My body had learned to make itself small to occupy the least amount of space possible.

But there were some things my body could not adapt to.

Some changes that would mark me forever.

I first realized something was different when the morning sickness began.

I didn’t know to call it that then.

I only knew that the smell of cooking oil, which had never bothered me before, suddenly sent me running to vomit.

Um, Hassan found me one morning heaving into the kitchen sink, my thin body shaking with the effort.

She placed a hand on my forehead, then on my stomach, and her face went very still.

She knew before I did.

The confirmation came from the same doctor who had examined me months earlier, the young one with horror in his eyes.

This time, he couldn’t hide his expression.

He spoke to the Imam in medical terms I didn’t understand, but I caught fragments.

Too young, high risk, complications likely.

The Imam waved away his concerns.

This was God’s will, he said.

God would protect what he had ordained.

But would God protect an 11-year-old girl whose body was barely beginning to understand itself, let alone capable of creating another life? The pregnancy was a special kind of torture.

My body, already small and underdeveloped, struggled against the growing life inside it.

I was hungry all the time, but could keep nothing down.

My bones achd in ways that made me feel ancient.

I would catch glimpses of myself in mirrors and not recognize the swollen, pale creature.

Looking back, the other wives treated me differently now.

I had proven my worth, my functionality.

But their kindness felt hollow when I could barely stand from exhaustion.

Um, Hassan took charge of my care with a efficiency born from experience.

She made me special tees that helped with the nausea, showed me exercises to help with the back pain, rubbed my swollen feet when they became too painful to walk on.

During one of these sessions, as she worked oil into my stretched skin, she told me quietly that she had been 14 when she had her first child.

“At least I had begun my monthly bleeding,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

At least my body had started to become a woman’s body.

The unspoken hung between us.

Mine had not.

The imam treated my pregnancy as his personal victory.

He would parade me in front of visitors.

His young fertile wife proof of his verility despite his age.

I would sit there, hands folded over my growing belly, while men congratulated him.

And women looked at me with expressions I couldn’t decipher.

Some seemed pitying, others envious, most simply uncomfortable.

Nobody asked how I felt.

Nobody wondered if I was afraid.

I was terrified.

As the months passed and my belly grew, the baby’s movements became stronger.

The first time I felt it, a flutter like a trapped bird, I thought something was wrong.

But then it happened again.

and again until I realized this was the life inside me making itself known.

It should have been a moment of wonder.

But all I felt was invaded.

My body, which had already been taken from me in so many ways, now house another being I hadn’t chosen to create.

Sleep became impossible.

I couldn’t lie on my back because the weight pressed on something that made me dizzy.

I couldn’t lie on my stomach for obvious reasons.

My sides achd no matter which one I chose.

I would prop myself up with cushions, half sitting, half lying, drifting in and out of exhausted half sleep.

In those dark hours, I would whisper to the baby, not words of love, but questions.

Who are you? What will you become? Will you hate me for bringing you into this world? The traditional midwife, Amrashe, began visiting in my eighth month.

She was ancient with hands like leather and eyes that had seen everything.

She examined me with those rough hands and made clicking sounds with her tongue.

Too small, she told Um Hassan when she thought I couldn’t hear.

The baby is too big and she is too small.

She left herbs and instructions for tea that would prepare the body.

But I could see the doubt in her eyes.

When the labor began, I thought I was dying.

It started as pressure in my lower back, then spread like fire around my middle.

I had seen cats give birth in the alleys behind our old house, had watched them pant and strain, but I had also seen them curl around their kittens afterward, purring with satisfaction.

I felt no instinct except fear, no knowledge except pain.

For 3 days, my body fought against itself.

The contractions would build to a crescendo that made me scream into pillows, then fade to a dull ache that never quite disappeared.

Um, Rasheed came and went, each time looking more concerned.

The imam paced outside, angry at the inconvenience, at the noise, at the disruption to his ordered household.

He never once came to see me.

Um, Hassan stayed by my side, feeding me sips of water, wiping sweat from my face during one particularly bad contraction.

