what makes it real

I read during my break at work. My green apron beside me, toasted blueberry bagel, raspberry cream cheese from the expired samples, and this morning, tears. I am hiding back in the wi-fi user's cove, lost in the cruel world where Maryam will not have Ali, no matter how strong her spirit or beautiful her eyes. In a time and place women best marry and then develop their cunning, she suffers the for the dreams her father will not have her pursue, and the man. And he for her.

Then at night Laila and Mariam are brought back to Rasheed. I lay the book face down on the sheet and sob like a child - like a protest against all that is not just in the world - knowing that my emotion does nothing save build awareness in me, and resolve for change. The roller coaster of hope and terror, then we come to terms - both they and I - with the reality of the horror they cannot escape.

There is a third story, this one told, over the dinner table on Sunday. Another woman, another mother, another person who falls on the hard side of power and choices. Law in this country can protect her, but cannot force respect from a son, or the man who has taught him that women don't deserve it. This story, the most real of the three, somehow seems the least; there is no emotion on which we ache our way in. We hear and consider the practicalities - money, housing, where the children will live - and only thinking about it later do I detachedly remember how she must suffer. So unlike the fiction, where the colors and smells and the touch of true love torn apart grabs our hearts by both hands and shakes, saying, "This is her, this is you, this is every woman in every town on every continent. Pay attention." I do.