The Last Girl

4.5 stars

First hand account of the genocide and atrocities committed by ISIS against the religious minority of Yazidis in Northern Iraq. Murad tells us of her upbringing, Yazidic traditions, Iraq's many communities divided by religion and ethnicity, the tumultuous years of the Iraq war, the rise of ISIS. In 2014 ISIS takes her village, kills most of the men, and takes her and all young females to become sex slaves for Islamic State militants in Mosul.

A hard book to read. Not the best written book. But absolutely worth it.

Very chilling and conflicting: Murad first had a hard time talking about what happened to her, as victims of rape bring shame to families in her culture, and honor killings do sometimes happen.

I really had to sit with my thoughts on this one. It's hard to call this a ‘good' book. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to read due to the subject matter, but well-written and easy to follow. The evil that befell Nadia's community at the hands of ISIS is hard to distinguish from the evil that befell so many communities at the behest of Hitler. Those of us who live comfortably in the Western word like to look back on the events preceeding the Holocaust and pooh-pooh how anyone could have let all that happen, and yet... here we are. The only difference is in size and scope, but the motivations are the same - and if ISIS had the means, they'd gladly kill as many as the Nazis, and then some.

All that said, there are two things that bothered me about Nadia's telling of her story. One is that she repeatedly places blame on the Peshmerga who failed to protect the Yazidis, while completely glossing over the fact that the Yazidis - at least as she tells it for her town - effectively did nothing to protect themselves. I don't condone the abandonment of ones allies, but I also don't understand how the fighters of the Peshmerga bear a greater responsibility for laying their lives on the line in defense of the Yazidis than the Yazidis bore for themselves. They were armed. They had the means to resist. They chose to gamble on the goodwill of ISIS and it ended really, really poorly. Again, there are many parallels to the Holocaust, and I'm not trying to victim-blame. If she blamed no one, I'd have less of a problem. Since she blames the Peshmerga, it makes me scratch my head.

The second thing that bothers me is that Nadia portrays the Yazidis as a generally peaceful, accepting people for whom things like honor killings are an uncondoned anomaly. That may well be true, but I have seen news reports lately that due to the refusal to accept anyone into their communities who is not born to two Yazidi parents, they are forcing the rape survivors who bore children to ISIS fighters to either leave their communities or abandon their children as orphans. I don't expect Nadia to single-handedly solve all the problems of the Middle East, or even of her own Yazidi community, but I feel like that's kind of A Big Deal to not mention. And, to be fair, it may be something she is addressing separate from the book - I can't say, as I haven't sought out her recent speeches. It was, I suppose, just a notable omission that left me feeling distrustful of her bias about Yazidi beliefs.

You should read this book. You will not enjoy it.