Sixteenth of September, six days after my sister was born was the first time I remember it happening.
Body in my bed, I knew that was strange— I had always slept alone— but I didn’t know if it was wrong. In school the next day I looked around at all the girls, I wanted to ask if this was normal.
I was twelve and I could not be sure my body belonged to me. I read horror stories, compared myself to them and said, you have faced a fraction of the full range. I said, you were complicit, he never told you to be silent.
I am seventeen still reading article after article and I think: my father is not evil, my father does not deserve to be behind bars— who will feed my family?— but I think I would feel safer if he was.
I think about one night when he asked, “ does it feel good” and I felt myself disintegrate. I am not sure he heard what I heard: does it feel good when I am making your body, in which you will stand for the rest of your life, unlivable? Does it feel good when I am desecrating it, when I make it unholy ground?
At the trial of our sins I will ask God what my body is, and He will say “it is a trust” and I will point to you and say “then he has broken it.”
Note: At the time of writing (2018) I was Muslim. In Islam our bodies are an amanah, or trust, that is given to us.