“Nujood, you’re like a daughter to me. I won’t abandon you,” she whispers to me.

I’m beginning to believe it. She has no reason to lie to me. I feel at ease with Shada, and I feel safe with her. She knows how to find exactly the right words, and her lilting voice comforts me. If the world came tumbling down, I know that she would stand by me. With her, I feel for the first time the maternal tenderness my mother, too preoccupied by all her family worries, did not know how-or rather, had no time-to give me.

But there’s still one nagging question.

“Shada?” I ask timidly.

“Yes, Nujood?”

“May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Can you promise me that I will never return to my husband’s house?”

“Insha’Allah, Nujood. I’ll do my very best to keep him from hurting you again. All will be well. All will be well. But…”

“But what?”

“You must be strong, because it may take some time.”

“How much time?”

“Don’t think about that right now. Tell yourself that the hardest part is over. The hardest part was having the strength to escape, and you carried that off beautifully.”

When I sigh, Shada gives me a little smile and pats me on the head. She’s so tall and slender. She impresses me a lot.

“And now, may I ask you a question?” she says.

“Yes.”

“How did you find the courage to run away-all the way to the courthouse?”

“The courage to run away? I couldn’t bear his meanness anymore. I couldn’t.”

6. Running Away

In Khardji, life had become impossible. Tortured by shame and pain, I suffered in silence. All those horrible things he made me endure, day after day, night after night-whom could I tell about them? In fact, that first evening, I realized that nothing would ever be the same again.

“Mabrouk! Congratulations!”

Early-morning light pours into the bedroom. In the distance, a rooster is crowing. Staring down at my naked little body, my mother-in-law taps my cheek to wake me. I can remember her face as if it were yesterday. Behind the old woman’s shoulder I recognize my sister-in-law, the one who rode in the car with us. I’m still drenched in perspiration. Eyes wide, I look around at the disorder of the bedroom: the oil lamp has rolled over to the door, and the brown dress lies in a heap on the floor like an old dishrag. And there he is, on the mat, sound asleep. What a wahesh-what a monster! On the rumpled sheet, I see a little streak of blood.

“Congratulations!” echoes my sister-in-law.

With a sly smile, she studies the red stain. I can’t say a word. I feel paralyzed. Then my mother-in-law bends down to pick me up as if I were a package. Why didn’t she come earlier, when I needed her help? Now, in any case, it’s too late-unless she was his accomplice in what he just did to me? Jabbing her hands into my ribs, she pushes the door aside with her foot and carries me to the narrow little bathroom, where I see a tub and a bucket. She begins splashing water on me, and oh, it’s cold!

“Mabrouk!” both women say together.

Their voices buzz in my tired ears, and I feel small, so small. I’ve lost control of my body, my movements. I’m cold on the outside, but inside, I’m burning. It’s as if there were something dirty in me. I’m angry, but can’t manage to put my anger into words. Omma, you’re too far away for me to call to you for help. Aba, why did you marry me off? Why, why me? And why didn’t anyone warn me about what was going to happen to me? Whatever did I do to deserve this?

I want to go home!

A few hours later, when he finally wakes up, I turn my head away to avoid looking into his eyes. He heaves a great sigh, eats his breakfast, and disappears for the day. Huddled in a corner, I pray for God the Almighty to come save me. I hurt everywhere. I’m terrified at the idea of spending my whole life with this beast. I’ve fallen into a trap, and I can’t get out.

I had to adjust quickly to a new life: I had no right to leave the house, no right to fetch water from the stream, no right to complain, no right to say no. And school? Out of the question, even though I was dying to write my name in white chalk on a big blackboard and sit on a bench to hear the teacher tell us new stories.

Khardji, my native village, had become foreign to me. At the house, during the day, I had to obey my mother-in-law’s orders: cut up the vegetables, feed the chickens, prepare tea for any guests who dropped by, wash the floor, do the dishes. No matter how hard I scrubbed the grease-blackened pots, they would never return to their original color. The towels were gray and smelled bad. Flies buzzed around me. Whenever I stopped for a moment, my mother-in-law pulled my hair with her filthy hands. I wound up as sticky as the kitchen, and my fingernails were completely black.

One morning I asked her permission to go play with the children my age.

“You’re not on holiday here,” she grumbled.

“Please, just for a few minutes?”

“Impossible! A married woman cannot allow herself to be seen with just anyone-that’s all we need, for you to go ruining our reputation. We’re not in the capital here! In Khardji, people notice everything, hear everything, know everything. So you’d better be careful, and don’t you dare forget what I’ve told you, understand? Or I’ll tell your husband.”

He left every morning and returned right before sunset. When he got home, he had his meal served to him on the sofrah and never helped clear the table. Each time I heard him arrive, the same panic seized my heart.

When night fell, I knew what would begin again. Again and again. The same savagery, the same pain and distress. The door slamming, the oil lamp rolling across the floor, and the sheets getting all twisted up. “Ya, beint! Hey, girl!” That’s what he would yell before throwing himself on me.

He never said my first name.

It was on the third day that he began hitting me. He could not bear my attempts to resist him. When I would try to keep him from lying down on the mat next to me after he’d extinguished the lamp, he would start to hit me, first with his hands, then with a stick. Thunder and lightning, over and over. And his mother egged him on.

Whenever he would complain about me, she would tell him hoarsely, “Hit her even harder. She must listen to you-she’s your wife.”

“Ya, beint!” he’d yell, and run after me again.

“You have no right!” I sobbed.

“I’m tired of your whining-I didn’t marry you to listen to you snivel all the time,” he would shout, baring his big yellow teeth.

It hurt me to be talked to that way, with such contempt, and he made fun of me in front of others. I lived in permanent fear of more slaps and blows. Occasionally he even used his fists. Every day, fresh bruises on my back, new wounds on my arms. And that burning in my belly. I felt dirty everywhere. When women neighbors visited my mother-in-law, I heard them whispering among themselves, and sometimes they would point at me. What were they saying?

Whenever I could, I would go hide in a corner, lost and bewildered. My teeth chattered when I thought of the coming night. I was alone, so alone. No one to confide in, no one to talk to. I hated him-I loathed them all. They were disgusting! Did every married girl have to go through the same agony? Or was I the only one to suffer like this? I felt no love whatsoever for this stranger. Had my parents felt any for each other? With him, I finally understood the real meaning of the word cruelty.

Days and nights went by like this. Ten, twenty, thirty? I no longer remember precisely. In the evening, I was taking longer and longer to fall asleep. Each time he came to do his vile things to me at night, I lay awake afterward. During the day, I dozed, abandoned, distraught-I was losing all sense of time. I missed Sana’a, and school. My brothers and sisters, too: Abdo’s constant liveliness, Morad’s clowning, Mona’s jokes (on her good days), little Rawdha’s nursery rhymes. More and more, I thought of Haïfa, hoping she wouldn’t be married off like me. As the days passed, I began to forget the details of their faces: the color of their skin, the shape of their noses, the folds of their dimples. I needed to see them again.