Book Review : The Last Girl by Nadia Murad
I am glad I read this book, but I will always wish the world wasn’t so cruel a place, a place that gives birth to such painful works.
My Rating: 5/5
This book is a pit — deep and dark — that swallows the reader inside and contorts the heart and soul a little, forever. And when one finally finishes the book and looks up at the sun, (s)he feels it to be a little too bright for the world just described in the pages.
This book is like a mirror to the world, and it is like a flashlight for the daytime — making us look at the world, stripped of all illusions, beyond what little fragments touch our cooped-up life.
However, despite the darkness shrouding the pages of this book, I’m glad I read this one. In all honesty (and at the expense of sounding a little cheesy/overdramatic), the darkness made me appreciate the light. My necessities are luxuries to a fragment of the population and my biggest troubles and worries are not worth a second thought to some. [I was awed by the fact how the Nadia longed to go back to her simple village life after everything; it was the simple village life she cherished above all else — something city people might find it a little difficult to understand.] [Perhaps, the safest home is just where your friends, family, childhood memories are.]
Within the comforts of a cocoon spun by love, laughter and excess, I was oblivious (or maybe, I did know the stories and headlines but had never connected with them on a personal level, before reading this book) of the realities of so many (or few; doesn’t matter! One is too many, when we’re talking about human lives and rights). This book is a moral compass; and it’s a spiritual journey. It’s a blatant reminder of all the corrections the world order still needs, all the flaws that humanity still needs to fix, and the urgency to shed off indolence and imbecility for more actions and dialogue.
This book tells the story of Nadia Murad, a young woman born in the destitute village of Kocho to a family teetering on edge. Soon after her birth, her parents separate and she, along with her mother and five/six brothers are forced to move out. Her illiterate mother who has never ventured beyond the little world of her kitchen and field is forced to take on the role of the breadwinner of the family. And I still think (and forever will) of her mother with respect and admiration. Polygamy is nothing short of cruel (:/) — when a wife who devotes her entire existence to the household chores of a stranger whom her father married off to at a tender age for good riddance, finds the stranger — whom she now calls her “husband” — bringing home another woman as his second wife, it not just hurts a woman’s self-worth but also undermines the importance of her role in society and the household. The same society that teaches a woman to be dependent on a man ever since she was born, then goes on to justify a man’s actions when he no longer wants the woman to depend on him. And just on a whim, and without considering the repercussions of his actions (or maybe, he is fully aware but just doesn’t care enough), the husband decides to separate. The woman’s voice or opinion is deemed unworthy of paying heed to. Polygamy also affects the lives, minds and tender hearts of children. It forces them to see things their hearts are too tender to witness/experience. That’s a social order still prevalent in many parts of the world but so many of us fail to acknowledge it. When we don’t acknowledge the existence and fallacies of such a doomed social system, we don’t act and in many remote corners of the world, household chores are a female’s domain, right from the moment of her birth; marriages are forged by society and elders and the consent of women isn’t desired; keeping away women from literacy is hence, considered a prudent option for it allows her to spend her time and efforts in maternal care and household chores. No woman wants to live in a world like this, but many women do.
We also tend to take our (mostly) secular, diverse yet harmonious society for granted. I take pride in my country, India, for its commendable unity in such diversity. I celebrate Eid and Diwali with my Muslim friends, I went to a Catholic school where I would pray to Jesus thrice a day and partake in singing Christmas carols, only to return home to attend my grandmother’s evening pooja (Hindu prayers). Some of my best friends are punjabis and Jains. My punjabi friends would indulge in a mutton korma while I’d be content with my vegetarian paneer tikkas and garlic naans. My Jain friend would specifically ask the waiter to not put any garlic or naan in his dal, and we’d all respect his choice. Such a social arrangement is not just unique to me. It’s a normality for a majority of Indians, and it’s beautiful. We occasionally try each others’ customs and cultures (I would often imitate my Muslim friends while they offered their daily Namaaz and they would join us while we decorated the house with diyas on Diwali. I also remember decorating the Christmas tree with them every year). Different hues harmoniously blend together to conjure up one, new and beautiful color. This heterogeneity is accepted and appreciated by many, and advocated and necessitated by others.
Contrary to notions of being only a Muslim country, Iraq is a diverse country too — with populations of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Iraqi Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and Arabs (a beautiful blend of ethnicities and religions). Unfortunately, the once peaceful co-existence of these diverse groups is today simmered with tensions stirred by the men on top (I still do think most civilians won’t ever want a homogenous State). But national leadership interests sometimes come in contradictions and conflict with individual interests and social harmony. Sometimes, what countries and their top leaders do is not what a majority of their citizens want. The reality of a nation portrayed to the outer world is far from the truth. All civilians want peace and harmony. But power is an enticement and an addiction that makes some morph history, culture and religion to personal advantages.
I think Nadia’s mom is as worthy of respect and admiration as much as is a valiant soldier on the battlefield. She fought all invisible forces of society and its expectations (and all imposed hurdles), just out of love for her children, just so she could feed them and give them a life that every child on earth naturally has a right to. She’s a warrior.
