I was a lamp lighting the roads of darkness, and now these roads are what put out my lamp

A letter: today's news and yesterday's memories. Narjis: she is the flower her garden does not want unless it wishes to smell the scent of her fragrance. Narjis asks: who is the female? Is she a human being among human beings? Or is she only a body stripped of humanity? Twenty-two years I have lived and not for a single day did I feel my humanity, my dignity, which that husband stripped from me. "He wore out my nerves": he would take a pin and turn it on my body and kept pushing this weapon in until he wore me down. He made me dependent on nerve sedatives, and I did not know that those medicines were nothing but poisons that enter the body and do not leave it. Only my strong will was the one weapon I had to expel those poisons and stay away from taking them. Great suffering. I know that the reader may think my story is nothing but a legend. I live in the middle of the city, yet I have lived a life like that of the bedouin who move about constantly looking for water and grass. Yes, such is my life and the life of my children, imposed on us by someone who does not know the meaning of responsibility: the responsibility of a home, a wife and children who have their requirements and their needs. And when I would go to my family's house and complain to them of my distress and of my children's and my own need for a loaf of bread, they would not listen to me; rather they would place the whole responsibility on me and say: "This is your lot and you have to bear it. What can we do for you, what is in our hands?" And when I dared to confront my husband and object to the way we were living, I met nothing from him but those slaps that came down on my face and scattered over every part of my body. At that point I found no one to defend me and protect me from those blows, which on one occasion broke my nose and turned the colours of my face to blue, green and yellow. I found no one to defend my humanity before him, no one to guide me how to face him or deal with him or escape his injustice, no one to listen to me. And once it occurred to me to use paper and pen as a way of confronting him. I took the pen and began to write to him about the psychological and physical suffering he had caused me through his brutality and his sadism, which tore my soul apart, indeed, if the expression is permitted, tore my humanity into scattered pieces, scattered and crying out with phrases whose words carried within them every meaning of harshness, misery and injustice. And when I finished writing, writing the memories of the past and the present, yes, my present has memories, because this present will pass over it just as the past has passed, how easy it is for us to live with memories and how hard it is for them not to stay with us. I did not have the courage to hand it to him, so I turned to one of my daughters and said to her: I want you to give your father this paper right now. My daughter asked me: what is written in it? And why do you not give it to him yourself? I answered her: go and do not ask so many questions, and tell him: read today's news and yesterday's memories. I stood behind the door and through its gaps I began to watch him. He began to read. I noticed that at first he was astonished at what was written. He carried on reading to the end but made no comment at all, as though he had read nothing at all, nothing at all. I had thought those words might stir in him some sense of his injustice to me and to the children. I was astonished at his silence. I wished he would confront me, even with beating or insults, but he did not confront me and showed no interest in the matter at all. This time I dared and shouted in his face: speak! And his only reply was: "I am not unjust and I know myself, and no more talk." He left me and went out of the house, and I sat weeping and weeping until my tears almost burned my face. Happiness and joy are words my ears hear and my tongue has never spoken. Why? Because I have not felt them and have not lived them, have not tasted their sweetness. How I wished to live them. How I wished my children had a good father who would raise them well, care about their education, sit with them and listen to their needs and their problems. How I wished I had a husband whose words matched his deeds. One time he came back home and said to me: woman, get up and get dressed, I want to take you to the market and buy you clothes. I was surprised and said to him: "Where did you get the money, and besides, do you really mean what you are saying?" He said to me: "Have I ever joked with you?" I said to myself: perhaps this man has come to his senses. Let us go, what is there to lose? We reached the market and went into a shop selling women's clothes. He said to me: choose what you want. I began to choose and chose a skirt and went into the fitting room in the shop, and when I came out I asked the shop owner about my husband and he said to me: "He left a while ago." I rang my husband's mobile and when he answered I said to him: where are you? He said to me: "Just as I left the house, that is how you know me. Get back on your own." At that moment I did not have a single shekel to get back, so I walked back on foot. This is among the stories that, however much I write about them, the readers may think there is some exaggeration in them. I was forced to work as a kindergarten teacher and to give private lessons at home to the neighbourhood's children so that I could provide for myself and my children. I relied on myself in everything, I accepted a hard life, and despite that I was not spared his injustice: he impugned my honour and slandered my morals, and in every gathering he began to weave from his imagination stories in which he attacked my character. I am content with what I have stated and I stop here, but my tragedy and my suffering have not stopped. By Rana Al-Nouri