The first night Amina remembered clearly was the night the wind tore half the zinc roof from their house. She was five small, skinny, and already learning how to read the slant of adults' faces the way other children read picture books. Rain came down like stones, hammering the little house until it shook on its tired foundation. Her grandmother held her close on the bed, whispering prayers that mixed with the storm.
Her father, Musa, was outside trying to fight the wind, holding the zinc sheets with ropes that had frayed from age. He looked like a man wrestling with something he had no business confronting. Yet even as the storm swallowed his voice, Amina felt safe in the warmth of her grandmother's embrace.
That was before everything changed. Before the woman who would become her stepmother walked into their lives with perfume that smelled too sweet to trust. Before lies planted like seeds would grow into a forest her father got lost in. Before the world demanded strength from Amina long before she was old enough to understand its weight.
But that night before all the betrayal and cruelty there was only rain, a leaking roof, and the warmth of two people who loved her.
The next morning, the storm's destruction became clear. Half their belongings were soaked, the ceiling boards sagged dangerously, and their clothes few as they were lay in muddy heaps. Yet Musa returned from the backyard smiling weakly, drenched and exhausted.
"We are alive," he said simply, pulling both Amina and her grandmother close. "We thank God."
Life, however, was not done testing them.
For years, Musa struggled alone, working extra shifts at the mechanic yard to rebuild their home. Amina's mother had died when she was three, after a sudden illness. Later, Amina would learn the truth—that her mother had not just died, but had been helped to her grave. But for now, all she knew was the heaviness in her father's eyes whenever her mother's name was mentioned.
Amina grew, thin as a broomstick but bright-eyed, always clutching her battered exercise books as though knowledge was the rope she needed to pull herself into a better world. Her grandmother, Mama Laraba, taught her old stories every evening as they cooked. Amina listened, absorbed everything, and carried the warmth of those moments like a shield over her heart.
She didn't know that soon, she would need that shield.
Everything shifted the day her father brought a new woman home.
Her name was Maryam.
She arrived in a bright yellow dress, lips red as palm oil, eyes calculating even when she smiled. She hugged Amina too tightly, as if trying to measure her worth and found it lacking.
"This is your new mother," Musa said, hopeful, desperate even. "She will help us rebuild this home."
Amina didn't feel helped. She felt… watched.
In the days that followed, the house changed. The air was never still. The once-warm evenings turned into tense silences. Maryam took over everything—arranging the kitchen, dictating chores, controlling Musa's schedule. The neighbors whispered. Mama Laraba watched with sharp, suspicious eyes.
Amina tried to be obedient. She swept the compound twice a day, washed plates as soon as they were used, and kept to herself. But Maryam seemed determined to find faults where there were none.
"You're lazy," she snapped over small things.
"You're dirty."
"You're ungrateful."
Each word was a stone thrown at a little girl who had no shield except her grandmother's quiet strength.
But Amina endured. She endured because she had no choice. She endured because she believed that someday, things would get better if she just kept her heart clean.
And she endured because she loved her father, and she feared that breaking under the weight of Maryam's cruelty would only bring him more pain.
One evening, after another round of accusations from Maryam, Amina walked outside to fetch water. The sun was dropping behind the rooftops, staining the sky orange. She paused at the well and let the wind cool her hot cheeks.
She whispered, "One day… I will leave this life behind."
She didn't know how. She didn't know when.
But she knew—deep inside—that she was meant for more than suffering.
That night, while she read under the dim lantern, Maryam stood at her doorway watching her like a predator studying prey.
"You think you're special, don't you?" Maryam said in a low voice. "Your father may be blind, but I see you. I see everything."
Amina looked up slowly. "I just want to study."
"That's the problem," Maryam said. "You're too eager. Too ambitious. Girls like you cause trouble."
But Amina didn't answer. She simply lowered her gaze and turned another page.
In that moment, Maryam's hatred deepened.
Later, much later, Amina would realize that Maryam's hatred came from fear—the fear that Amina, a child with nothing, could grow into a woman with everything Maryam desired.
And that fear would push Maryam into darker and darker choices.
As Amina studied late into the night, unaware, Maryam quietly slipped into Musa's room and whispered the first of many poisonous lies:
"I heard Amina talking to someone outside. She's falling into bad behavior… just like her mother did before she died."
Musa stiffened.
Amina's life of suffering had just begun.