Episode 1
She was only six when her mother d!ed in front of her, coughing blood into a cloth while Amina clung to her weakening body, begging her to wake up. “Mummy, please don’t sleep. Don’t leave me.” But her mother’s eyes never opened again.
That day, Amina’s world crumbled. Her home turned into silence. Her toys lost their meaning. Her smile disappeared.
Her father didn’t cry. Not once. He just stood there, staring at the corpse of his wife, then turned to Amina and said, “You’ll be fine. Life goes on.”
And from that moment, the man she called daddy turned into a stranger with no soul. He stopped calling her “my baby.” He stopped tucking her in. He started going out early and coming back with alcohol in his breath, shouting at nothing and kicking at walls.
The house that once smelled of her mother’s cooking now stank of sweat and sorrow. The neighbors whispered, “Poor child.” But no one helped. No one asked questions when Amina began wearing the same dress every day. No one spoke when she stopped going to school.
And when her father came home one night and said, “Tomorrow, you’re going somewhere special,” she thought maybe, just maybe, he remembered her birthday. But the next day shattered her completely.
He dragged her out of bed before dawn, dressed her in a white gown that smelled of mothballs, and tied a scarf on her head. “Where are we going?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He took her to a big house with a tall gate and beautiful lights. Amina had never seen such a place.
Her father knocked, and a fat, bald man in a wrapper came out, smiling with rotten teeth. “So this is the girl?” the man asked. Her father nodded.
“Come in, my little wife,” the man said, reaching out. Amina shrank back in confusion. “Wife?” But her father held her tight and whispered, “Don’t embarrass me. He gave me money. Be grateful.”
That night, she was left in the room of the man she now called “husband.” She screamed. She cried. She banged on the door. But no one came. He entered with wine in one hand and oil in the other. “Time to teach you how to be a woman,” he said.
Amina begged. She said she was only six. She said she missed her mummy. But the man didn’t care. He hurt her. He crushed her innocence. And when he was done, he tossed her on the floor like trash and left her bleeding.
No police came. No relative showed up. When her father came the next week to collect more money, he didn’t even look her in the eye. Amina sat in a corner, arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. Her soul was no longer there. It was buried with her mother.
But something deep inside her didn’t die. Something stayed awake, breathing through the pain, whispering that this story wasn’t over.
To be continued
