APRIL 2021 - AudioFile
Baraka Rahmani brings emotional sensitivity to her narration of the memoir of Badeeah Ahmed, an 18-year-old Yazidi woman who was kidnapped and held in captivity by Isis forces in Iraq. Rahmani is gifted at delivering context. In matter-of-fact tones she weaves information about Badeeah’s family, her small town of Kocho, and the Yazidi people, a Northern Iraqi sect with a unique and powerful spirituality. This spirituality, her mother’s love, and protecting her nephew, whom she nurtured as her son, sustains her in captivity. While the story is in no way gratuitous in its details, Rahmani’s emotive narration reveals the horrific torture Badeeah faces as a sex slave, along with her courage in escaping and healing from the trauma she experienced. A poignant, gripping listen. S.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
School Library Journal
★ 03/01/2019
Gr 6–10—This is a story of terror, suffering, loss, survival, and hope, but most of all it is a human story that makes the stuff of international headlines deeply personal and immediately real. It focuses on Badeeah, a teenage girl living in the Ezidi village of Kocho in Iraq, using her own words and memories. In August 2014, Badeeah's village is invaded by ISIS militants. The women of the village are separated from the men and sent away to the nearby town of Solakh. Separated from her sisters and mother, the young woman must protect her nephew even as she is sent to Syria and sold as a sabaya, or war slave. Depictions of murders, beatings, kidnappings, and sexual assaults appear throughout this book. However, the grim depictions of brutality and destruction are interspersed with Badeeah's memories of her loved ones, descriptions of the other girls and women that she encounters, and the folktales that she recounts to sustain (and distract) her nephew Eivan. The narrative is authentic, even graphic, in its detail—but it is also poetic and beautiful. VERDICT Though consideration should be made for readers' maturity and sensitivity due to subject matter, this first-person narrative account of a young woman's escape from ISIS is highly recommended for all junior high and high school library collections.—Kelly Kingrey-Edwards, Blinn Junior College, Brenham, TX
APRIL 2021 - AudioFile
Baraka Rahmani brings emotional sensitivity to her narration of the memoir of Badeeah Ahmed, an 18-year-old Yazidi woman who was kidnapped and held in captivity by Isis forces in Iraq. Rahmani is gifted at delivering context. In matter-of-fact tones she weaves information about Badeeah’s family, her small town of Kocho, and the Yazidi people, a Northern Iraqi sect with a unique and powerful spirituality. This spirituality, her mother’s love, and protecting her nephew, whom she nurtured as her son, sustains her in captivity. While the story is in no way gratuitous in its details, Rahmani’s emotive narration reveals the horrific torture Badeeah faces as a sex slave, along with her courage in escaping and healing from the trauma she experienced. A poignant, gripping listen. S.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
