Too Scared to Share With My Family

I am a muslim girl too scared to share with my family what I went through in my childhood and why I am so different and difficult. I don’t know how to write this but watching Brave Miss world has left me in tears. I saw Linor turn from the broken girl she had become after her rape to the beautiful strong women she is now. The strength I see in her, I wish our muslim community had women like her. I wish we had families that stood for us and with us. I wish I can share with my parents what went on in my childhood. I was raped, sodomized, and molested by 3 different people. 2 were my cousins and 1 my uncle. I want to be the next Linor for this community of silence. I want mothers aware of what is happening inside our own homes, behind closed doors. Its like one day you think your moving on, and past is in the past and another day you find your life still crippled by constant rapes of my childhood. Why me you ask God? I try to be a good per son, an upright person but something in my heart always asks why me. Why did God who is so merciful put a child through such pain. No one knows how bad it was. Maybe I was raped a few hundred times. My cousin once told me when I was 9, that he started molesting me when I was just a little baby and that he got me used to it.

This story seems to have no beginning or end. I listen to Linor and it gives me this nudge to get up and change something and to have a voice. I somehow came to terms with the rapes over the years by telling myself that God has punished them and still does because these men, especially the one that ruined me from the baby age, live miserably and are unhappy. I try to move on because I believe God will give them what they deserve but i can’t be responsible for broken families. The uncle and cousin who molested me have wives and children. My mother talks to them and all of our families love each other. If I came out with this, so many families will shatter. If I tell my parents they will die of pain. I have a son and I am a single mom so I know the love we have for our children.

If God forbid someone did my son wrong the way i was wronged I would die in pain and cry tears of blood. How can I tell my family what I went through. How can I share what I have kept silent all these years? How can I hurt so many people, just so that I may find peace and heal. Someone tell me? Linor I don’t know if you will read this because I am sure you are busy. But I love you. I have never met a Jew yet I will tell you, all I see is beauty and strength in you and how you embraced your religion after all that you went through… I wish Muslims and Jews didn’t have such animosity because your voice could be so powerful in the Muslim world. All those women hiding behind their veils and 4 walls of their house can rise against rape and tell their stories if we had more women like you. I can’t seem to even talk about the details of my rapes even to myself. Its as if a part of me has locked it away from me and I’m not ready to reach open that lock.