This book is a harrowing, but a courageous account of brutality and fear.
It is an autobiographical account of Nadia Murad who lived a simple, pleasant life in Kocho, a small village in Northern Iraq. Belonging to the Yazidi community, her only dreams of the future consisted of Kocho and marriage.
But the dreams shatter with the incoming of ISIS into their lives. Taken captive by them in August 2014, this book is her tale of torment and torture in vivid spine-chilling detail.
Six of her brothers killed and her mother soon after, Nadia is taken to Mosul and forced into the slave trade.
Fear lurks on each page of the book. When ISIS start coming closer to Kocho, her village in Iraq, a sense of eeriness creeps in. Locked in their own houses, streets and village, the cloud of terror hangs high….. wating for the inevitable.
And when in the magic moment, she jumps over the wall, it is a heart-stopping moment of triumph and freedom.
Hats off to Nadia and the entire Yazidi community for bearing the anguish and surviving to tell this tale.
Nadia Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 jointly with Denis Mukwege for ‘efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of ear and armed conflict’.
Today, she lives in Germany.
Preeta Chag 