At this, Rashida's face became calm and relaxed. "I don't believe what I'm hearing," she said softly. "Your parents were right."

Essa had taught me how to take out my contacts while I was there, and as I did so, my eyes stung further. I walked to her, took her hand, and put the tiny glass bulbs in her open palm. "Take these to Baba. Tell him he can turn me over now." My voice was cold. "I will always love you."

Rashida had been about to speak herself, but then she closed her hand over the lenses, a bitter look shone in her eyes. "Farewell." With this, she left the room.

▣

Baba burst into my room within a few minutes, his eyes ablaze with fury. I could do nothing to escape his grip as he ripped me from the bed with one hand and smacked my cheek, again and again, with the other. Each CLAP was more fire, more shame....but strangely, no regret.

After he had decided my cheek was bruised enough, he dragged me out to the living room, where gray-coated officers were waiting for me. I knew these all too well. They were sighted, just like I was.

As Baba thrust me into their grip, and my hands were chained with cuffs that cut into my wrists and made them bleed, I gazed upon my parents with red eyes. My eyes could never hurt as much as my heart when I spoke those last words to my mother. 

"Even you, Ammi?"

Her lightly-lined face was placid. "We cannot allow a sighted person into our family. It is the biggest shame."

"So honor comes before love? Before truth?" I shouted over my shoulder as I was dragged away.

But my Ammi—my sweet, sweet Ammi, whom I love even now—never responded to that question.

▣

I was taken to the area of Lamae where citizens do not go, because it is considered unspeakable. But I learned very quickly what this place was called: Layiq (it is a Lamaean word that means Unbecoming).

As I crossed the threshold into the gray building, I looked at my shoes. I knew now what the Alhukum would do. They would kill me, and not quickly or painlessly. All because they wanted to stifle any ideas of rebellion.

No other people were here. At least that was a single consolation—the fact that if anyone in Lamae was living as someone who was sighted, they were not caught.

But at the same time, I was lonely. I had heard that torture was always easier to bear if someone else was going through it along with you. What if I accidentally damned a person I loved because I was too weak? Or worse....what if I exposed Essa's work altogether?

How would they break me first? What would their first tactic be? As I waited alone with the silent, gray-coated officers who stood beside me, I was unsure which was worse: knowing, or not knowing.

▣

They placed me in a room. A simple, cold metal room, with a single metal bench attached to the wall. I was thrust in there.

I remembered reading about differing torture methods at school, but I had expected something more painful. In school, we had learned that the most common torture methods were physical pain, designed to crack a person open and reveal their darkest secrets.

(Tales of needles being jammed beneath our fingernails till they exited at the first joint; people being water-boarded to give the illusion of drowning; bodies being split open and their organs showcased—these were methods we were all familiar with.)

Now I knew why these methods were never discussed in school. The Alhukum wanted us to never be prepared for how they themselves would torture us. (At the time, I had been thinking about the possibility of them just leaving me here to 'soften me up' before the actual torture started, but now I know that I will be in here forever. It is solitary, but it is peace, for once in my life.)

I do not know about how many days passed in the cell. I was brought meat, bread, and milk—all fluffy, tender, and not spoiled—but was never allowed to leave the cell.

Death to the wicked. Mercy to the one who has earned it.

But I was no longer able to obey. Now that the veil was torn away, I could not go back. It was simply impossible after seeing the evils the Alhukum had committed with their own hands.

Yet grief for my family tore me apart. As the door shut on me, I curled into a ball. Would I ever be able to forgive myself for acting so rashly, for believing that the people were any more capable of seeing the truth without guidance than I had been?

It was my own foolishness that would cause their death. It was my fault that they would remain under the Alhukum.

▣

Sitting in a cell with nothing to do generated boredom. Boredom turned to hysteria, which then turned to depression. I remember eating my food and then forcing myself to vomit it up again, and waiting for a worker to come in and clean it up, just so I would have something new, something that didn't involve having nothing to do.

But the Alhukum intended to keep me alive, even if it drove me mad. So one day, a man with a grisly beard and a white lab coat like Essa's walked into my cell. He sat down on the plain bench, stroking that beard until I grew uncomfortable.

Finally, he spoke. "I've been watching you," he said in a soft voice. "It's against the law for me to give you anything, but since I'm the only one watching you, I might as well." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook and pen. "I want to hear your story from the beginning. Everything."

I looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "I can't do that, sir."

He leaned in close. "My lover was a rebel," he said. "They called her Maryam Essa." He sighed through his nose. "I am the only one who will ever read it. I just...." a finger reached out to stroke my cheek. "I don't want you to die without knowing your story."

I looked at the diary. I can black out all the names when I give it to him. Where the rebel base is located.

I can't die without making the most of the time I have.

I took the journal. "Thank you, kind sir."

▣

Here I sit, journaling my story. Tomorrow I will be executed, they say—and it will be a shameful death, something too shameful to even mention.

But I am not afraid. I see colors now—the paper is not quite white, and the ink is as dark as the night sky.

And the scales have fallen from my eyes.

◈◈◈

Tell me what you think....

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