The Girl Who Escaped ISIS

Author/Guide: Farida Khalaf

Why a Booktrail?

2014: A young girl flees from her home in Syria

ISBN: 978-1784702755
Translator: Jamie Bulloch
Genre: Autobiography/memoirs

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What you need to know before your trail

In August 2014, Farida was, like any ordinary teenager, enjoying the last days of summer before her final year at school. However, her peaceful mountain village in northern Iraq was an ISIS target as their genocide against the Yazidi people began.

ISIS murdered the men and boys in the village, including Farida’s father and brother, and took the women hostage. Farida was one of them. She was held in a slave camp, in the homes of ISIS members and finally in a desert training camp. Continually she struggled, resisted and fought against her captors, showing unimaginable strength and bravery.

Eventually, Farida managed to plot her escape and fled into the desert with five young girls in her care, but defeating ISIS was just the first step in her journey. In this book she tells her remarkable and inspiring story.

Locations

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Syria
D: Raqqa

Travel Guide

Iraq

We lived in Kocho, a village on the plain to the south of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. It had 1,700 in habitants. In spring, the countryside is ablaze will all the colours of the rainbow.

The area here is dry. They have to water the garden everyday and she talks of this being one of her chores. But the farming life although tough, provides them with food and the fresh air is welcoming. Life is hard and simple, but rewarding and peaceful.

The villages close by are populated by Muslin Arabs. They are different from t the girl and her family not just because of religion but of language, customs and traditions. Children have muslim godfathers. She is told their history is one of persecution and suffering.

Lalish

The village or mystical place they make a pilgrimage too each year. It is some 150 kms from Kocho in the mountains between Dohuk and Mosul.

Syria

The bus kept going west toward the border that mu father had been guarding until recently: the border between Iraq and Syria. But it no longer existed; all the border posts had been bulldozed. Our bus continued on its way without any constraints. The “Islamic State,” as our abductors called the entity that had created, now extended across large parts of northern Iraq and northern Syria.