Nadia Murad had luck on her side the day she escaped ISIS. The door was unlocked, and no guards surrounded the area. She says their negligence could have stemmed from the assumption that she was too weak, both physically and mentally, to attempt an escape. To add to the luck factor, the family she eventually sought help from while on the move turned out to be empathetic rather than deceitful, a fortunate outcome not experienced by most Yazidi women who tried to escape.

Keeping luck aside, Nadia exhibited a quality that day uncommon for someone in her position – courage. To muster the strength and determination to capitalize on an opportunity, especially when you are exhausted, is heart-wrenchingly admirable.

The Last Girl chronicles the harrowing journey of a woman who had to go through hell on earth as the perpetrators sought heaven on “the other side.”

Nadia’s story serves as a lesson – never take your peace or soldiers of the nation for granted. You are safe because the soldiers of your country are spending countless hours and energy to ensure no harm comes your way. You realize the importance of this only when you read and research extensively, go through history, and pay attention to actions.

The book is heartbreaking. You feel incredible sadness for Yazidis. But you also feel sorry for the people who get radicalized to the extent that they end up thinking violence is the answer. How can we save them? How can we protect our youngsters? How can we extinguish their hate and make them realize we are all, ultimately, children of the same universe?

Reader discretion is advised: The following content may contain sensitive or mature themes that could be distressing to some individuals.

Here are some of the quotes from the book that caught my attention:

People say that Yazidism isn’t a “real” religion because we have no official book like the Bible or the Koran. Because we pray toward the sun, we are called pagans. Our belief in reincarnation, which helps us cope with death and keep our community together, is rejected. Some Yazidis avoid certain foods, like lettuce, and are mocked for their strange habits. Others don’t wear blue because they see it as the color of Tawusi Melek and too holy for a human, and even that choice is ridiculed.

We (Yazidis) would, over generations, get used to a small pain or injustice until it became normal enough to ignore. I imagine this must be why we had come to accept certain insults, like our food being refused, that probably felt like a crime to whoever first noticed it. Even the threat of another firman was something Yazidis had gotten used to, although that adjustment was more like a contortion. It hurt.

I used to pray for my own future—to finish school and open my salon—and the futures of my siblings and my mother. Now I pray for the survival of my religion and my people.

For a young Yazidi girl, life only got better after the Americans and the Kurds took over. Kocho was expanding, I was going to school, and we were gradually lifting ourselves out of poverty. A new constitution gave more power to the Kurds and demanded that minorities be part of the government. I knew that my country was at war, but it didn’t seem like it was our fight.

I still think that being forced to leave your home out of fear is one of the worst injustices a human being can face. Everything you love is stolen, and you risk your life to live in a place that means nothing to you and where, because you come from a country now known for war and terrorism, you are not really wanted. So you spend the rest of your years longing for what you left behind while praying not to be deported.

Rape has been used throughout history as a weapon of war. I never thought I would have something in common with women in Rwanda—before all this, I didn’t know that a country called Rwanda existed—and now I am linked to them in the worst possible way, as a victim of a war crime that is so hard to talk about that no one in the world was prosecuted for committing it until just sixteen years before ISIS came to Sinjar.

Everyone thinks Yazidi women are weak because we are poor and live outside the cities, and I have heard people say female fighters with ISIS are, in their own way, proving their strength among men. But none of them—not Morteja’s mother, not even a suicide bomber—was a fraction as strong as my mother, who overcame so many struggles and who never would have let another woman be sold into slavery, no matter her religion.

Fear was better. With fear, there is the assumption that what is happening isn’t normal. Hopelessness is close to death.

I was quickly learning that my story, which I still thought of as a personal tragedy, could be someone else’s political tool, particularly in a place like Iraq. I would have to be careful what I said, because words mean different things to different people, and your story can easily become a weapon to be turned on you.

Every time I tell my story, I feel that I am taking some power away from the terrorists.

I have begged Sunni leaders to more strongly denounce ISIS publicly; they have so much power to stop the violence. I have worked alongside all the men and women with Yazda to help survivors like me who have to live every day with what we have been through, as well as to convince the world to recognize what happened to the Yazidis as genocide and to bring ISIS to justice.

I told them I wasn’t raised to give speeches. I told them that it was in their power to help protect vulnerable people all over the world. I told them that I wanted to look the men who raped me in the eye and see them brought to justice. More than anything else, I said, I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.