Читать книгу Brutal: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Little Girl’s Stolen Innocence - Nabila Sharma - Страница 4

I’m running around the garden in the sunshine. My brother turns to throw a red rubber ball towards me and I watch as it sails high up into the air. I stretch up my hands to try and catch it and, as I do, the sunshine blinks between my fingertips. It’s a hot day and I can feel the sun baking my skin.

My dolls are sitting in a neat line in their pram. I’ve brushed their long glossy hair and dressed them in nice clothes and they look beautiful. Their hair isn’t as long as mine, though. Mine stretches below my bottom and attracts comment wherever I go. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ they say. ‘What a beauty!’

Maybe that’s why the new imam at the mosque singles me out from the start. ‘You’re a pretty one,’ he says, and asks me to help with the cleaning. I feel very proud. He’s a strange-looking man, with his freckles and protruding belly and the funny sarong he wears, but he’s the imam, the leader of our community, the one all the parents want to impress. The other girls are jealous of the attention he pays me.

Every evening after school I go to the mosque for lessons with seventy other children. We all line up to shake the imam’s hand and say ‘Salaam alaikum’, to which he replies ‘Alaikum salaam’. But one night as he holds my hand, he does something odd. He strokes the inside of my palm with his index finger, wiggling it around, tickling me. I’m confused. Should I do the same thing back? Then he jabs his finger hard into my hand, as if to make a point.

I watch carefully as he shakes hands with the other children and I don’t think he does the funny handshake with them.

It’s on my mind as I play in the garden. Why me? There are times when I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m only seven. I feel like I’ve been chosen for something. But I don’t know what.