Yezidi Girls

Who remembers the news reports of the Yezidis captured by IS forces in Iraqi Kurdistan? brings the plight of these kidnapped girls and women sharply back into focus. In Lalish, a place of pilgrimage for Yezidis, three victims ages 15, 17 and 18 explain how their neighbors, with whom they had always lived in peace until that moment, betrayed them and handed them over to IS. With closed expressions – they never look directly into the camera – they tell of how they were separated from their family, tortured and forced to relinquish their faith. Sometimes, the inability to speak is all the answer we need, such as when the subject of sexual abuse is raised. No matter how awful their accounts are of how they managed to escape IS, these stories come as a relief. We only see smiles appear on the girls’ faces when they are performing religious rituals; happily, their fears that they wouldn’t be allowed to return to the Yezidi community proved unfounded.