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In 2004, Waleed Nesyif, heavy metal musician, is forced to flee Iraq following death threats for working for American journalists as a translator. By the time America finally withdraws all its troops from Iraq in 2011, he is a Canadian citizen, happily married and university educated. A year later, he returns to Iraq for the first time since leaving. It is not the same country he left. Naori Al Maliki is in his second term as prime minister, and his Shia-led sectarian policies reignite long-held Sunni grievances. The door is open for Isis. The legacy of the 2003 invasion plays out in a most brutal manner.

Omar Mohmamed, a university professor from Mosul, remembers clearly the night armed men invade his city, proclaiming they are the Islamic State. For the next three years, Omar lives under one of the most brutal regimes the world has ever known, witnessing daily executions, hand cutting and stonings. As the anonymous author of a blog exposing the atrocities committed by Isis, he risks his life to share the realities of life under Isis with the world.

He is not the only one to resist. Um Qusay risks her life by sheltering Shia soldiers in her house after they have escaped being executed by Isis. Seeing past sectarian differences, she explains, ‘I risked my life to help those boys because they were Iraqis’.