By Khalid Taalo
Survivors with Broken Wings is the title of my second book published in Arabic by Rudaw Research Center about a number of female Yezidi captives of ISIS. My first book, The Nights of Pain, was the story of Layla Taalo, my own sister.
When a writer decides to write about his own sister in an ISIS prison it becomes a unique experience in the world of literature.
My second book was even a bigger challenge. I write the story of four women from my own family who were taken captive by ISIS and later rescued.
One of them is Amshi, my brother Dakhil's wife, Hiyam, the wife of my brother Marwan whom he married after she was rescued from an ISIS prison, and Suhaila and Shayma, my own two nieces.
This book is the story of those women and my conversations with them about their ordeal, imprisonment and life of captivity. This is a story for the Yezidi community themselves and the outside world.
My closeness to these victims helped me break the walls of shame and fear and tell the whole world in all honesty the story of the women in my family.
This book is testimony to their capture by ISIS on August 3, 2014 and the subsequent torture, degradation, rape and enslavement that they endured.
Hearing these stories your heart will weep before the eyes do. Yes, with every line I wrote tears trickled down my face, but I kept going and I kept writing so that the entire world knows the savagery of the Islamic State.
What ISIS did to the Yezidi women and girls cannot be hidden. More than 6,000 Yezidi women, girls, men and boys were killed, abducted, enslaved, imprisoned or are still missing.
Sitting with these women and hearing their stories would transport you to the darkest moments of life under ISIS. Many underage girls were violently raped by ISIS militants. They were forced into group dances naked or group sex and they were drugged before some of these horrifying events.
The women in my family are still hesitant with deep fear and shame in their hearts and tones, but they broke the silence to tell the world their own story and the cruelty of the Islamic State.
Survivors with Broken Wings is published by Rudaw Research Center
Publisher: Rojhelat, 2018
262 Pages
By Khalid Taalo
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