She wore a scarf in our first interview because she did not want you to know her. She was a humble 21-year-old from a poor farm family. Her dream was to own a hair salon in her village of nearly 2,000, but that was before the massacre. She didn’t want to be on 60 Minutes, but she needed the world to know what ISIS did: the murder, the rape, the genocide of her people. Nearly six years ago, in Iraq, we discovered this hesitant, frightened, woman. We did not imagine that her scarf concealed not only her identity, but also a fierce invincibility which would lead her, four years after our interview, to the highest honor the world has to give.
We found her here, among refugees who survived the invasion of the ISIS terrorist army. Her people are Yazidis, a minority in northern Iraq that is poor, persecuted and bound by faith to its revered Mount Sinjar. In 2014, ISIS invaded. Two months later, we came to report on the atrocities of the self-described Islamic State.
