In
“The
Last Girl,”
Nadia Murad tells the story of her captivity along with other members
of her Yazidi village of Kocho. It is an intimate account of what she
calls “a slow, painful death — of the body and the soul.”
As an
insider, she is able to present a full portrait of her people as more
than just victims. She writes with understandable anger but also with
love, flashes of humor and dignity.
In telling her story, Murad also
offers glimpses of what has been wrought over recent decades in Iraq.
The
Kurdish-speaking Yazidis live in northern Iraq, largely in
underprivileged villages around Mount Sinjar.
Most of their Kurdish
and Arab neighbors view them with disdain, and they have long been
persecuted for their religious beliefs. (Their monotheistic religion
has elements in common with many other Middle Eastern faiths,
including Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.)
The
Yazidis inhabit disputed lands that Arabs and Kurds battle over, and
they have often been caught between those competing nationalist
ambitions. Murad writes that Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and
Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party pressured Yazidis to
embrace identities as Arabs and Kurds, respectively, in their bids to
assert claims to the land. (Both Arab and Kurdish nationalism imagine
a basis for belonging in a most limited sense; their insistence on
ethnic homogeneity, in a land where there is none, is doomed to leave
out many.)
Internationally
and in the region, very little attention was paid to the Yazidis —
until the Islamic State came for them. Then they quickly became the
subject of much reporting.
The interest in the Yazidis, like stories
about Middle Eastern Christians, perplexed many who had watched for
decades as Iraqis experienced unrelenting horrors that traumatized
much larger populations, with little global outcry.
Resentment even
arose over what seemed like an outsize focus on the suffering of
minorities when, in absolute numbers, Muslims make up by far the most
victims of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Shiite militias and others
committing violence in the name of Islam.
Of
course, it’s important to pay close attention to what happens to
minorities in all nations: They are the canaries in the coal mine, a
gauge of tolerance, inclusiveness and equality in any society.
But
many observers close to the region are wary of giving a platform to
stories of minority persecution in the Middle East, out of fear that
such tales can demonize Islam by pinning any shortcomings of
majority-Muslim societies on the religion itself.
Regrettably, these
stories are frequently shared for just such purposes, and those who
disseminate them lack a sincere concern for the victims. This is true
of both Western Islamophobes and Middle Eastern sectarians.
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Original Review on: www.washingtonpost.com
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