Despite being a family of 15+ members staying in a single decrepit house, love and laughter flowed like magic and held all members together. They cared for each other, they loved each other.
Nadia explains, in excruciating detail, how a ‘normal’ life felt like at Kocho — walking miles to reach a school only to be taught a propagandist curriculum, all the while being nagged by the guilt of leaving her brothers and sisters to toil at the family field.
A life where the present mattered more than the future, and feeding bellies today was the predominant thought in everyone’s minds — sanctions hurt civilians more than they deterred autocratic leaders. Reading about her life felt like a slap in the face, for I’d always thought that long gone were the days of scarcity; this was the age of food surpluses and prosperity and democracy. However, there are still places on earth where people live lives the others read about only in history books.
Another tiny yet exponential factor — in a single sentence Nadia conveys how much she loved studying, regardless of the explicit biases of the State-sponsored curriculum. And that’s the beauty of education. It enlightens young minds to be curious. It expands their world and their world views. It enables an adolescent in a secluded village of Kocho, in a war-torn country of Iraq, to think. To think beyond fixed rules and dogmas and into abstractions and contradictions. To think to make things work. It unleashes the power of the human mind and fuels the curious spirit. It gives purpose.
When the village of Kocho is seized by black-clad terrorists, brutality darkens the world and plagues the human soul. The bodies of men and the souls of women are tortured and it’s painful to even write or think about it. Nadia is captured and taken as a Sabbiya (sex slave). Her body is commoditized. But the desire for freedom assuages all doubts and fears and she manages to flee away to safety. Fleeing away from her home to somewhere else safe; if only the irony in this sentence was less hurtful, I’d write a paragraph to expand on it. Nadia details out the scarring experience in excruciating detail, and just for that — she has all my respect and love. I couldn’t get myself to read about what she actually lived.
After being traded from one man to another, Nadia finally escapes and by a fortunate stroke, knocks on Nasser and his family’s door. I didn’t think it’s possible to respect any set of strangers as much as I respect Nasser and his family now, even though I haven’t Met them, even though I can’t face to them. They are the lotus in a mucky pond; they are that one slightly visible star on a cloudy night. They help her. Because of them, the world had one less victim and one more survivor. They saved her.
They decide to hide Nadia in their house, arrange forged identity papers for her and take her to Kurdistan. Nasser accompanies Nadia on this journey to Kurdistan, as her husband. The friendship that evolves between Nasser and Nadia is beautiful and inspiring. Such selflessness, such compassion. A human taking care of another human, not as part of a quid pro quo transaction but because it’s what makes us humane.
Nadia acknowledges their sacrifices and efforts to save her but she does raise a pertinent point — why was her knock on the door a call to action for them and why were they sitting inactive, oblivious of the atrocities around them? This is a complex question, spanning multiple perspectives. Sometimes, we don’t feel to act unless we feel connected to an issue, or unless we don’t have any other option but to act or unless the fear that kept us hidden is overwhelmed by a feeling of compassion and rising conscience to do what’s right. For some, this happens early and for some, it takes time. The family could have easily refused to turn down Nadia’s plea for help or worse, they could have turned her to the terrorists in return for money. But they didn’t do it, and that very act commands respect. After rescuing Nadia, they say they won’t stop with her and continue saving girls. That’s an appreciated change of pace.
However, on a very humane level, all this is still no excuse for the many years of silence that preceded the knock on the door. It’s no excuse for Nasser’s family and it’s no excuse for the thousands of other such families going on about their lives, blinded by fear. The human urge to be humane should have been, and should be, the strongest. Countless more lives could have been saved had more families been like Nasser’s and had Nasser and the others had acted a little earlier.
Let’s talk about Nadia, our central character now. Nadia is a strong and a courageous and a sensitive and a vulnerable girl. Her life wasn’t easy before the seize of Kocho but it was safe and filled with love. Her life after the siege was a plague on her soul but she rose up better. That requires strength of another dimension. But from beginning to end, she was just an ordinary girl faced with horrific circumstances and she set herself apart by fighting back, in whatever way she could. All girls she mentions in the book tried to resist their captors in whatever big, or small, way they could think of and I think that makes all these ordinary girls wonder women.
I like the narrative style of this book, because it felt honest. Even though the book wasn’t actually penned down by Nadia, the book still manages to give us a sneak peak inside Nadia’s mind and spins us around — albeit a bit dizzily — her thoughts and emotions, the candid articulation of which, adds to the power of this book. There are moments when she thinks of giving up and there are moments when she persists and prevails upon her fears and doubts. There are moments she’s joyous and there are moments where she’s crushed. But she lives through them all. The little moments she sneaks with her sisters in interludes, when’s she’s not being parceled off from one man to another, our sad and happy, crushing and uplifting.
When all’s over, Nadia goes on to make a life for herself in Germany, dedicating it to those for whom it’s not all over yet.
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