We Are Prisoners

I cannot see. I am blinded by the bright light above me. The clinical air pervades my being. I cannot see. But I can hear. I hear the scrape of a blade sliding off of the metal surgical table. Their hands press into the flesh of my face, squashing me in their unrelenting grasp. The tip of the blade tickles my skin, tracing a soft path around the flesh of my mouth before it is driven into my skull. I am consumed by pain and yet I am prohibited from crying out or struggling or trying to escape. So I feel nothing as they tell me to. The blade makes quick work of my face, slicing around my lips, ploughing through the path again and again and again, not minding the river of blood flowing down my chin, over my body, into my soul. After all, that's all I am to them. Blood and flesh and bone. Nothing more, maybe less. Time evades me, stretching out of my grasp, just a fingertip's breath away. At last they lift my mouth from my face and I hear the soft thud of it's corpse as it is dropped onto the floor at their feet.

I cannot see. I cannot speak. But I can hear. I hear the rustle of fabric. I feel the cool material drape over my face, hiding the ensanguined lump of tissue that was once my mouth. Now no one can see.

I cannot see, no one can. But I can hear. I hear the slow whir of a drill charging up, drawing closer and closer to me. To what used to be me. Now their hands grasp my head, pressing their fingers into my temples until I can hear my heartbeat. The whirring gets closer. And closer. And closer. In this moment I cannot see. I cannot hear. I can only feel. The drill bores through my skull, leaving a deep hole in its wake. But then it stops, leaving me with just the appearance of a wound, just the appearance of a demolished mind. But tucked away inconspicuously beneath the puncture lies the plush fabric of my brain, untouched but trapped beneath the hole, beneath the appearance of the wound.

I cannot see. I cannot speak. I appear not to think. But I can hear. I can feel.

And in the end, all I feel is the band of leather being clasped around my neck, a short rope neatly clipped onto the end of it. They permit me to stand in the corner and as they drape fabric all over me, all around me, engulfing my vision once more, I feel the end of the rope graze the bridge of my foot.

I cannot see. I cannot speak. I appear not to think. But I can hear. I can feel. I hear the footsteps of a stranger enter the room. Before I know it, the stranger has snatched my wrist from under the fabric and slipped a ring onto my reluctant finger. They snatch up the length of rope and yank me forward.

And I follow, because what other option is there?

No one can help me. I am in their hold now. We are all trapped and we cannot escape. The bars of our cages are invisible but they are real... they are very real. Because after all this is a real story, not a nightmare, not a lucid dream but reality, blunt and cruel.

We are all trapped and we cannot escape, as while we are Afghan women under the reign of the Taliban, we are prisoners.