In Her Loss for Words

Can I share a story today? I call it a (non)fiction narrative account. You can believe it or let it be fleeting words. It is my burden to share.

It takes place in Afghanistan.

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There was grief in his voice, but deep sincerity.

"I am very sad this morning. Something very bad happened to my sister," said my driver, in his heavy accent, with his eyes coated with a layer of hazy water; maybe his tears, maybe his rage.

He had received a phone call at the break of dawn from his niece. Her mother had taken a destructive fall down the stairs after a violent encounter with her husband. She was not doing well. After receiving another phone call from his nephew who was far away in a different province, he rushed over to his sister's house.

Inside, he found her curled- broken, in all ways imaginable. Her face, covered with dark colors of heavy bruising and marks of blood that trailed down to her clothes; her body, lifeless in form with only a painful gaze showing any sign of life. There she was, in speechless fear, yet her silence cried louder than audible words.

He boiled from the inside of his stomach with hatred towards the man who had done this to his sister. As he searched every corner of the house, he could not find the person whose life he wanted to destroy with his own hands- the coward who had fled from his own doings. Even an upright man like him, in his right state of mind, would find it hard to express grace to someone who left his sister like that.

When he went back to her, he observed her bloody mouth that had swollen up in the waiting hours and her broken nose with purple bruises extending to her half-shut eyes. She did not speak up; not only from her physical pain, but her words were crushed deep into herself.

"She did nothing horrible, my sister. Her husband wanted to arrange marriage for their 18-year old daughter with their nephew. He has no education and he smoking hashes every day. My sister thinking... her daughter too young and still going to school, she deserving a better future, not with that nephew. That is all she wanted to tell her husband."

As I heard him telling me this, my heart was crushing inside of me like his sister's words. This was reality, not some article from CNN or a documentary of oppressed women in Muslim culture. She was one person, in this country, who was living this identical, unspoken life that so many other women like herself were hiding in. Some women are left with nothing, a family who departs from her in times of agony, who turn the other way to avoid acknowledging this reality; some who do not wake up in a hospital bed, surrounded with her supportive family and her loving brother. You can say her story is a fortunate case.

In his disheartened sigh, he wished his culture would respect their women- their words and their work. If only there were more people like him in this country- my thought- people who praised their wives and loved them for their worth.

Maybe it is because he finds the beauty of his wife as a reflection of Him who lives inside of her; called to love her as He loves His church.

What a blessed pair they are, in this dark world.

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This is the world where I am living in right now. It really hurts me....... so deeply to open my heart to a place where this is the norm, what is accepted. It tests my faith to seek justice for these people..

My prayer is that this girl will not grow up into
the world these women are living in today

"The Lord is King forever and ever;

the nations will perish from his land.

You hear the desire of the afflicted;

you encourage them and you listen to their cry,

defending the fatherless and the oppressed,

in order that man, who is of the earth,

may terrify no more."

                                                Psalm 10:16-18