“I remember the room where it happened. I remember there was no lock. I remember there was no one except me and this person. I remember how I felt. I remember the emotional pain more than the physical pain. I remember wanting to die. I remember wanting to run away. But rape was not the only thing that scarred me. During the war, a man got close to me. He promised me to teach maths. He would ask me about my mother and my home and I would tell him everything. He had gained my trust. One day while I sat with Mother in her shop, the man walked in, took out a gun and shot mother several times. I did not know what was happening. I remember looking for mother’s blood but only seeing tiny bullet holes in her Fariya. Though Mother eventually recovered after intense treatment, the incident planted so much fear inside of me. I cannot imagine what it must have done to Mother. For that day, I feared men more and more. I looked out for men who wore a shirt, untucked, like the math teacher who shot my Mother. I felt they could be hiding a gun. I felt like I was going to get shot. In retrospect, I feel like I was constantly trying to dodge the ‘bullet’. This fear also turned into anger. I started getting into physical altercations with men. I started punching men who misbehaved and also in many ways became the savior for many girls in my school.

When I came to Kathmandu I must have been 13. I started looking for an escape. My dream in life was to shut my eyes and wake up to become a 15-year-old girl with a normal life. But the older I got the more darkness my past brought. The worst part was to have absolutely no family support. I cried my eyes out most nights and my resentment towards my mother and the hatred towards men, in general, grew bigger by day. I became an isolated kid. I was embarrassed by myself and I could not trust anyone. I felt someone would come and spank me. I sat near windows ready to escape if someone came to shoot me. I could not make connections or make friends. You see I was not capable of receiving love as I had never experienced that earlier in my life. However, the city allowed me anonymity. I did not have a social identity like in the village. In the village, everyone knew me and I felt manipulated, abused and judged. However, it wasn’t easy living in this lonely city. As I grew up to become a woman, I started to get more worried about society’s judgments and verdicts about who I and my family was. Who would marry an impure girl like me? If I did get married would my husband and his family be nice to my mother who had married multiple times? Would they be respecting of me after meeting my alcoholic brothers? What if my husband found out about my past? Would he leave me? Would his mother taunt me for what I had brought into the family? As a young woman with dreams to get married and live happily and respectfully, the dream just brought more helplessness.”