Fatiha ( Part3)

When she woke up, she had the lower part of her body bind and couldn’t feel anything. Her eyes were dull and she was tired after a long battle between life and death. Fatiha's mother had circumcised her daughter as she was herself circumcised and as her own mother was. Nobody could blame her since she just followed traditions which were all she knew. She believed that circumcision was the best thing that could happen to her daughter and that without it her daughter would never fully be a woman. At an early age, she had learned to follow tradition and culture, to be submissive and suffer in silence so that she would be happy in this life and the next. She was feeling her daughter's pain but she thought it was a necessary pain and a step that she had to take towards her life as a future woman.

After that episode, Fatiha never blew kisses to the wind for Munir. She matured and grew up from night to day. She entered in the mutilator’s hut as a young innocent child and she exited as a woman. She was a child, with the body of a child and the eyes of a woman. From that day on, Fatiha never smiled. Some people say that when she grew old she would take long walks alone and look at the stars mumbling sentences that only she understood. She would repeat the word 'Munir' with tears in her eyes. Those who knew her, say that she knew well the art of life and was an artist of nature. Fatiha never fought her destiny, she accepted it as women before her did. She died a lonely devout God-fearing woman.

God is without any doubt, the artist par excellence, the only black dot in his master-work was to create men who had the choice between being humans and being subhumans.

The End

Notes:
Female Genital Mutilation is the term used for removal of all or just part of the external parts of the female genitalia.

An estimated 85 million to 110 million women and girls alive today have undergone Female Genital Mutilation.

Fatiha ( Part 2)

Fatiha was a girl of the Desert and like most girls of the desert, she was used to leaving loved ones behind. However, sometimes, there are people who come into our life and make us feel so unique, people with whom we have so much in common and so much love that losing them breaks our heart.

Fatiha was only 10 years old when Munir left but she cried as she had never cried before. She cried for the loss of her friend, the loss of her fiancé and the loss of her confident. Tired of crying, the thought that one day she would meet Munir again made her feel better. After that day, Fatiha smiled less. Each night, she would look at the stars on the sky and think that wherever he was, Munir was seeing the same sky and the same stars. Every night, she blew kisses to the wind and begged the desert wind to bring them to Munir. From where he was, Munir was feeling the wind and reminiscing the days he spent with Fatiha. Every day, the wind blew kisses to him, soft and sweet.

One day, Fatiha woke up in the middle of the night and saw her mother next to her. She told her “Wake up Fatiha, we have to go somewhere”.
Years later, when she thought about that night, she told herself that it would have been better to just run. But because we do not know the meaning of things unless they happen, at the moment they’re happening, destiny makes itself. It is in those moments, that without knowing it, our destiny is shaped because we all have appointments with her. Appointments that cannot be missed because Lady Destiny knows exactly where and how to find us when the time is right.

That night, Fatiha followed her mother and they went to a hut around the camp. Without knowing it, she had an appointment with fate. Inside the hut was a very old woman without a single tooth in her mouth. A long scarf was covering her head from her hair to her shoulders and of her face, only her eyes were visible. Big, round, red, scary, sharp, her eyes were similar to those of an owl. With her wrinkled and shriveled skin, the old lady looked like an ugly, shapeless portrait compared to Fatiha's beauty and youthfulness.

Fatiha's mum and the old lady exchanged elusive words and Fatiha's mother asked her to get undressed and lay down. Fatiha didn’t know it yet, but she had just encountered the one who genitally mutilates girls, the nightmare of every young girl and the killer of womanhood. The old woman had in her hands a blade that still carried blood spots. She looked at Fatiha with her owl eyes, a big smile on her face. Her toothless mouth was enraptured, widely opened and gave an image of a black hole. At that point, Fatiha was really scarred and ran behind her mother. The mother put her down and put a piece of wood in her mouth. The old lady opened Fatiha's legs and she started struggling with her violently. However, with a strength that was surprising due to her old age, the old lady kept Fatiha on the floor. Fatiha heard the sound of the blade between her legs. She felt the pain of the human flesh being cut. The blade was going up and down depriving her of her womanhood. A stream of blood was flowing between her legs. She wanted to scream her lungs out but not a single sound came out of her mouth. Then it was a complete blackout, Fatiha had passed out...

(To Be continued) Only 1 part left :)

Fatiha

I will share with you a short story that I wrote. Here is Part 1

She is six years old and loves to listen to stories on the moonlight. Pure and innocent daughter of the Sahel, she loves to play with her friends on evenings and help milk the cows in the morning. Knee-high, the only type of life she knows is happy-go-lucky. Fatiha was her given name in remembrance of Arabs who came to visit her land years ago and with whom her dad has kept a friendly and strong bond. Her skin, shiny and light was common to the Tuareg girls and some say explains the beauty and delicacy of her features.

Very traditional, the Tuaregs are fond of milk and dry meat. Nomad by nature, they move where the water is very mild to their herd. This is how, at the age of six, Fatiha had alredy lived in different places. In those areas, the landscape was always the same, only the people were different. The landscape was always similar, every part of it reminding the visitor of the one he just left. On that land, bonds and relationships never lasted. Sometimes right after meeting somebody, you realize that they have to go on their separate ways. People are leaving on a daily basis and wishing each other good luck and saying to each other: 'May Allah guide you'. Most times, they hope that destiny would reunite them somehow, somewhere, some day in a similar place, in an identical scenery.

It was during one of the numerous trips that Fatiha met Munir. Munir was eight years old but he was already thinking of himself as the head of his family. Because he was the eldest of his siblings and the only boy, he held a lot of responsibilities. Every morning, he milked the cows and one morning he was walking his flock near Fatiha's. Very quickly, they became inseparable. A strong bond grew between them and they made promises to each other while their only witnesses were cows whose only worry was where to find a greener grass. Despite their youth the two of them thought they knew everything they needed to know about love and swore faithfulness to each other. They exchanged rings, made by themselves and were secretly engaged. They kept their secret from everybody, not wanting to share those stolen moments of happiness.

As inevitable as it was, three months later, Munir's parents thought that the grass was greener in the East and decided to migrate East while Fatiha's parents decided to go west. Fatiha and Munir had to go their separate ways. Fatiha watched as Munir and his parents went East. Just the day before, they swore their love to each other and promised that they will reunite one day when they were older. They planned to then get married and have lots of children, hundreds of children...

( To Be Continued)