This autobiographical account conveys the brutal experiences of a young Ezidi woman while she was held in captivity by ISIS forces. Badeeah was 18 when Daesh soldiers attacked her village in Iraq, killing the men and abducting the women and children. Badeeah pretended that her very young nephew, Eivan, was her son and that she was an older, married woman. This ruse, however, only offered a slight reprieve; she soon became a sex slave, traded between various captors. Badeeah's deep faith and spirituality gave her the strength to keep her hope alive through several agonizing months, until both she and Eivan escaped from the cruel al-Amriki American ISIS officer known as the Sheik of Aleppo. Badeeah and Eivan fled across the border into Turkey, where they were reunited with some family members. Badeeah is a real person, and while her story has been slightly fictionalized, her graphic descriptions bring home the horrors of the Ezidi genocide. Badeeah currently resides in Germany, but the fates of her parents, siblings, and neighbors remain unknown.

This book chronicles the traumatic story of Ahmed, a young Ezidi woman who was abducted by Islamic State group forces from her village in northern Iraq and subsequently forced into sexual slavery. Ahmed's ordeal began at age 18, when IS' army rolled into her native village of Kocho, thwarting her family's attempt to seek refuge in the surrounding mountains. The village population was promptly split between the men, driven to an unknown fate, and the women and children, rounded up in a nearby school before being forced aboard trucks heading to neighboring Syria. Months of captivity in the most extreme conditions ensued before she was finally sold—alongside Navine, a friend met in captivity, and her nephew, Eivan, who she pretended was her son—to al-Amriki, an American citizen-turned-emir, a high-ranking position in IS' military hierarchy. In a succession of fortunate circumstances and bold decisions, the trio managed to escape, first from the compound where they were held captive, and then from Syria toward a Turkish refugee camp. Ahmed, reunited with what was left of her family, attempted to heal her wounds and rebuild her life. The first-person narration provides important context for those unfamiliar with the Ezidi. Readers will find it hard not to empathize and be moved by Ahmed's heart-wrenching ordeal and will likely forgive some of the book's naïve essentialisms, plot holes, and unfortunate Eurocentrisms.A grim but worthy read. (authors' note, map, epilogue) (Nonfiction. 16-adult)