“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk,” the voice muttered. “I really did think you were smarter than this. I’m more than aware you are absolutely clueless about the location of the women who were unlawfully taken from their families.”
Alexander shook his head, bewildered. “If you know I’m in the dark here, why did you take Melanie?”
“You may be in the dark,” the sinister voice said, “but your wife certainly is not.”
Part Three
Justice
The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fourteen Months Ago
FEAR CAN SEEP INTO your bloodstream, into your soul, freezing you like a human ice sculpture. You’re no longer a living, breathing thing, but someone molded to behave and act a certain way through manipulation. You’re held prisoner in your own head. Your thoughts become grim and dark, every noise causing you to jump and overreact. On more than one occasion, you consider ending your suffering the only way you know how. No one will miss you anyway.
Then something happens.
A smile. A kind word. A warm hug. For the first time since you can remember, you feel loved. The fear you were living with slowly drains from you, but not completely. It’s always there, dormant, ready to return at any time.
Laila’s fear returned the night she sat huddled in the bunker of the shelter and heard two voices she prayed she’d never have to listen to again. Her brother, Tariq, and Waleed, a sixty-year-old man with whom she had been forced into marriage at the age of thirteen. After five years of suffering mental, physical, and sexual abuse, she had enough and fled. She thought she would be safe here. Aliyah, the woman from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs who had transferred her to this shelter because of her situation, assured her they would never find her.
She was wrong.
Laila didn’t know how, but they had come for her…and her “husband’s” unborn baby now growing inside her.
“I know she’s here!” Tariq bellowed through the lobby of the shelter that actually functioned as a medical clinic.
No one was supposed to know what was really behind the locked door to the operating room…twelve women with some of the most heartbreaking and uplifting stories of perseverance. There were girls as young as thirteen and women as old as fifty-five, each of them running from a custom the elders in their respective villages held on to with everything they had. Some proudly wore the scars they suffered from the slashing of a blade. Others were quick to cover the marks left on their skin from being beaten with whips and chains. A handful of women limped around, even after receiving the best medical care possible, due to broken bones that had never properly set. Despite no longer being forced to wear a full-body burqa, one woman still donned the traditional Muslim dressing each and every day to cover a face that had been eroded by acid, an injury she had suffered from failing to wear the headdress she now wore like a shield.
Twelve women. Twelve stories of endurance. Twelve survivors of legal domestic violence. Twelve women who would be dead if their family had a say. Twelve lives that had been saved.
But for every twelve, there were thousands who wanted to defend this antiquated notion of female subservience.
And they would stop at nothing to do just that.
“Who are you talking about?” the man running the clinic, Landon, responded in Pashto.
“My sister, Laila. I know she’s here!”
“There’s nobody here by that name,” Landon assured him. “Go ahead and take a look.”
The women sat huddled together, hugging each other, jumping at each loud noise as the two men stormed through the clinic, rummaging through each and every exam room, dumping out trays of medical supplies. Laila felt horrible, thinking this was all her fault. Her brother and husband weren’t to be messed with. She was living proof of that. They would stop at nothing to bring honor back to the family after, according to them, her “actions tarnished the family name”. She didn’t know if she would be able to live with the guilt if something happened to any of the staff members protecting her, caring for her, smiling at her.
“It’s okay,” Fatima, one of the other women, comforted her. “He’ll make them leave. He’s a good man and won’t let anything happen to us without a fight.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Laila responded, meeting her eyes, then returned her attention to the locked door, the commotion growing closer and closer.
Just when she thought they would come barreling through the door, the voices retreated. Minutes ticked by. Laila feared her brother or husband had slashed Landon’s throat, just as they had threatened to do to her, just as they did to her own mother when she tried to intervene in the arranged marriage.
After her father had died at the hands of the Taliban, her brother became the patriarch of the family, making all the decisions. It didn’t matter that their mother raised them, fed them, loved them. She was a woman and, according to custom, incapable of making decisions for the family.
Her father died fighting against the customs her brother was too eager to embrace.
The sound of loud footsteps grew closer, bringing Laila back from her memories. All the women tightened their hold on each other, fearful of what would greet them on the other side of the door. Keys jingled and the door opened.
Relief flooded through her when Landon stood in front of them with one of his guards, another American.
“It’s okay,” he assured them in their native language. “They’re gone. You’re all okay.” He beamed his brilliant smile at them, then found Laila’s concerned eyes.
The idea that anyone would put his life on the line to keep her alive was completely foreign to the way of life she had grown accustomed to over the years. She had been led to believe she didn’t matter, that she didn’t have any worth, that no one cared whether she lived or died.
But Landon cared. He was a complete stranger, yet he found it in his heart to keep each and every one of them safe from harm. Because of Landon, they each had a reason to keep going. If they gave up, all his effort, all his sacrifice would have been for nothing.
So they carried on, returning to their usual routine. They woke every morning before the sun, as they had been accustomed. It didn’t matter they no longer had to prepare meals and clean before the men of the house rose. They did so partly out of habit…partly out of fear.
As the days stretched on, the other women assured Laila that everything would be okay, but she could see the concern in their eyes. They were worried for her, but also for themselves. If she could be found, what about the rest of them? Were they at risk, as well?
Just when they had all but forgotten about the incident and began to breathe again, Tariq and Waleed came back with more men, voices Laila recognized as belonging to people from her village. Her neighbor. Boys she grew up with who were barely old enough to be called men. Her uncles. They had all come for her.