A life torn apart

Author : Nadia Murad
Title : The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State
Published : 09/11/2017
Pages : 320
Genre : Autobiography
Publisher : Virago

     A Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the first Goodwill Ambassador the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations and winner of the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, Nadia Murad is a courageous young woman who has endured unimaginable tragedy (losing eighteen members of her family) and degradation through sexual enslavement to ISIS. But she has fought back. This inspiring memoir takes us from her peaceful childhood in a remote village in Iraq through loss and brutality to safety in Germany. Courage and testimony can change the world: this is one of those books.

 

     I must confess my knowledge of Islamic state was limited to what I had seen on the nightly news. The reports of atrocities committed by them were always shocking. But I never really showed much more interest than that. So when I came across this book by Nadia Murad I thought maybe it was time to delve a little deep into the subject.

     Murad grew up in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq. Throughout the first part of the book, she gives us insight into her life before ISIS turned up to the village. This was a happy for all intents and purposes a good life. She paints a warm image of friends and family and also of her religion Yazidi. I knew nothing about the Yazidi infect if you had asked me before reading this I wouldn't have even known it existed. She showed me a world of peaceful people who do there best to support and look after one another. Despite her father marrying someone else they banded together and seemed content and happy.

     With the arrival of ISIS her life became one of fear and horrors. I cannot fathom why anyone would do to a person what they did to her. This belief that somehow the  Yazidi people a less than human. That the can be killed or enslaved with impunity is one that brought me so much sadness and anger. She recounts with excruciating detail what she had to endure at the hands of these men.  There were times when I had to stop reading and let my mind settle again before I could go back to the text. On top of all this, I find it staggering that the wife's and mothers of these men seemed to care little for the fate of these women.  Believing that what these men where doing was justified by there religion. She also takes of the constant pressure to convert to Islam and renounce there own religion as it was seen as devil worship. ISIS seems to bend the word of the Koran to justify their actions and when that does work they simply break the rules.

     Through the final chapters of this book, she recounts her eventual escape to freedom. Even while complete mental and physically drained. That in the heart of a groups of people that want nothing more than to wipe her people off the map she managed to find some good people. It was hard for me to imagine what I would do if someone showed up at my door begging for help knowing that if I was found out it would mean my death. Would I, in fact, be brave enough to do it anyway. I hope that despite this I would do it anyway.

     This is book I think everyone should read. It is both humbling and inspiring to Follow Murad on her journey. By no means is this a book an easy read and nor should it be. The subject matter is heavy and I have a feeling will be stuck in my mind for a long time. The bravery this woman shows is one the truly astounds me. As she says her self she longs for the day she can stand in a court and look her captures in the face and say yes these and the men who raped and abused me. Even now she is out there fighting for the right of all the other Yazidi women who went through what she did.

     I have spoken of ISIS quite a bit throughout this review but for me, the focus should be on Murad. She is a woman that trough the reading of this book I have come to respect deeply. No one should have to go through anything thing she did. But she did and came out the other side with a determination to make the world a better place. And in the telling of her story, she has given names and faces to the thing I see on the news.