ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Leyla Ekren, a quiet but scrappy girl from rural Kansas, lost her childhood in Syria, where her mother dragged her after war broke out more than a decade ago.
Even as she fell ill with typhoid fever, her mother, a hardened militant who would ascend the ranks of the Islamic State, demanded that she undertake military training. As delirium and pain ravaged her mind and body, Leyla, then 10, found her effervescence evaporating. She just wanted to die.
