The Other Eighteen Year Old
By Amal Naseem
What’s the difference? I ask as an 18-year-old blessed to have been born into a loving, well to do family – living in one of the richest countries in the world. I ask as an 18 year old who has been given all that she’s ever asked for…and not asked for. I am ever thankful to the one and only for being so merciful and gracious. But now I ask, what’s the difference between me and that other 18-year-old girl… the one who is exactly like me, yet miles away from me?
Whilst I enjoy reading my favourite books sipping my green tea in my backyard, she is walking the streets begging for food. Why?
Whilst I tease my younger sister and my brother, she is being sold to criminals by her own brother. Why?
Whilst I shop with my mother, she shrieks out for her dead mother. Why?
Whilst I have a heart to heart conversation with my father, she is getting a beating from her father for being born a girl. Why?
What is the difference? What have I done that she hasn’t? What is in me that isn’t in her? Why do I get to enjoy all these worldly pleasures while she suffers each and every second of her life?
Her heart is pure as gold, her tears speak a thousand words, her eyes hide a million dreadful stories. She sees herself as defective; a damaged piece being torn alive. All she prays for is to go back to her Master. Her poor body is tired. She feels hollow inside. She needs love and compassion to fill her. She needs God. She loves Him despite the trials and hardships He has put her through. She knows she will be blessed in the afterlife. She cherishes life despite being tired of it.
Now I understand the difference between her and me. I believe that I shall be answerable for both her life and mine, because I have the power to help her. I can change the helpless state that she seems destined to live. She is no different from me; we’ve sprouted from the same roots and bloomed in different directions. She is a sister, a consciousness, and a duty.
