{"id":656,"date":"2021-04-05T05:50:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/?p=656"},"modified":"2022-11-01T21:53:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T21:53:06","slug":"that-should-be-a-movie-the-girl-who-escaped-isis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thatshouldbeamoviewebseries.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/05\/that-should-be-a-movie-the-girl-who-escaped-isis\/","title":{"rendered":"That Should Be A Movie: The Girl Who Escaped ISIS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Young Woman Survives and Escapes Brutal Slavery By Her Determined Character and Math Skills<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now That Should Be A Movie. <\/h2>\n\n\n
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(Bas Bogaerts \/ Polaris) (Newscom TagID: polspphotos251244.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Today\u2019s Book I would like to pitch as a movie is The Girl Who Escaped ISIS: This Is My Story<\/em><\/a> by Farida Khalaf, with Andrea C. Hoffmann, from Thorndike Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie would open in 2014, with Farida living in the village of Kocho in northern Iraq with her father, mother, one older brother, and three younger ones. Her family are Kurdish-speaking Yazidi. They are surrounded by Muslim Arabs, with whom they have friendly and commercial relationships with the Muslims. The Yazidi boys have Muslim godfathers, who are meant to protect them. Yet the situation is still dubious. The Yazidi see themselves as children of God and the Muslims as children of Adam and Eve. The Muslims call Yazidis \u201cdevil worshipers\u201d since they worship the sun and the Peacock Angel. Yazidi girls walk through the markets without the head coverings required for Muslim women.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The first few minutes of a film based on Farida\u2019s experience would explore the beautiful and little-known culture of the Yazidi, including a look into their religious ceremonies. We meet her cousins Nura and Pevin at one of these ceremonies. We see her father training her to use an AK-47 to defend herself. We also get to know Farida as she pursues her love of math. She is so  good at the subject that her classmates call her \u201cCalculator.\u201d She astonishes Mr. Ahmed, the man responsible for providing the annual math exams, by scoring 99% on her examine. She dreams of becoming the first teacher from her village, which is considered to be in the lowest class of the Yazidi caste system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But dark clouds are on the horizon as civil war spirals out of control in neighboring Syria. Farida\u2019s father, a border guard, talks of having to turn Syrian refugees away. Then in June 2014, car bombs began exploding in northern Iraq as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant \u2013 ISIS – attacks. The Iraqi army retreats after three days of fighting, leaving Mosul to the terrorists. By August 1st<\/sup> it became clear that the advance of ISIS was not going to stop at the city. The family remained glued to the news. Farida used her math skills to figure that if 100 ISIS fighters had been killed as the news reported, then the actual number of fighters must be much larger than those the media reported. After the Iraqi army fled, only the Kurds are left to defend the Yazidi. But then they too retreat, abandoning northern Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Farida begin having nightmares about what might have happened to Nura after receiving news that her cousin\u2019s village was captured. In a movie this would be a scene similar to the nightmare about concentration camps in the 1959 adaptation of The<\/em> Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>.  Then she starts having epileptic seizures, which she has suffered from since childhood. Finally, the villagers began to flee in a convoy. As they were leaving, the mayor received a call from a Muhammad Salam, the Emir in charge over the region. The emir claimed that he had made a deal with ISIS that no harm would come to the Yazidi if they stayed in the village. If they continued to flee, they would pay with their lives. The mayor tells each family they can make their own decisions. Farida\u2019s family decides to stay. As they are return to Kocho, they hear gunshots fired at the families that chose to continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days later, a delegation of Arabs from nearby villages arrived, announcing that they had come to an agreement with ISIS. The terrorists would not take the village if the Yazidi gave up their guns. The villagers agree to this proposal, taking the Muslims at their word of honor.  Some think they made the right choice since the refugees who had fled to the neighboring Mount Sinjar were now dying of thirst and hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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