Nadia Murad (2017), The
Last Girl, Virago, pp. 306
This is the inspiring story of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi
girl born in rural Iraq, her extra-ordinary escape from sexual slavery by the Islamic
State (IS) and her ongoing battle against sexual violence in war-torn regions
as a Nobel laureate and an Ambassador of Peace. Born in the village of Kojo in
Iraq, Murad led the ordinary life of Yazidi women with dreams and hopes for a peaceful
future even as the rumblings of war and ethnic cleansing was all around.
Gradually, what was commonplace - a family outing, harvest in the village field,
pilgrimage to a holy shrine and communal celebration become more and more difficult
as a minority community in a country increasingly defined by a narrow
definition of nationalism.
As friends turn unreliable and strangers surround
their lives, everything Murad and her family knew as a way of life comes to a
standstill. She loses most of her family and her village overnight in a mass
massacre and young girls and women are abducted as sex slaves and sold through
an unbreakable chain of buyers and tormentors by the IS. In a first-person
account, Murad details the harrowing sexual, mental and spiritual abuse as a
woman and minority citizen as she is held captive and exchanged for money all across
IS-held Iraq.
Throughout this inhuman and terrifying ordeal, Murad
clings to the comforts of a happy past spent among her people and that of a
gritty future she is determined to make for herself. She has to grieve for her
lost self even as she mourns the loss of others. She has to define the meaning and
purpose of her life from the searing pain of her past. She has to make home in
a new country and fight for the rights of others like her. The strongest motivation
to do so is the determination that she should be the last girl to go through such
gruesome struggle for dignity and self.
I read and re-read this overwhelming story over a
period of many days. The journey with her is filled with deep darkness and absolute
light as she emerges alive and takes on the mantle of a survivor. It is baptism
by fire that we all need to understand the kind of torture women and children
go through amidst war and conflict.
