Amara had never known freedom before. She had never known what it felt like to do something because you wanted to and not because someone forced you. But one day, she did taste freedom. She tasted it and she loved it. She was just nine years old at the time.

That was the day she ran.  

One moment, she was ironing clothes in the sweltering kitchen, her fingers stiff from burns and clutching the pressing iron for hours. The next, she was tearing through the streets, bare feet slapping against the dirt, breath burning in her chest.  

Behind her, Auntie Mariam screamed.  

“Amara! Amara, come back here!”  

But Amara didn’t stop. Not even when her legs trembled. Not even when the market loomed ahead, a sea of colors and shouting voices.  

She had never run this far before. Never been beyond the compound walls. Never beyond Auntie Mariam’s reach.  

She was almost free.  

Then hands caught her. Rough and unyielding.  

A stranger’s voice spoke gruffly in her ear. “Where are you going, little one?”  

Amara kicked and bit for all she was worth, but the hands held firm. The stranger was very strong and she was very small.

Then like a bad dream, Auntie Mariam was there, breathless, her slap like fire across Amara’s cheek.  

She dragged her home, past the whispering neighbors, past the wide-eyed children who were too scared to run.  

In the tiny, airless room that was Amara's prison, Auntie Mariam’s voice was ice.  

“You think you can leave? You belong to me.”  

Amal’s cheek throbbed and her knees ached, but she had felt the wind on her face. She had breathed air that she wasn't sharing with at least four other people.

She had run.

By thirteen, Amara understood that her life was not her own.

She cooked. She cleaned. She bore the weight of a house that was never home.

Auntie Mariam’s children called her “sister,” but they never lifted a finger to help. Amara was sure they didn't even know how to.

Their father, Uncle Danjuma, never really looked at her, but she saw the way his eyes lingered whenever she walked past

She learned to move small, to shrink. To survive.  

One night, Auntie Mariam came into her room, her face cold and her expression hard. “You are old enough now. It’s time to earn your keep.”  

Fear clawed up Amara’s throat. She knew all too well what that meant. She had heard stories of girls who went away with some men and never came back whole. They had a kind of hollowness in their eyes, like the life had been sucked out of them.

She would not be one of them.

So at fifteen, she ran again.

She waited until the house was silent, until the weight of Auntie Mariam’s words kept repeating themselves in her head till she couldn't stand it any longer.

She stole a scarf and a pair of shoes from one of her ‘sister’s' room. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then she ran.

Through the streets. Past the market. Past the voices that asked, “Who is that? Where is she going?”

She didn’t stop until she reached the bus park at the end of town.

It was there she found a woman with kind eyes who said, “Hello, my dear. Do you need help?”  

Amara’s throat was dry and her hands shook, but she lifted her chin and said, “Yes.”

She did not belong to Auntie Mariam.

She belonged to herself.