User:Tina1981

I travel a lot for work.

Some might say that's a dream job I got going on there. Before all this happened, I thought so too. I teach English with the British embassy and get sent to busy, bustling cities as well as to remote villages. I have been all over the Middle East to live. Asia too. If this were a year ago, I would probably be writing this from a hut in a Vietnamese village where I trained local primary school teachers. But I am writing it from my East London home, my mind slightly groggy this afternoon from the meds I've been given by my doctor. They make my hands shake and my speech slower than normal, as though I can't get the words out fast enough. As a result I am taking a long vacation from work. You might be wondering why I am taking medicine that has such a detrimental effect on my day to day activities. But I need them. I need them right now, like you need oxygen to breathe. Otherwise I will start to remember again.

Once I had a bad experience staying in a hotel a few years back. It freaked me out so much I didn't want to talk about it until a friend persuaded me too. I found that the fear lifted somewhat and that the power the bad event held over me was lessened somehow. And that is why I am confronting my fear and setting this down in words for you today. This is for me, not you. This is for healing, not attention. Read on and help me unburden myself from what I saw and heard that day. I almost beg you. If nobody reads this, then nobody is listening and if nobody is listening then she still has hold of me.

About ten months ago I was sent to Sudan out of the blue, to do some teacher training. It was a dream come true. I had always been drawn there. The beauty of the landscape; desert stretching for miles, yellow mists that settle over the land, the incredibly ancient history. Sudan was like the culmination of a magic spell to me. I couldn't wait to go.

On arrival I found that my expectations were not too far from accurate. I was quite literally spellbound with the rawness of Sudan away from the city. I was staying in a luxury bedouin style tent because the schools I was visiting were based in suburbs and small towns. I met the locals and they threw parties for me to welcome me to their country. I was an honoured guest, although I tried to hide my disgust at the slaughtering of an adorable goat. I am an animal lover and vegetarian. I cried secretly about it for the rest of the week.

The atmosphere was jovial, almost euthoric and I had no reason to believe that there was anything wrong, or unnatural happening in this small town. Here, people wore western clothes, listened to American music and had satellite dishes to pick up television signals. The weather was boiling and sometimes mini sand storms rose up from the ground and blew dust everywhere. Due to this, the British Red Cross - a charity organisation that provides assistance to people in need all around the world (I often worked closely with them in my job) had given out face masks. You know the type that are white and sit across the mouth and nose, like a dentist or doctor would wear. The local Sudanese often wore them to prevent breathing in sand and polluted air in extremely hot climates.

I had been making my way home from work one night when I saw a local woman wearing one of those facemasks. I spotted her across the deserted road from me. Just us walking. I took notice of this lady because in this town, it was not common to see a female out alone at night. Most go everywhere with their husbands or male family members.

I tried not to stare, but out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn her eyes followed me as we both passed each other and her neck almost twisted right the way round, I am assuming, because she didn't want to let me out of her sight either. Now, remember, I am a white woman in a Sudanese suburb and so I stood out like a sore thumb. I was used to being stared at, but her actions struck me as unusual and extremely creepy. Actually I was really scared. There didn't seem to be anything frightening about her. She had long black hair that shone under the nearly full moon. Her eyebrows were full and shaped beautifully to compliment almond eyes that I think were green. The road that seperated us was narrow enough that I had a good look at her. I remember silver eyeshadow and black eyeliner framing her eyes. She had a slim figure and must have been almost six feet in height. I definitely remember thinking how pretty she was. That's why I stared at her. I admired her beauty, but the reason behind her long look at me, I didn't know. Her eyes were completely blank.

I slept fitfully that night. At the time I didn't know why. I went to work. I entered the classroom of the teacher I was going to be working with that day.

"How are you Fatima? I brought you ....."

I stopped mid-sentence. Fatima had a black eye, a swollen lip and a homemade bandage on her arm.

"What happened!" I remember gasping and running toward her. "Can I do anything to help? Do you need anything?"

"No, no. I am okay. I was holding this. He couldn't do what he wanted to do. I had this."

Confused I looked at her hand. She raised it to her lips - something blue and glassy - and kissed it.

"I had protection."

On showing me the object, I saw that it was an 'evil eye' charm which is used in many cultures from Greece to Turkey, Egypt to Iran and some places in Africa. People believe the eye can protect from evil.

Fatima, seeing my puzzled and horrified expression went on to tell me that her husband suspected her of cheating and had attacked her.

"He doesn't like me working with male colleagues. He is so paranoid. I knew he was getting more and more worked up about it, so I carried this with me." she again kissed the eye and said, "he was going to do it, I know. But he just did this instead."

"But what do you mean? What did the eye stop him from doing?" I asked, my voice low and urgent.

She stepped closer, looked me straight in the eyes and made a gesture with her two fingers whereby she placed them at the corners of her mouth and traced upwards. In a raspy whisper she said,

"From slitting my mouth."

