They had been waiting for a couple of minutes already. She knew that she still would have to wait a bit longer. She only had little money and no car would take her, she had to wait for a nice driver, willing to take her to her home town for the little money she had left. She tried to look confident. Her daughter should not realize how worried she was in reality. She was worried that they could catch her. That they would catch her and bring her back to the city. To the place she had escaped from.
She looked down at her daughter. Her daughter looked confident and a little too mature for her age. But who could blame her? She had seen her mother suffer, she had been helpless and had to watch how her mother was beaten and humiliated.
Initially, when they came to town, it all seemed like a happy story, a success, and an improvement. They could leave their poor and remote village and join parts of their family in the big city. Oh, the big city. She had heard so many great stories. She heard of people coming to the city and getting rich in the twinkling of an eye. It was supposed to be the place of progress.
A rich uncle paid them the trip to the city. He told her that she would have to work during the first months to pay off her debt and she was happy to do so, because she didn’t want to live on his pocket. Her daughter went to school while she went to clean the streets. She still earned more than she would have earned in her home village. She was happy.
One day, just a couple of weeks after she arrived in the city, she met a guy. He was good looking and stopped by to talk to her. He came every day and talked to her, while she was cleaning. After a couple of days, he invited her for a drink. The day after for dinner. She felt that she was starting to feel something for that stranger.
He asked her to marry him. She accepted and so she moved to his place with her daughter. The first days were wonderful, she felt like in heaven. Shortly after they married, he asked her to get a new job and introduced her to one of his friends. The friend took her to an isolated neighborhood; he drove so quickly that she couldn’t remember the way back. He stopped in front of a house and let her in. Kindly he gave her something to drink. Suddenly she started to feel dizzy and her eyes shut.
When she woke up, she was lying on a bed in a small room. Her head hurt and she didn’t know where she was. The door was locked. She knocked the door and suddenly someone turned the key and it opened. A man came in, he looked at her, hit her and threw her on the bed. There he ripped off her clothes and violated her. She felt so much pain, she felt so humiliated and as soon as he left she started to cry. But the next man came and she had to suffer again. It seemed to keep on going like this forever. She wanted to die. But there was nothing which could help her escape this cruel world.
She didn’t remember how many days had passed. But one day, she managed to escape from her room, she could get to a street and a man was driving her, kindly, to the city center from where she managed to find her husband’s apartment. She thought that he would be relieved and endlessly happy to see her again. She thought that he must have worried.
But when she entered the apartment her husband slapped her, yelled at her and kicked her. The moment she wanted to start crying from pain, she saw from the corner of her eye that her daughter was silently watching. She retained her tears, she had to be strong.
After some minutes her husband left. Although everything was hurting she took her daughter, grabbed some clothes, put them into their luggage and left the apartment. The first night, they slept on the street. The second night, they could find a safe backyard where almost no one could see them.
During the day she went begging. She begged for food and for some money to return to her home village.
After four days on the street, she came to the gas station, the place where cars pick up travelers. There she was waiting now. She was waiting and hoped that someone would accept her in the car and accept that she couldn’t pay for the trip. She was waiting and tried to look calm, making her daughter feel secure.
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