I would have cried out at the memory of some of the things, but I had numbed myself to those memories long ago.

Chapter One:

The first time I met my family was at the airport.  I was a stranger in this strange place, and these people were going to take me in as their own.  America was like a dream.

The America my Father had told me about had been one of evil and infidels, but my father himself was evil.  I had celebrated his death secretly, celebrated, when I had come home to be told he had been killed. I made the show of grieving but in my heart I felt nothing but relief.

I spent a year and a half in an orphanage in a small village outside of Kabul.  The same village that had hid so many secrets, secrets about the things a monster was doing, and letting others do to his own daughter, but I was only a girl and in his eyes I did not matter.  I was a piece of property.  

I was treated worse than a piece of property I was treated like a piece of garbage by the very people who were supposed to love me.  So when these strangers walked up to me with open arms I felt myself shaking.  I was terrified, what if they really were monsters like my parents? What if they were only pretending?

I did not know these people yet, and already they were wanting to give me hugs.  I thought how strange is it in America you hug even strangers?

I was not a stranger in their mind though, they had been working for a year to bring me to America, not an easy thing for a Christian family to take in a child from a Muslim world.  I knew nothing of what to expect and neither did they, we were strangers to each others beliefs, but the truth was I was not even sure what I believed.

Certainly not in the Allah my Father spoke of, the one who was so full of evil and violence.  The one who said it was okay for a Father to do horrible things to his child.

I would have cried out at the memory of some of the things, but I had numbed myself to those memories long ago.

I stood in the corner, as these blonde hair, blue eyed strangers came up to me.  I spoke their language, because I had learned to do so in the Orphanage, but I did not understand their customs.  I did not understand their ways.

My skin was darker browned by the sun, but they were white, like the Milk used in afternoon tea.

I knew they were my family now, that they had paid a lot of money to adopt me, that they were Christians who had one daughter, a daughter who was seventeen six years my senior, but I knew little else about them.  And they knew only what the people at the adoption agency had told them, which was very little, because I did not speak of what happened to me.

If I told of the things that my Father had done to me, my brothers, the neighborhood boys as my family watched no one would ever want me.  I would never get adopted, I would certainly never get married, so I kept my mouth shut.

I had learned long ago, that being silent licensed the pain some, the disappointment some.

What if they hurt me like my other family did?

What if I am going from one hell to another?

What if they really don’t want me?  What if this is something they only felt they had to do because they felt bad?

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