A victim’s comeback
When I picked up Nadia Murad’s The Last Girl, I wondered if it would be any different from other books by refugees who fled from wartorn Iraq and Syria. It is oddly familiar yet distinct enough to make it a page-turner. Ms Murad’s prose describes atrocities that have now become part of the refugee-crisis discourse. And yet, the social and cultural history of the perpetually marginalised and dwindling Yazidi community is captured well through the extraordinary life of Ms Murad.
For the uninitiated, Ms Murad survived rape and torture at the hands of Islamic State militants to become a global human rights activist, who is now working towards bringing justice to victims of genocide and human trafficking. She became the first goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking for the United Nations, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. Her story is also retold in On Her Shoulders, Ms Murad’s biography by Alexandria Bombach.
Ms Murad’s is the bold voice narrating The Last Girl. Her account begins with her childhood in Kocho, a small village in the Sinjar district of Iraq. The personal is interwoven with the political and she places her family’s commonplace challenges within the context of the conflicted Yazidi community. Both the Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds have looked at the Yazidis with suspicion and Kocho, Ms Murad’s village, was surrounded by those who considered the Yazidis kuffar, or “unbelievers or worthy of killing”. Ms Murad writes that she never thought there would be a home outside Kocho and this simplicity is beguiling especially when one looks at in context of the constantly looming violence and centuries of Yazidi persecution. And though there is simplicity, there is no room for naïveté in the narrative, a consequence of the unimaginable cruelty that Ms Murad faced at the hands of her captors.
The book is divided into three parts. Ms Murad talks about her childhood and life in Kocho in the first. This section is a priceless primer of Yazidi history and the author uses her simple filial ties to explain the traditions, superstitions and oral religious stories. Her brothers and sisters are humans first and players in the geopolitical drama later.
The second section is the most gruesome and heart wrenching. Ms Murad details how she and her sisters were taken by IS militants, sold from one soldier to another on the deep web as slaves, or sabiyyas, and were stripped of all sense of dignity, respect and belonging. The sabiyyas, though separated by these dehumanising circumstances, were united in their ghastly experiences. Ms Murad writes that every sabiyya has a story like hers. “You can’t imagine the atrocities the ISIS is capable of until you hear about them from your sisters and cousins, your neighbours and schoolmates, and you realise that it wasn’t that you were particularly unlucky... .”
Ms Murad doesn’t shy from detailing her experiences. Voices like Ms Murad’s help people understand the consequence of war. But more importantly, her account gives a spine-chilling insight into the workings of IS and their disturbed desire to gain power through sexual violence. Ms Murad’s simple and direct prose only drives this point home more strongly.
The third section is devoted to her journey to freedom and how she escaped her captors. There is no suspense here and it is a well-established fact that she escaped safely. And yet, it makes for a page-turner, especially since she did not allow the atrocities she suffered to paralyse her spirit. In the middle of the second section, she writes, “The rape was the worst part. It stripped us of our humanity and made thinking about the future — returning to Yazidi society, marrying, having children, being happy — impossible. We wished they would kill us instead.” And yet, she finds the courage to escape. She was left alone in the house of her captor with the door unlocked and with no guards only because he was sure he had broken her spirit. But, as Ms Murad says, “They thought they had me forever. They were wrong.”
The third and final section is the story of Ms Murad’s miraculous escape. She found the determination and the hope to find a better life for herself and her family. She eventually emigrated to Germany and became a human rights activist. It is here she met her lawyer Amal Clooney and together they have fought to bring world leaders to treat IS’s crimes as genocide. Her, story, she writes, is her only weapon against terrorism. “I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine,” Ms Murad concludes.
The third section leaves one wanting more detail and that is the one quibble with this book. Otherwise, Ms Murad’s voice and tone never falter and every point in her life’s story is nothing short of inspirational.
THE LAST GIRL:
My story of captivity and my fight against the Islamic State
Nadia Murad (with Jenna Krajeski) Hachette India
~499; 306 pages