When I begged her to make it stop, she gripped my hand and said, “You are stronger than you know.

We women always are.

” But I didn’t feel strong.

I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside.

The second wife, Om Khaled, prayed constantly in the corner, her prayer beads clicking in rhythm with my contractions.

Zara appeared once, looked at my writhing body, and said, “Now you know what it means to be a woman, as if this suffering was a right of passage, a necessary evil to be endured rather than a tragedy that should never have happened.

” On the third day when my strength was nearly gone, Umrashe made a decision.

She sent for her daughter who had some modern medical training.

Between them, they managed what Umrashid alone could not.

But the baby was stuck, turned wrong, and every push felt like it was ripping me in half.

I remember the exact moment I gave up when I stopped pushing and decided it would be easier to die.

Um, Hassan must have seen it in my eyes because she grabbed my face and forced me to look at her.

Not yet, she said fiercely.

You don’t get to leave yet.

When the baby finally came, it was in a rush of blood that wouldn’t stop.

I heard him cry, a sound that should have been triumphant, but seemed thin and angry to my exhausted ears.

They placed him on my chest for a moment.

This red, wrinkled creature covered in white paste and my blood.

I looked at him and felt nothing.

No rush of love, no maternal instinct, just a hollow exhaustion and the growing cold that came with blood loss.

The hemorrhaging was severe.

Um, Rashid and her daughter worked frantically, packing me with cloths, massaging my stomach to encourage the womb to contract.

Someone gave me something bitter to drink that made the room spin.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes aware of the baby crying, sometimes floating in a space that was neither life nor death.

I survived though for days afterward.

I wondered if that was a blessing or a curse.

The baby, they named him Hassan after the Imam’s father, was given to Om Hassan to nurse as my body could barely produce milk.

I was too weak to protest, too broken to care.

I lay in bed, bleeding still but slowly now, and stared at the ceiling where a water stain looked like a bird in flight.

Recovery was slow and incomplete.

Things inside me had torn that would never properly heal.

I walked differently now, slowly, carefully, like an old woman.

The doctor was called again, and this time his conversation with the imam was heated.

I heard fragments.

Permanent damage should not happen again.

Criminal to allow.

The Imam’s response was predictable.

God’s will supersedes medical opinion.

When I was finally strong enough to hold Hassan properly, I studied his face for signs of myself.

But he looked like his father.

The same broad forehead, the same thin lips.

Only his eyes, dark and questioning, seemed to hold something of me.

I tried to feel what mothers were supposed to feel.

I tried to summon love for this creature who had nearly killed me coming into the world.

But all I could manage was a protective pity.

He hadn’t asked to be born any more than I had asked to bear him.

The Imam celebrated the birth of his son with a feast.

Men came to congratulate him on his verility, on his young wife’s success.

I was displayed briefly, pale and weak, holding the baby like a prop in a play I didn’t understand.

Then I was dismissed back to my room where I could hear the celebration continuing without me.

The man who had planted this seed in my child’s body was praised, while I, who had nearly died bringing it to bloom, was forgotten.

Caring for Hassan was beyond my capability, but it was expected nonetheless.

I fumbled with diapers, my child’s hands, trying to clean another child.

His cries at night sent panic through me.

I didn’t know how to soothe him, how to understand what he needed.

Um, Hassan often took over.

Her experience making up for my ignorance.

But the imam insisted the baby sleep in my room.

said it would help me learn to be a proper mother.

Those nights were the loneliest of my life.

I would sit in the darkness, this crying bundle in my arms, and wonder how this had become my existence.

12 years old, holding my son in a house that was not a home, married to a man who saw me as property.

I would think of girls my age asleep in their childhood beds, dreaming of school and friends and futures that belong to them.

The contrast was so sharp it felt like being cut.

My body had barely begun to heal when the imam resumed his visits to my room.

The doctor had said to wait, had warned of dangers, but the imam quoted verses about a wife’s duty and ignored my tears.

