“Before they lay a finger on us, we’ll take our own lives.” The author, Farida Khalaf (not her real name), is a Yazidi of 17 who tries to do just that. She knows that if she is raped her family is shamed.
She and many others had been seized from her mountain village in northern Iraq in 2014 by Islamic State invaders who killed her father and brother. She and others were enslaved by terrorists – terrorists in the classic sense of the word. Because terror is what these young women experienced on a daily basis – near starvation, severe beatings, brutal rapes and being put in constant fear.
And after miraculously escaping from the Islamic State prison to a safe refugee camp, she suffers the shame of incomprehension by some Yazidis. Although a harrowing story it is also an uplifting one as it is truly a triumph of the human spirit over terror.
