This essay is completely fictional.
Once I was ignorant, I was in university when terrible news hit the gossip vineyard. A senior girl had been raped when she was on her way hone from a birthday party late at night. There was a girl companion with her and a car slammed into their car. Three men got out of the other car and pulled the senior girl out and took her away in their car. The victim barely survived. It was such horrific news and something like happening to somebody that walked the same hallways as I did, sat on the same patch of garden in our university as my friends and I did, brought hairs on the back of my neck on end. The next day, this news had not ceased to spread and the raped girl was clearly not going to be forgotten for a while. My life went on as usual though, I went to classes, submitted assignments, cried over horrible exams and enjoyed my time with my friends. What I did not realize was that this senior girl who had been raped had her whole life changed. She wouldn't think the same way, talk the same way, and even see things the same way as she did before her terrible fate.
However,
after a few weeks, I saw the girl walk around on campus alone. I was with my
friends, enjoying a laugh over a grotesque joke and my eyes had gone to a girl
wandering alone. A friend had nudged me and whispered to me that it was the girl
who had been raped. I gave my friend a knowing look and then we went back to
talking about trivial things in our lives. So consumed were we in our own
selves, I did not give a second thought to the girl that walked alone.
I
saw the girl again. She was in one of the senior classes I had taken. She sat
at the back and since I was late, there was an empty seat only beside her. I
made my way there and sat down, already hoping that the class gets over. There
was nothing wrong with her. She listened to the lecture and wrote down notes as
the rest of the class. But there was something about her; I knew something very
personal about her. Her ordeal was open to the public and yet she sat there as
if she was still like one of us. As if she wasn’t raped. A boy in the class got
on the professor’s nerve for some comment he made and he was ordered to leave
the class. I jumped up immediately and took the departed boy’s seat, so
uncomfortable was I. How ignorant was I about that girl’s own discomfort at
being snubbed so easily by me.
Now
I am just like the senior girl, a rape victim. I was astonished to be in such a
position. My family background, financial or political was so normal that one
wouldn’t assume that the rape was because of that. I was adequate looking. I
was not an exotic beauty or a delicate doll, I was like plain Jane, and so it
wasn’t because some mad stalker just had to have me. I was not even friends
with anybody influential, so that some psycho terrorist could use me as
leverage and rape me but not kill me. I was as plain as the Punjab province. My
face must have showed the question in my head. Why me? The perpetrator had
whispered hoarsely in my ear, his breath so foul, I wanted to choke. The sweat
on his forehead was dripping on to me. He grunted off of me and then he said
that it was because I was a girl, and I was worthless.
A couple of years after my bachelor’s
graduation, I had been driving my car over to the supermarket close to my home.
I had just come back from a tough meeting after which I may or may not have
been fired from my job. That’s how my boss makes everyone feel, every weekly meeting
was a ‘fired or not fired?” one. I got a car park in front of the supermarket and
I opened my door to get out of the car. Something slipped off of my lap; I
realized that it was my phone that I have a habit of keeping on my lap. I bent
down to retrieve it from under the car and suddenly I felt a prick at my back.
I felt a voice extremely close to me, growl at me to get into the car. Icy fear
trailed up my spine, I turned my face just a bit to see if I could ask anybody
for help. There was no one. It was late evening, quickly getting dark. Whatever was held at my back went a bit deeper and I had no doubts that it was a
gun when I heard the man unlock the safety belt. He urged me to get into the
car or get shot in the head. I tried to control the shaking that was rapidly
increasing, hoping desperately that somebody would sense my distress. There
were cars driving by on the road, some parked far away from where I was, if I
shouted for help, I was sure they could hear me. The question was that would
they come over to help me? I had no choice but to get into the car again, with the
man sitting behind me, his gun positioned very close to my head.
He
gave me directions to the place I knew well. It was close to the beach and so
secluded, you could hear the air causing the sand to swirl around. The man
suddenly told me to stop in the middle of nowhere and he got out. He had his
gun directed at me as he pulled me out with just one hand. Fighting was futile.
If I had to fight, I would have shouted outside the supermarket, but I would be
dead too. As I stood there, my knees were almost about to buckle under me. They
actually buckled when he pulled the trigger but the bullet did not hit me, he
had shot the fire in the air, to just to let me know that the gun was real. Then
he ordered me to take off my clothes and after that, I blanked out everything
else that happened later.
I
survived especially because after the rape, the man threw my phone on the
ground and drove my car away. I called my sister to get me. The horror had just
begun and it has remained a part of me ever since. Oddly, I remembered that
girl who had also gotten raped when I was in university. How offhanded I was
about it. Only because she was just a stranger to me, I had no idea what her
name was or where she lived or anything. All I knew was that she was also a
girl and some deranged, psychopath had also told her that she was worthless and
deserved to get raped. Now we both had something in common. I would probably be
able to sit beside her now.
I
quit my job afterwards as a columnist from a newspaper and became a
humanitarian. I would visit women crisis centers and help out with women who
were also victims of rape. However, I would always remember the girl who I
didn’t help. I had actually turned away from her when I should have given a
friendly smile at least. How could have been so ignorant, so unfriendly, so
inhumane? I wish to God that no one goes through what the senior girl and I
went through. Unfortunately though, it happens more often in my country than
probably anywhere else. The rapes have increased enormously and don’t plan on
decreasing yet. What does a girl have to do in this situation?
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