The Last Light
A Long But True Story





Nooruldeen Oglah


  
© Copyright 2021 by Nooruldeen Oglah



 Photo by Jonas Kaiser on Unsplash.
                                              Photo by Jonas Kaiser on Unsplash

I am a wife and mother to a son and a daughter, and since I started my life with my husband, we have been living a good life. I have used throughout my married life to raise my children with several nannies, and each of them did not stay with me for more than two months and then escaped from my husband’s aggressive cruelty by nature. He was masterful in torturing any nanny who works for us, and I do not deny that I sometimes participated in his crime. When my daughter was seven years old and my son was in middle school, a farmer from my husband's acquaintances came to us with his seven-year-old daughter. My husband welcomed him with pride and exaltation. The simple farmer said: He brought his daughter to work for us for twenty pounds a month, and we agreed. The farmer left his daughter, and she started crying while holding her father's robe, and the man left with tears in her eyes. The little girl started her new life with us. She would get up early in the morning to help me prepare food for my child, then she would carry the school bags and take them to the street and stay with my daughter and son until the school bus picked them up, and she would return to the apartment and eat her breakfast, and it was mostly beans without oil, and bread on on the verge of rotting, then she begins to do the housework of cleaning, wiping, buying vegetables and answering calls until midnight, then she falls to the ground like a dead woman and falls asleep, and at any slip, forgetting or delaying the performance of a required work, my husband beats her very harshly, so she endures the beatings crying patiently, and despite She was extremely honest, clean and loyal to her servants, rejoicing in the simplest things. Although I admitted that I was my husband’s partner in his cruelty to the maids and his mastery of torturing them, he sometimes took pity on this girl, for her kindness and brokenness, so I appeal to my husband not to beat her, so he used to tell me: This “type” of people does not find good treatment with him. And the girl continued to bear the torment in silence and patience, and even when the Eid came and my children came out rejoicing, this poor girl would still clean and wash without a trace. As for her father, we only saw him a few times when he came to collect the rent, then he sent one of his relatives to receive her monthly wage, and she did not see her mother and her sisters except on three limited occasions: the first when her older brother died, and the second time when she fell ill with a contagious disease and we feared for our two children from transmitting the infection to them We drove her to her hometown, and the third time when her father died. And I cry now every time I remember the harshness of our punishment for her, if she made any mistake, my husband used to electrocute her with an electric wire!! We often deprived her of dinner during the harsh cold nights, so she went to bed hungry, and I do not remember that she slept a night, several long years, without crying!!

And the author of the story says: And you will wonder why she endured all this torment and did not escape with her skin from your hell?

I answer you: The girl, when she was almost young, went out one day to buy vegetables and did not return, so my husband asked the doorman about her and knew that she had been talking for long periods with a young man who worked for a butcher on the same street, and that she might have agreed with him to marry so that he would rescue her from this harsh life .

But not a week had passed until my husband’s influence ensured that she was brought from her hiding place, and upon her return we received her with a welcome full of all kinds of torment, so my husband electrocuted her and my son volunteered to kick her violently, except for my daughter, who was in pain with what he was doing to this poor maid.

The poor woman returned to her miserable life with us and surrendered to her fate. If she made a mistake or postponed a job for some time, he would beat her severely. We used to enjoy going out on vacations and leave her the leftovers of the week's food. Then, little by little, we began to notice that the cups and plates fell from her hands and that she stumbled a lot in her gait, so we presented her to the The doctor assured us that her eyesight has greatly weakened and that she cannot currently see what is under her feet, meaning that she has become almost blind, and yet we did not spare her and she continued to do all the housework and go out to buy vegetables from the market, and I often slapped her if she came back from the market with vegetables that were not fresh, so my wife pity her The doorman used to buy vegetables for her to save her from insults and beatings. And this continued for a while, then the girl left the house one day after she became almost blind and did not return again, and we did not bother to look for her this time.

The years passed and my husband was referred to retirement and lost his position and influence and my son graduated from university and worked and got married and we were happy with his marriage. Our happiness was complete when we learned that his wife was pregnant, and after the months of pregnancy passed, she gave birth to her child, so we discover that he is blind and does not see, and it was a harsh shock for us, and our joy turned into sadness. We showed it to the doctors, but to no avail. My son and his wife surrendered to the fait accompli, and we entered our grandson a nursery for the blind, and my daughter-in-law decided not to become pregnant for fear of a repeat of the disaster.

But the doctors reassured her and encouraged her to get pregnant and we also encouraged her, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. The doctor gave us the good news that she sees and sees like children, and we were doubly happy with her. After seven months, we noticed that her eyesight was focused in one direction that she did not deviate from, so we showed her to an eye specialist. It shocks us with an even more horrific truth, which is that she only sees a glimmer of light and that she is also at risk of losing her sight. My husband had a psychological condition that spoiled his days and hated everything, and the doctors advised us to enter a psychiatric clinic to treat depression.

My heart sank and I suddenly remembered the broken woman who escaped from our hell blind after spending ten years with us during which she tasted the horrors of electric shock, beatings, humiliation and deprivation, and my soul worsened from anxiety. Is this Heaven’s punishment for us for what we did to her?!

The image of this orphan girl whose treatment we neglected and caused her to lose sight of is haunting me in my loneliness, and my hope is that my Lord will pardon what we have borne in finding this girl and atone for what we have done to her. After searching and asking about her, we learned that she works as a maid in one of the mosques, so I went to her and greened her to live with me the rest of my days. Despite the cruelty of the memories, I was happy when I asked about her and sought her to return her, and she memorized the ten that we did not memorize and came back with me feeling the way while I held her hand. Their hearts: God is alive and does not sleep, so do not be hard on anyone, for there will come a day when you will regret what you did in your strength and tyranny.





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