Um, Hassan found me bleeding again one morning and quietly helped me clean up, her face grim.

Men do not understand, she said.

They never do.

When Hassan was 6 months old, I realized I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was different from the first, worse in its familiarity.

My body, still recovering from the trauma of Hassan’s birth, protested violently.

I bled frequently, sharp pains shooting through my abdomen.

Um, Rasheed visited more often, each time looking graver.

She spoke of babies born too soon, of mothers whose bodies simply gave out.

But the imam forbade any talk of ending the pregnancy.

This was God’s blessing, he insisted.

To refuse it would be sin.

I carried the second child in a haze of exhaustion and pain.

Hassan still needed care I could barely provide, and my growing belly made even simple tasks monumental.

I would sit on the floor to play with him, then be unable to get up without help.

My back achd constantly, and my legs swelled so badly that walking became agony.

13 years old and feeling like my body was failing me completely.

The other wives helped more this time.

Perhaps seeing how close to breaking I was.

Even Zara, still bitter about her own childlessness, would sometimes take Hassan so I could rest.

But rest was relative when your body is fighting a battle it’s too young to win.

The second birth came early as Omar Shid had predicted.

7 months and suddenly I was gripped by pains that made the first labor seem gentle.

This time there was no 3-day buildup.

The baby wanted out and my body, too damaged to resist, complied.

She came in a rush of fluid and blood so small she fit in Um Rasheed’s palm.

She didn’t cry at first, and the silence was terrible.

They worked on her for what felt like hours, but was probably minutes.

Finally, a weak mule, more kitten than human.

She was purple and struggling, her lungs not ready for air.

Um, Rashid’s daughter said she needed a hospital, needed machines to help her breathe.

The imam refused.

If God meant for her to live, she would live.

She lived three days.

I held her for those three days.

This tiny girl who looked more like a baby bird than a baby human.

Her skin was translucent, showing the map of veins beneath.

Her fingers were impossibly small with nails like rice grains.

She would open her mouth like she was trying to cry, but only the smallest sounds emerged.

I called her Amira in my mind after my doll, though the imam named her Fatima.

When she stopped breathing on the third night, I was alone with her.

I watched her tiny chest still, her purple lips part slightly, her perfect miniature hands relax.

I should have called for help, but I didn’t.

I sat there in the darkness holding her cooling body and felt something inside me break that would never fully mend.

When Um Hassan found us in the morning, she had to pry a mirror from my arms.

The burial was quick, efficient, a small wrapped bundle in a small hole.

The Imam led prayers while I stood silent, Hassan on my hip, feeling nothing and everything simultaneously.

Some of the women cried.

I couldn’t.

My tears had dried up somewhere between her birth and death, leaving only a salt burned emptiness behind.

After air, something in the imam changed toward me.

Perhaps I had proven defective in some way.

Or perhaps he’s simply tired of my youth and sadness.

His visits to my room became less frequent, though no less violent when they occurred.

I was grateful for the reprieve even as I knew it meant my value in his eyes was diminishing.

Hassan grew despite my inadequacy as a mother.

He learned to crawl then walk then run.

His first word wasn’t mama but um directed at Hassan who had become more his mother than I ever could be.

I felt relief rather than jealousy.

He was safer with her, better cared for.

I could love him better from a distance where my brokenness couldn’t infect him.

Just before my 15th birthday, a date that passed unagnowledged by anyone, including myself, I discovered I was pregnant for the third time.

The familiar nausea, the exhaustion, the sense of my body being hijacked once again.

But this time, there was a dull acceptance.

This was my life now.

This was all it would ever be.

The third pregnancy was easier physically but harder emotionally.

I had learned to disconnect from my body almost entirely.

To observe its changes like a scientist studying a specimen.

My belly grew.

The baby moved.

My body prepared for another trauma it would somehow survive.

Um, Rasheed checked on me regularly, always with that same concerned expression, but said little.

This baby came on time after a labor that was mercifully shorter than the first.

Another boy, healthy and loud.

The imam named him Khaled.

