Review Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper of Sinjar, Serpent’s Tail, 2018

  

The Beekeeper of Sinjar is full of heartbreaking stories of mostly Yazidis who were victims of the Islamic State takeover of northern Iraq in 2014. Author Dunya Mikhail befriended a Yazidi man named Abdullah who was helping women escape from the militants. He told her of some of the people he assisted. Many of the tales are similar but they need to be told as the community faced genocide during the war.

 

Most of the book is Mikhail calling Abdullah and he telling her of the latest person he helped escape Islamic State captivity. The stories breakdown into two general types one for women and one for men.

 

Nadia is an example. In August 2014 the Islamic State came to her village in Sinjar and she along with her family and nearly 200 others fled. They were intercepted by the Islamists who then divided the men and women and drove them to Mosul. The women were sent to Tal Afar where they were told to study the Quran and convert to Islam. Eventually they ended up in Syria where they were sold. When that happened to Nadia she was told she was now married to the Chechen man who bought her. Nadia was repeatedly raped and shared with other fighters. She was then put to work making rockets for the insurgents. Eventually she made her escape and with the help of a smuggler provided by Abdullah was able to return to Iraq and ended up in Kurdistan.

 

As for the men there was Khalid. When he heard the Islamic State was coming he fled into the mountains with about 2000 others. He walked for two weeks but the group was eventually captured. The men and women were separated with the women and children being taken away while the men were broken up into small groups, thrown into a pit and shot. Khalid was only wounded and faked his death. He found that his friend was also alive but shot in the feet and couldn’t get out of the pit. Khalid had to leave him there and eventually found an Arab family that helped him get out of Sinjar and to Kurdistan.

 

The Beekeeper of Sinjar is just full of these tales. The Islamic State considered Yazidis infidels and attempted to exterminate them. That became a sensation internationally but their individual stories really need to be told and heard by the world. That’s what this book attempts to do which is why it is so important.

 

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