As The Kite Runner and The Swallows of Kabuldid for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, this slim, profound novel illuminates the plight of those living under the Islamic State as well as the spirit of the Yazidi people. Today is Nazo’s wedding. Today she will set herself on fire. Nazo Heydo has drenched herself in kerosene and is ready to light the match in order to avoid marrying the Syrian … order to avoid marrying the Syrian elder who bought her from Islamic State officials. Her forced marriage is just the latest horror in a journey that began when ISIS fighters surrounded her peaceful village, demanding spoils and the Yazidis’ conversion to Islam. Rebuffed, they took away her father, brothers, and the love of her life in their pickup trucks with the other village men. The women and children they enslaved and separated, transporting the younger women to be trafficked for the pleasure of their soldiers or sold for money. Only Nazo’s wits and daring have saved her from further abuse or death, yet each escape leads to some new horror.
Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, Soz, another young Yazidi, flees her family’s farm when she sees the black-flagged pickups approach. She manages to reach Mount Sinjar, where she joins the Yazidi fighters who have allied with the Kurdish Peshmerga. Her journey will lead back to her homeland to do battle against ISIS.
What Comes with the Dust is a powerful novel about genocide and the will to survive as well as a testament to struggles of the Yazidi people.
more
The author delves into the history of northern Iraq and one tribe of people, the Kurds, one faction of which is
known as Yazidi. Some Yazidi have blond hair but the predominant feature of the Yazidi is blue eyes. Additionally, they do not practice the Muslim religion; they practice a religion which actually has some similarities to Christianity.
They live a simple existence in the north of Iraq until ISIS comes to the region. The author follows the lives of two people who had hopes and dreams prior to the ISIS invasion of their homeland. As they abandon their original dreams and modify their existence to the reality of their situation, they rediscover in themselves a new purpose for their lives, one which finally gives meaning to their existence.
This is not a “happy” book but it is an important one because it shows what people will go through to protect their families and loved ones.
Rich in culture and characters, and jarring in its account of jihadist brutality, it is a story that keeps the reader turning the pages to the end.
In this timely and important novel, Gharbi Mustafa unveils the hidden suffering of the Yazidi people at the hands of the brutal and merciless terrorist regime of ISIS. What Comes from the Dust is a testament to the indomitable power of love and the unconquerable persistence of the human spirit in the face of the most unimaginable evil.
How much suffering we human beings inflict on others! A young woman is ready to burn herself to death rather than be forced into a marriage she does not want. All around her people are losing family, friends, and homes. This is a novel about the Yazidi people, based on interviews done by the author. This book will touch your heart.
This is a hard book to read as the content has to do with war and the genocide of the Yazidi people in Iraq, by ISIS, the Islamic State.
This book follows a couple of people, but one of the main ones is Nazo, who lives on a farm with her parents, outside a small village, and whose parents have set up a marriage for her with a cousin of hers.
Nazo has other plans because she has fallen in love with Azad a young man who had come to her village to teach, and they were going to elope and make their way to Europe.
The morning they were to leave, she hasn’t heard anything from him, and shortly after she finds out why, ISIS fighters are in her town rounding up people, separating the women and children from the men, killing the men that they could and taking the women, for their pleasure and for sex trade. The woman were told if they did not convert to Sunni Islam they would be killed.
This story is a hash reality of what happens during war, and the sad look at the cruelty, that one group can bestow on another just because they do not have the same beliefs.
It is a story, that gives us a look a the horrors of war but also of the resilience people have to continue on in search of the good, but also a story of love, friendships, and hope.
It is a story that keeps you reading and cheering for the main characters. It is a book one should read to understand the conflicts in that area.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for the ARC of this book.