Yet another harrowing story from the Brave New UK. By Ferzanna Riley for the Daily Mail (thanks to all who sent this in):
I remember clearly the first time I feared for my life. My father was visiting my mother and their new baby in hospital, leaving my ten-year-old sister and me at home taking care of the younger children.
The other two babies, aged one and two, were asleep and the original Godzilla film was on television. We were so absorbed that we didn’t hear my father come in.
Hearing my baby sister Farah grizzling in the cot, he strode over to discover her nappy had leaked and her clothes and bedding were a mess. The room shrank as my father loomed, more terrifying than Godzilla, very real and very angry.
Predictably, the verbal and physical abuse was directed solely at me, but although I was used to his assaults, on this night the violence took a terrifying new turn. To my horror, he grabbed a big knife from the kitchen. Roaring that he was going to butcher me like an animal, he pulled my head back by my hair, exposing my neck, and held the knife across my throat.
I was barely conscious, but aware these were the final moments of my life. My sister fell weeping to her knees, begging my father not to kill me. He released me and left us both cleaning up the mess, sobbing in fright. My father had almost murdered me. I was six years old.
I grew up being called a bitch, a bastard and an idiot. I answered to a variety of names that roughly translated into the same thing. Sali, harami, haramzadi, kameeni were the insults in Urdu that I was most familiar with. Bhahenchode (sisterf***er) and maaderchode (motherf***er) were ones I heard frequently, but only understood years later.
Read it all.