The girl who survived hell

Geetu Vaid

In her much-acclaimed speech at the Golden Globe Awards recently, the winner of Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, Oprah Winfrey, lauded the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their stories as “...speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have”.

Nadia Murad has used the same tool to tell her story in The Last Girl — The story of My Captivity and Fight Against The Islamic State. The bone-chilling account of a 21-year-old caught in the trap of religious fanatics belonging to the ISIS who use her a sex slave is enough to give goose bumps to all those indulging in debates on human rights in the cozy comfort of the so-called civilised world.

Belonging to the Yazidi community, a religious minority in war-torn Iraq, is the “crime” for which Murad is captured by ISIS militants, while six of her brothers and old mother are killed. The genocide in Kocho village in northern Iraq is frightening not only because of the brutality let loose by bigots, but also because of its proximity in time.

While reading about the siege of her idyllic village Kocho and the fear that overpowers helpless villagers as they await help from Kurdish Peshmerga and others nearby, one can’t help but stop, to remember what was happening in our lives in August of 2014. The genocide, happening in the second decade of the 21st century in a part of digitally connected global village, without international outrage is enough to makes one feel guilty.

Murad’s story will jerk the readers out of their complacent cocoons wherein the news of genocide, kidnappings and rapes of girls and slaves being sold like cattle don’t lead to collective action.

Murad writes in one of the chapters expressing her angst over the way Sunni Muslims carried on with their routine lives despite knowing about the atrocities that the ISIS terrorists were committing on Yazidis and other minorities in their towns. “… May be if some people in Mosul had gone into the streets and shouted, ‘I am a Muslim, and what you are demanding of us is not true Islam’, the Iraqi forces and the Americans would have gone in earlier, with help from the people living there, or smugglers working to free Yazidi girls could have expanded their networks and gotten us out by handfuls instead of one at a time like a dripping faucet. But instead they let us scream in the slave market and did nothing.”

Murad, a simple girl, who nursed dreams of becoming a history teacher or open a beauty salon, was one of the thousands of Yazidi girls who were “picked” up by ISIS and used as sabiyya (slaves) as they were kuffar who could be sold and abused with something of a religious licence. Being bought by a powerful ISIS militant and forced to convert to Islam before being raped, however, was just the beginning of her torment as she was subjected to inhuman treatment and was even ‘punished’ with a gang rape for trying to escape.

Thereon it was a long, painful journey for her wherein she was shuttled like cattle from one terrorist to another, from one town to the other in Iraq. One gets a peek into the psyche of a trapped girl feeling lost without her family and completely at the mercy of her captors whom she hates but has no way of escaping. The heartrending account makes several portions of the book too painful to read.

Murad’s narrative doesn‘t let the reader forget even for a second that it is a real-life story and not a work of fiction. The accounts of her sisters Adkee and Dimal, niece Katherine, sister-in-law Jilan are equally moving as each of the trapped girls fight not only for personal freedom but also for that of others like her.

But the book is not all about atrocities. Besides giving a first-hand account of what ISIS has done in Iraq, Murad also provides insights on the life, culture and philosophy of Yazidis and the political scenario in Iraq and Kurdistan. Her account of life in refugee camps is equally moving. Her escape might have saved her from physical abuse but the mental torture continues as the surviving members of her family live in a refugee camp dependent on aid and petty jobs. All this is a blow to the self respect and dignity of the proud Yazidi community yearning to return to their villages and home, Murad sketches this pain vividly.

The spirit, spunk and the survival instinct of this young girl is, however, the most striking part of the book, something that elevates it from a mere journal to an inspiring and motivating story. Murad’s determination and grit not only made her survive the worst and achieve a daring escape to Kurdistan, but has also made her an ambassador for thousands of girls of her community and her people whose lives have been shattered and ruined by ISIS. Her endeavour to seek justice and get ISIS terrorists punished for crimes against Yazidis in Iraq is heroic. “I want(ed) to look the men, who raped me, in the eye and see them brought to justice. More than anything else, I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.” Here’s a woman who lost everything but still stayed strong to share her ordeal and fight for justice. This is what makes The Last Girl a remarkable book.

You can help Nadia with her mission to bring the ISIS to justice at http://www.nadiamurad.org