I held him, nursed him when my body cooperated, changed him, soothed him.

But the maternal feelings everyone expected never came.

I cared for my children like I completed my other household duties mechanically, efficiently, emptily.

By the time I was 16, I had Hassan who was four and Khaled who was one.

My body had been permanently altered by pregnancies it had been too young to bear.

I walked with a slight limp from hips that had separated wrong.

My stomach stretched and scarred would never be flat again.

I had lost several teeth from the pregnancies leeching calcium my young body needed.

I looked in mirrors and saw a stranger wearing my face, age beyond recognition.

The fourth pregnancy came when Khaled was barely walking.

This time I knew before any symptoms appeared.

I had become so attuned to my body’s betrayals that I could feel the moment of conception like a door closing.

The pregnancy progressed normally.

If anything about a 16-year-old’s fourth pregnancy could be called normal.

Um Rasheed just shook her head when she examined me, muttering prayers under her breath.

This baby, another girl, came easily compared to the others.

She slipped into the world with minimal fuss, pink and healthy.

The imam named her Mariam when they placed her on my chest.

I looked into her dark eyes and saw myself reflected.

Not the broken woman I had become, but the girl I had been.

For the first time since Hassan’s birth, I felt something crack in the wall I had built around my heart.

But that crack was dangerous.

To love in that house was to invite pain.

I had learned this lesson through bruises and blood.

So I sealed it up, tended to marry him with the same mechanical care I gave the boys, and tried not to think about what kind of future awaited her in a world where 9-year-old girls could become wives.

Three children by 17.

My body had become a factory for the Imam’s legacy, producing heirs at the cost of my own dissolution.

The other wives looked at me with a mixture of pity and relief.

I had fulfilled the function they could not or would not.

Bearing the burden of continuation for the entire household, Hassan grew to be serious and quiet, already learning the ways of his father.

Khaled was wilder, more prone to tantrums that earned him beatings from the Imam.

Mariam was watchful, those dark eyes taking in everything.

I loved them in the only way I knew how.

By trying to shield them from the worst of their father’s anger.

By teaching them to be quiet when he was home.

By showing them how to become invisible when necessary.

But even as I protected them, I knew I was failing them.

How could I teach them about love when I had forgotten what it felt like? How could I show them joy when I had none to give? I was 17 years old with three living children and one dead and I felt like I had nothing left to offer anyone.

The worst moments came when Mariam would cry in the night and I would hold her knowing that in this world, in this house, being born female was already a sentence.

I would look at her perfect face and wonder if she too would be married off before she could write her own name properly.

The thought made me hold her tighter, as if my arms could shield her from the fate that awaited girls in our world.

Hassan had started attending the mosque school, coming home with verses memorized and questions I couldn’t answer.

Why does Allah make women cover themselves? He asked once, “Why can’t they pray with men?” I gave him the answers I had been taught, even as they tasted like ash in my mouth.

I was perpetuating the very system that had destroyed me.

But what choice did I have? The Imam began talking about Hassan’s future, about the kind of man he would become, strong, pious, successful, a leader like his father.

I watched my 4-year-old son puff up with pride at his father’s attention, and something cold settled in my stomach.

He was being shaped into someone who might one day take a child bride of his own, who might quote the same verses to justify the same cruelties.

Khaled at was showing signs of rebellion that worried me.

He would refuse to sit still during prayers, throw his food when angry, scream when disciplined.

The Imam’s response was increasingly violent, a child that young beings struck for acting like a child.

I tried to intervene once and earned a blackened eye for my trouble.

After that, I could only comfort Khaled afterward, whispering apologies for a world I couldn’t change.

But it was Miam who broke my heart most completely.

At barely a year old, she had learned to be quiet.

Not the normal quiet of a contented baby, but the careful silence of someone who has learned that noise brings danger.

She would watch everything with those knowing eyes, and I swear she understood more than any baby should.

Sometimes I would catch her looking at me with what seemed like pity, as if she knew what I had endured to bring her here.

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