But even in the midst of all this emotion, it never occurred to me to take my own life. I knew I could never do that. If someone with a gun had said, “I’m going to shoot you,” I might have said, “Okay.” But if they had handed me a gun and told me to shoot myself, I would have recoiled at the thought. I could simply never do that, no matter whatever else I felt.
So I just closed my eyes and curled up into a tight ball of despair. I pushed toward the corner of the tent and cried myself to sleep.
The last thing I remember thinking before I drifted off was, Tonight I’m going to run.
*
I slept lightly for an hour or so, never really slipping away, always aware in the back of my mind where I was and the situation I was in. There was no rest in my brief sleep, no comfort, no solace. It was a weary sleep. Hard ground. Dirty blankets, sheets, and pillows. The horrible linen robe bunched around my body. I was in pain. I was bleeding. But it was infinitely better than being awake.
I woke up feeling something being wrapped around my ankle. I jolted awake. The sun was high and it was getting hot inside the tent. The man was kneeling over me, wrapping a steel cable around my ankle. The cable was stretched to near its limit. I followed it with my eyes. It extended out the tent door and disappeared.
I turned back to the man as he jerked the cable tight around my ankle. “What are you doing!” I cried in disbelief.
“Shearjashub, I just want to take away any temptations,” he replied sarcastically.
I felt the cable being cinched against my skin. I felt its tautness. I felt its strength.
My heart sank.
“Shearjashub, you’ve got to be a good girl now,” he said.
Shearjashub! Who was Shearjashub? What was Shearjashub? I didn’t know.
I watched in horror as the man finished his work. He used a crimper to clamp the cable tight, then gave it a tug to test it. Satisfied, he crawled out of the tent, leaving me alone again, leaving behind the taint of his smell. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse!
I picked up and studied the cable. Steel wrapped inside a plastic cover. It seemed strong enough to hold a car. I adjusted my leg, relieving some of the pressure.
Earlier that morning, even as the man had forced me out of my bed, then throughout the long hike up the mountain and the horrible nightmare in the tent, I always thought that he would kill me. I thought he would hurt or kill my family. That scared me even more. And I absolutely knew what he was capable of doing now.
If you haven’t been in such a situation, if you haven’t felt the kind of stone-cold fear that cuts you to the core—and few people really have—it’s impossible to imagine what it does to your thinking, to your emotions, to the way your heart and brain begin to work.
I had always been afraid that he would kill me. But now I realized that wasn’t his plan. He wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble to bathe me, dress me up and marry me, and then to trap me with the steel cable if he were going to kill me. My nightmare was not ending. It was just getting started.
Then I had the most horrible thought of all.
What if this goes on forever?!
Is this to be the only life that I will ever know?
10.
Tender Mercies
Most of us believe in miracles. Not everyone, I understand that, but most of us are pretty comfortable with the thought that there are good things in our lives that come to us as special gifts from God. I don’t mean everything, of course. Sometimes these intersections of fate are really just coincidences. But I think there are far more miracles in our lives than we may ever realize. Like flickers of light among the darkness, they remind us that God is there and that He cares.
One of the miracles that I experienced on that first brutal morning was the fact that, in the midst of all the torment, I was able to find a tiny ray of hope.
Nothing that had happened to me so far was fair. No one knows that more than I do. It was brutal and violent and the greatest intrusion on one’s person that can happen in this world. And the suffering was just beginning. Nine months of pain and fear and the greatest humiliation still lay ahead.
And like I said, I was just a little girl.
Remembering what happened makes me think of a song that I know. It is beautiful, I think, and the lyrics are powerful: “Consider the Lilies” by Roger Hoffman. The third verse asks the listener to think about all the beautiful children who have suffered throughout the history of the world. It goes on to say:
The pains of all of them he carried
From the day of his birth.