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The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

Nadia Murad

Start date: June 15, 2019

Finish date: July 15, 2019

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Why we're reading this: June selection for world memoir
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What Members Thought

Jan 17, 2018 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, iraq, middle-east, true-crime, memoir, non-fiction, craziness, womens-_studies

Well, I won't put this in the military non-fiction category because Daesh are a murdering bag of bastards, only good for killing unarmed opposition, and the Yazidi didn't put up a fight. I'd call this situation a comedy of errors but there is really nothing funny about this tragic situation. It's a disaster that everyone contributed to, all the way down the line. Ms Murad starts her book with a little family background and fills us in a bit on Yazidism, a religion of which I was previously ignor Well, I won't put this in the military non-fiction category because Daesh are a murdering bag of bastards, only good for killing unarmed opposition, and the Yazidi didn't put up a fight. I'd call this situation a comedy of errors but there is really nothing funny about this tragic situation. It's a disaster that everyone contributed to, all the way down the line. Ms Murad starts her book with a little family background and fills us in a bit on Yazidism, a religion of which I was previously ignorant and now I find I am merely mystified (they pray to a peacock angel). Yazidism has no book and is passed on by word of mouth, but it has one great advantage over other religions: they don't want you. You cannot convert to Yazidism, apparently, so they don't want you. No evangelism. They are perfectly happy to live in harmony with their neighbours and produce children to help in the field but now we have too many mouths to feed so we need to grow more so we need more children to work the field...you get the picture.

Anyway, the head wizards over at the ISIS think tank decide that, since the Yazidi have no holy book, they are fair game for killing, raping, basically anything you want to do to them, so they surround the village with what amounts to lightly motorized infantry. This is where it could have got interesting, because the Yazidi are armed. It seems every Yazidi household has at least one firearm and they love to shoot them, just like every other place in the Middle East. I've heard them; they shoot at funerals, they shoot at weddings, they shoot when their soccer team wins a game. Totally ignorant of the laws of gravity, they shoot all the time. So what do the fierce Yazidi do with this armament? Some of it they turn over to ISIS, and the rest they bury! Then, in a scene eerily reminiscent of that other holocaust, they take their belongings to a collection point for selection. Women of ravishing age are put on transport. Any boy with armpit hair is sent off with the men to be machinegunned.

This is where Nadia's story begins, really. Obviously she survives, because she is pictured on the cover, but I won't tell you more than that. You will have to read it yourself, and really, you should read it. I wish the liberal fancy-boy Prime Minister of my country would read it, because maybe then he wouldn't be letting ISIS fighters back into Canada instead of putting a bounty on them like he should.

This book made me mad! At the United Nations for imposing sanctions that hurt only the people at the bottom of societal strata. At the USA for destabilising the region and then taking off at the high port, leaving weapons to the Iraqis which were then dropped and picked up by Daesh (Murad says ISIS had American weapons). I was angry at the Yazidi polygamous ways that enabled her father to take another wife to produce more kids and then house his first wife in a shed. And let's not forget a system that makes it practically impossible for a poor woman to get birth control. Or the other Muslim people who, while they maybe didn't exactly condone Daesh, didn't speak out against them. And I was especially angry at the Yazidi men who, having weapons, did not use them on those murdering black-clad monsters who had them surrounded. They might not be less dead, but they would have died fighting. They made it easy.

People in the Middle East, in general, have a tendency to be theatrically dramatic while we in the west tend to prefer a type of stoic approach to hardship. This is the only problem I had with the book: Murad seems to be either screaming, fainting or puking on every other page. Even considering that some very painful and wicked things were happening to her, it seemed a bit over the top. It certainly didn't ruin the book, which I endorse whole-heartedly.

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Nov 24, 2019 Susan rated it really liked it

Hard to fathom the depravity and cruelty of the Islamic militants, but this book gives a chilling account of one woman's capture into their slave trade. I learned a lot more than I even imagined about their interpretation of the Koran to feed their brutality. On a side note, it's almost as sad when she escaped and then had to be quiet about the rape at first, as some in her family and religion still practiced "honor" killings... ...more

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Aug 08, 2019 Andy Plonka rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: src

Neither the subject nor the outcome of this story is new, but the important part is that many young women have died as a result of the fanaticism of individuals who believe their way is the right and only way to live, and this belief needs to be dealt with.

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Jan 08, 2019 Wes F rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A crystal clear indictment of ISIS/Daesh/ISIL and any other cult capable of the kinds of actions/teachings exposed someone who experienced them first-hand. Absolutely. Sickening.

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