My blood flowed icy under my skin and goosebumps rose instantly up my arms, legs and neck. My instant reaction was to break away from her eyes and flee, but my training in detecting abuse, neccessary in my job logically flashed at the forefront of my mind. It calmed me. There was protocol for this. Action I could take. The eye did nothing. I opened my mouth to tell her to sit down, that we could talk about it, but she began again and she wouldn't look away.

"You are new here. You are a foreigner" she practically spat, "you have no idea how things work here." I waited for her to get this off her chest. It was part of the protocol at work. "When a Sudanese woman in this town cheats on her husband, he has the right to do it. To slit her mouth. Like a permanent smile on her face. To make her ugly so no man would want her ever again. It doesn't matter if she is innocent. Here a man's reality is a woman's reality."

I didn't know what to say but the fear was creeping back up on me.

"My grandmother gave me this eye. She said when I used it. Pass it on. Never hold onto it once it has worked for you, she said. So now I am passing it to you."

I have no idea why I played into this woman's delusions about this eye, but I put it in my pocket.

Later that day, I talked to my manager - who was a local - about the tradition of men, slitting the mouths of their wives. I wanted to know how prevelant it was and what support I could offer the victims of this horrendous crime against their human rights. His first reaction, after almost choking on coffee was to ask me how I knew.

"Someone told me. A local woman."

"Well, I don't want you talking about this to everyone all over town. It's a sensitive subject. What that woman told you isn't true."

When I pressed him for more information he wouldn't tell me. He said it was urban legends and myths that were frightening people. It wasn't reality.

I was confused but Fatima had seemed so aggressive about what she told me that I ended up thinking she could be mentally ill or something. Especially when I found out later that she had no husband, had never been married and was prone to beating her own head against the wall and cutting her face with knives, rambling on about being the slit-mouth woman. She lost her job in the same month. Something about her scared me to death. The story she told me scared me to death. I tried to push her from my mind.

After living in Sudan for three months, the memories and all I had heard from and about Fatima came screaming back to me. It was a night that changed my life forever, The reason I am heavily sedated everyday. The reason I do not sleep.

I saw her again. The beautiful woman on the other side of the road. I spotted her from a distance because of her height and her slender figure. she seemed to float down the road. Something on her face glinted in the artificial light. I saw it was a face mask. As we approached each other, she suddenly and alarmingly crossed the road and seemed to be heading straight for me. I could not understand why I was alarmed but there was some kind of forboding associated with her. My body knew it before my mind did. My knees locked, ready to pounce, a rush of adrenaline was released into my system. Something was very wrong here. And then she was standing in front of me.

She looked into my eyes. I was right. They were green. To my surprise she fluttered her long, thick eyelashes and looked past me into the distance as though she were posing. Her hair hung down to her waist and her mocha skin, revealed at the waist. She was wearing a black cropped tee and full length floaty skirt. I felt like a tramp in my sandy old jeans, the ones I always wore and I put my hands in my pockets, feeling awkward. There we stood face to face. She mumbled something, the sound like an eerie melody. I asked her to repeat it again.

"Am I pretty?"

Something cold and round was in my right pocket. I clasped onto it with sweaty fingers.

"Ammm I prettyyyyy?"

I giggled nervously and said, "Yes of course you are! Actually that's why I was looking at you before. Hope you...."

I stopped mid-sentence. Her hand was reaching for her face mask. She unhooked it from one ear and what I saw was horrific. Her mouth had been sliced at the corners. It was carved into a huge smile. There was nothing I could do.

"AM I PRETTY NOW?"

She shouted as I pulled my palm out of my pocket with the eye firmly inside. I remember very well, slinking down onto the floor and curling up in a ball as she screamed over and over,

"Am I pretty now?"

There was sand in my mouth as it hung limply in horror. There was nothing I could do to get away. I held my hands to my ears and clasped tighter to the eye. It has to protect me, I thought. God let it protect me.

This is hard for me to write. I am so afraid. But it has been almost a year now and I have to let this go. The next few weeks, from the time of meeting 'slit-mouth woman' I had to be put into an induced coma. My colleagues and mother told me I was grabbing sharp objects and trying to carve a smile onto my face. They would find me in the night, talking to her and rocking back and forth, saying slit-mouth woman would come and get whoever spoke to me. Whoever listened to my words. Needless to say, everyone was terrified of me.

I have no idea who has the eye now but I am convinced it saved me from death at her hands that night. Can she kill I don't know. But she sure as hell can torment.

I wasn't honest with you in the beginning of this. I said my meds were to stop me remembering. They are actually to stop her nightly visits. If I am drugged up, I can't see her, she can't get to me.

I don't care if you believe me or not but I would like to take a second to thank you for reading, because I have spoken to you and you have listened. Maybe she will finally leave me and move on.