was forced to wear Muslim clothing. Lori became an English teacher. She hated living in Iran with all the customs she had to follow, and to add to her misery, Mohammad began to beat and slap her even more when he found out that her Lori was trying to find her way back to the United States.
Mohammad and Lori were kidnapped while on the streets together, but each was taken to a different location. These places were camps, certainly not camps as we know them. From here things went downhill quickly for Lori. She was chained 24/7 to another girl. They received little food, most of which they scratched at what the camp guards dumped on the ground or fetched water from mud puddles. They ate insects, rats, or whatever they could catch, mostly raw. Was it Mohammad’s drug trade that led her to be in such a place? She did not know
This went on for months and in various camps as she was moved from one to another. They were torn from their sleep or rest, taken to another area of the camp, repeatedly tortured and raped. The soldiers took turns so that each woman did what he wanted. The women got to the point of staring into space as this happened, but there was no way any human would get used to such a misfortune. Some of the things that happened to them while they were in the camps are so horrifying that you will shudder as you read and wonder how they stayed alive. The truth is that many did not survive it.
As I was reading, I was wondering how a human could do such things to other humans. Some sadistic things would not be done on animals, much less on humans. I will stop here so as not to spoil any of the final parts of the book. Occasionally, I would stop reading and think, “Did this really happen in our world?” Only Lori and the many in her camp, many of whom didn’t make it, know what they went through.