Acrid smoke and rancid sweat fill the small room
Five men sit in a tight circle deciding a girl’s fate
In this culture, men always decide a girl’s fate
Hard faces
Angry eyes
Hatred

She is called Sabiha,
‘Morning’ in her language
And like mornings in her village she is
Warm, inviting, hopeful
But she is also independent and willful
and covetous of her dignity

At nine years
Sabiha fought
and bit
and refused the auntie’s blade
Keeping her tiny body intact

At fourteen
Sabiha ran blindly into the night
She refused to marry the old fat man
Who reeked of goats and hookah

At seventeen
Sabiha declined the advances of her protector,
She refused to be his ‘pleasure wife’
She kept her honor

Her uncles arrived the next day

And now they glared venom

and Sabiha knew

That by noon

Morning would end

And her long darkness

Would begin