Heard from afar are the screams of voiceless voices, screaming of pain they cannot bear. They scream in agony and vengeance. Humanity and sympathy vanished like a thief in the night. I’m dying an untold death with no mercy or help.

How is it my fault to have been born a female? I’m being tortured for being a female whilst the family wished for an heir. My mother is burning in hell because of the wrath of her in-laws. It is said that my father’s family didn’t want him to get married to my mother due to reasons best known to them. After their marriage, she suffered a miscarriage and sadly it continued for a couple of times. She was told after she conceived for the fifth time that if she loses the pregnancy, she would never be able to conceive again.

That was when the devil made his way into their marriage. He turned the husband against his own wife. My father really hoped and wished that I was born a male so that his lineage wouldn’t perish, but unfortunately, I was born a female and that was his greatest disappointment. He started hating my mother and I the very same moment my gender was disclosed. He blamed my mother for all the miscarriages she suffered and labelled her a witch for killing all his male children. This opened a can of worms when his family saw an opportunity to insult and degrade my mother and I.

My father changed terribly. He got worse each passing day. His loving and caring side vanished into thin air. He used to beat up my mother right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t say a word or do anything.

One faithful day, he came home drunk as usual and picked a fight with my mother. What he had in his eyes was something I had never seen before. It looked like a storm, a fire from hell. You could tell from the look in his eyes that all hell was about to break loose. I told my mother that we should perhaps run away, but she refused and told me that she was to stand by the vows she took on her wedding day, that she would gladly accept whatever was given to her by her husband.

I stood back as he got closer and closer, with my heart beating faster than a runaway bride.

He grabbed my mother by the neck and started beating her while I watched from under the small table where I was hiding. He beat her until she lost all her strength and her body appeared to go numb.

With the last strength she had, she screamed, “Run away Faith! Run as fast as your legs can carry you. Your life depends on it and don’t look back no matter what!”

I saw my father murder his own wife because she bore him a girl and not a boy. As scared and horrified as I was, I stormed out from under the table and headed for the door. As weak as she was, my mother tried to hold him back until I was out of the house. I kept running, yet with no direction. The screams of my dying mother was spinning around me. I felt like turning back and dying with my mother, but she told me never to look back no matter what.

If I was born a male, my mother would have been alive. I was suffering in my own home, but that didn’t matter because she was there to wipe my tears and make my dull day seem brighter.

I am now a lone orphan with no place to lay this head of mine, despite having a father. Do I return home to suffer the same fate as my mother, or will I perish on these lonely streets all by myself?

My mother faced and embraced death with great courage, but it’s sad because she did not take a moment to think about what would happen to me after her departure from the world of the living.

Tell us: What advice do you have for Faith?