BAGHDAD — Basma’s phone is always in her pocket. She used to throw it around the house, but things have changed. She is waiting for a phone call from her father, who lives in Mosul and was not able to leave with his wife and children for a safer city.

She got married in Baghdad several years ago and has a close relationship with her father. She would visit him every month or he would come to the capital to see her. But the situation changed; the young employee who works at the Iraqi Ministry of Construction and Housing has not seen her father since June, i.e., since the dramatic fall of Mosul at the hands of the Islamic State (IS).

Mosul, a Sunni-majority city, has been completely isolated from its surroundings for more than a month now; IS cut the Internet and mobile phone networks and the city's residents became prisoners of the extremist organization that unreasonably imposes its brutal laws.

Basma’s father, 55, a physician, crosses about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to the mountains near the province of Dahuk in the Kurdistan region to secure coverage for his mobile phone to call his daughter in Baghdad.