Captured by Islamic State, Amera began writing letters to her lost brother: ‘I wrote because I was scared, but also because I have hope’

Amera’s book tells of her Yazidi family’s kidnapping, the violence they endured and her eventual three-day escape. Photograph: Simon Scott/The Guardian

When Islamic State militants arrived at their family’s home in northern Iraq, Amera and her brother were sitting under their grandmother’s fig tree.

The 11-year-old girl had been watching a ripening fig for days but needed her older brother Ali’s height to reach it. Now, with IS beginning an assault on their town’s Yazidi people, she thought this may be her only chance.