Can we get back what we lost?

A story and a poem. A story in a poem.

Aicha is an eleven years old girl,
whose smile in the morning makes everyone happy.
She has brothers and sisters that she loves a lot.
She has a dad who is really proud of her.
She is the major provider of the family,
Despite the fact that she has much elder brothers.
“You’re doing the right thing”. 
That’s what her dad told her
The day she to had to marry a fifty years old man.
A man that is five times her age.
A man that would come back home drunk,
And would belabore her if the food wasn’t ready.
“You’re doing this for the family”
That’s what her sister fatima told her.
Because he’s also the man that brings food to her dad’s house.
Every day she has to Prepare her children in law for school,
And stay home to clean the house and make love to her husband.
Aicha is an eleven years old girl,
Whose cries at night, only reach her mum in her grave.
Will Aicha ever get back her happiness?

Mariam is a seventeen years old girl,
She ran away from the hell of her house and joined a shelter
She left to have a chance to get a life
 In order to take her younger sister out of her misery.
She refused to listen to her friends who told her to join their brothel
“I prefer to earn crumbs than to sell my body, 
My God does not permit that”
So Mariam works hard; Her life depends on it.
Thinking about her poor little sister, she works harder.
Every morning before five she walks to a small village out of town
Where she buys a huge bucket of oranges
That she tries to sell in the market
Before she goes downtown in the afternoon 
Clean up three houses, where she’s a part-time maid.
And then goes baby-sit a nurse’s son who comes back at ten.
It’s while going back home one night that she has been grabbed by a man.
He was more powerful and was putting her to the ground.
She couldn’t see his face, he was wearing a hoodie and sun-glasses.
No matter how much she cried, he wouln’t stop.
God himself came down, and  said nothing; she felt the pain.
Rape is proper to humans. 
Which other animal can make love with hatred.
A man has been arrested for this crime,
But Mariam cannot find peace in the mind; judged as “the raped girl”
Will Mariam ever get back her dignity?

Malik is a twenty two years old young man,
He is what we can call sociologically correct.
He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t even watch violent movies.
He is always there for everyone in the neighborhood.
They call him their angel.
But Malik’s only problem is his dad.
He hates him since the day he lost his mother.
His dad was his shame, a burden he had to carry all his life.
Having a drunkard and paedophiliac as a father
Doesn’t make you want to stay home a lot.
This night Malik takes his hoodie and sun-glasses and goes for a walk
One step after the other he forgets everything, all that sorrow.
Suddenly he hears people running, looks back
They’re running after him, afraid he starts running too.
You run fast when your life is the gage.
But they’re faster than him, and catch him.
When Malik sees their police armband, he asks what he’s done wrong.
They call him a rapist before he gets  beat up like a dog.
The next week his face is all over the news being called a psychopath.
Malik is devastated, victim of his people, victim of his world.
In the trial court, he looks at the “raped girl” and cries.
She is so young, but her life has been removed from her body.
However behind these marks  is hidden a face that he recognizes
He tries to get closer but the chains don’t allow him.
So he looks harder, and harder before saying “Mariam, is that you?”
He then looks around and sees them, they are all there. And now he realizes.
The irony, accused of raping The elder sister of his father’s eleven years old wife Aicha.
No one believes  him, they all see the devil in him. All, except the jury.
Not Guilty was the verdict. That’s what he was, not guilty.
But Guilty to everyone’s eyes. Even to those who called him their angel.
Malik is a twenty two years old young man
Coming back from jail, at the border of madness, blaming the system, blaming the society.
Will Malik ever get back his innocence?

Every day we lose things and say it’s nothing.
We lose people and say they’ll be fine where they are. 
We all have the ability to accomodate with loss.
We believe that as long as we don’t think about our loss we’ll just be fine.
But when we lose unfairly the only thing we cling to
We lose more, we lose hope, we lose ourselves (my case).
In a desperate manner we ask ourselves “can we get back what we lost?”