Ghaisary and her mother Fathi during military training with Komala, an armed Iranian opposition group, in northern Iraqi Kurdistan. — ©2023 The New York Times Company
ONE rainy spring evening, a young Iranian mother with a mangled arm, her husband and their three-year-old daughter met a smuggler near the Iraqi border who gave them a stern ultimatum: Ensure the child’s silence or leave her behind.
The mother, Sima Moradbeigi, 26, recalled that she dashed to a pharmacy for a bottle of cough syrup to drug her daughter into a stupor.
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