A Personal Letter to Aaran

Dear Aaran

Hey sweetheart I miss you and I bet you’re missing me as well. I am writing this letter with a purpose. Here I am, sitting on a hospital bed with something I can’t win over. It’s already taken over me I can’t remember much either. I want you to know who your mother is and what I’ve been going through. You must know that I loved you and your father very much, and what I did was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made. Aarav you deserve a real explanation, so let’s start from the beginning.

I wasn’t very old maybe around 6-7 years when the stupid Muslim’s killed my parents and burned the whole village that I lived in, I didn’t know it at the time but your father lived in that village too. They killed your grandparents. One of the hairy Muslim’s grabbed me and hit my leg with a bat, in return I kicked him in the balls and ran as fast as I could out of the village.

I didn’t know how much I ran but I remember the feeling of my lungs screaming for air, as I looked around and saw that I was in the middle of nowhere. There were other crying kids too, I didn’t know what to do. I was numb.

Reality hit me and I realized that it was pitch black and raining hard. So there I was standing in the middle of an empty dark field, while the rain was pouring down. A boy around my age called me, he was under a single pitch of roof, and I quickly ran over there and laid down. I couldn’t sleep at all, after I don’t know how many hours, I saw the sun was about to rise when I felt my eyelids getting heavier and heavier and everything went black.

I woke up, and everything was blurry, I blinked a few times before I adjusted the light, the boys were gone. I looked to the right and saw them, looking through the trash that were covering most of the field, I guess the field wasn’t empty after all.

I got up and I started my search for food. I constantly had eye contact to the boy who called med yesterday, he was kind of cute. I heard a car come towards us and stated to panic was this another attack? All of a sudden a bus came with “Orphanage” written across it, and two men came out of the bus, and walked over to the boys and gave them a drink, it looked delicious. We were all in the bus, some kids sang, others was making friends with one another, but I only saw the boy who called me that night. I didn’t know if he was trying to avoid my gaze.

After what seemed like a century, his eyes finally met mine, his eyes was gorgeous. The bus stopped and we all looked out of the window, that orphanage place was paradise, I saw laughing and carefree kids running around jumping and dancing like the world would end tomorrow. My mother used to tell me goodnight stories about how nice heaven was. This was heaven.

We all got out and ran to the playground and began playing. The man from earlier called us over and we ate dinner, it looked so good, that my mouth was salivating. We finished and played a little more. The cute boy’s name was Jamal and the other one was his big brother Salim, they were really entertaining.

Later that night, the man who got us here in the first place, Maman said we should line up and sings the nation anthem of India one by one. There was a kid before Jamel who had a voice like an angel, but Jamal didn’t his voice wasn’t good at all at it, sounded so bad that some of the other kids started to laugh and I couldn’t hold it anymore and I burst into a laughter. He didn’t take it too well. I really don’t want to write about what he did to me. The perfect day was now over.

We have been there for a few days, Jamal and I had been good, we pulled pranks and we joked about everything, I felt so comfortable around him, like I could be myself, I was falling for this boy hard.

It was night and I heard screams and shouts, I immediately woke up, I looked around and Jamal and Salim was nowhere to be found. I ran outside and saw Jamel and Salim, running towards me, before I blinked Jamal took my hand and we ran away from Maman who was running after us. We were outside of the orphanage, still running, I saw Mamans facial expression, and I didn’t know why but it was increasing my fear. Jamal and Salim jumped on to the train that was running to fast, I was running extremely fast and Salim reached his hand out to me, I grabbed, but he let go of it, the train left without me. Hell has officially begun.

8 years later

I was kind of famous then, local wise. I hated it, people knew me as cherry the dirty dancer. I performed in bars and club, I would wake up strange places that I didn’t remember going to, I couldn’t hate my life more. Maman has made my life a living nightmare. If I didn’t listen I would get slapped, if I rolled my eyes I would get kicked and if I ignored him, tried to escape, or ask questions that didn’t have to do with my dancing I would get punched so much that I would black out.

Every time I would get abused by him, I would look him in the eyes and the only thing I saw in those cold eyes was anger, selfishness and his greed for money. You may wonder if I punched back? I did, once, I ended up with a bruise that covered my entire