My stomach turned to ice.
“Check them.”
Kim, Fatima, and Khadija exchanged glances. I saw hesitation flicker across Kim’s face—she’d always been the kindest of the three, the one who snuck us magazines when Baba wasn’t looking, the one who braided our hair and told us storiesabout our mother. But then Baba’s gaze landed on her, heavy with expectation, and whatever resistance she’d been building crumbled.
“Come on,” she said quietly, reaching for my arm. “Let’s go to the bathroom.”
“No.” I jerked away from her. “No, you can’t—Baba, please?—”
“You will submit to this examination.” Baba’s voice left no room for argument. “Or the consequences will be far worse than anything you can imagine.”
I looked at Zahara. She was trembling, tears streaming down her face, but she gave me a small nod.Just get through it, her eyes said.We’ll survive this. We always do.
We didn’t have a choice.
They took us to the master bathroom—the big one attached to Baba’s bedroom, with the clawfoot tub and the cold tile floors.
And Baba came with them.
He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, watching as Kim led me to one corner while Fatima and Khadija took Zahara to the other. His presence filled the room like a weight, pressing down on us, making the already small space feel suffocating.
“Baba, please.” My voice cracked. “Please don’t watch. Please just let them?—”
“You lost the right to privacy when you chose to behave like animals.” His voice was flat. Emotionless. Like he was discussing the weather and not about to watch his daughters be violated. “If you have nothing to hide, this should not bother you.”
Kim’s hands were shaking as she closed the door. She wouldn’t look at me. Couldn’t look at me.
“Remove your clothes,” Baba instructed. “From the waist down.”
I looked at Zahara across the room. She was already crying, her whole body trembling as Fatima tugged at the waistband ofher jeans. Our eyes met, and I saw the same horror reflected back at me. The same disbelief that this was actually happening. That our own father was about to watch us be examined like cattle.
“I said remove them.” Baba’s voice sharpened. “Do not make me repeat myself again.”
My fingers felt numb as I unbuttoned my jeans. Slid them down my legs. Stepped out of them. Then my underwear—plain cotton, nothing special, but removing them in front of my father felt like peeling off my own skin.
I stood there half-naked, arms wrapped around myself, trying to cover what couldn’t be covered. Trying to disappear into the cold tile floor.
“Lie down,” Kim whispered, and I heard the apology in her voice even though she didn’t say the words. “On your back. Knees up.”
I lowered myself to the floor. The tile was freezing against my bare skin. I bent my knees, and Kim gently pushed them apart, and I wanted to die. Actually wanted to cease existing rather than endure another second of this.
Baba stepped closer.
He was watching. Standing right there, looking down at me, as Kim positioned the flashlight and examined me like I was a piece of meat at the butcher shop.
I stared at the ceiling. Counted the tiles. One. Two. Three. Four. Tried to leave my body, to float up and away from this moment, from the cold air on my exposed skin, from my father’s eyes taking in every detail of my humiliation.
Across the room, I heard Zahara sobbing. Heard Fatima tell her to hold still. Heard Khadija murmur something I couldn’t make out.
“Well?” Baba’s voice cut through the silence.
Kim cleared her throat. “She is… she is intact. Her hymen is intact.” It was so bizarre, didn’t he know that a hymen could be broken without sex? I had learned that in one of the Cosmo magazines that Kim snuck to us.
I felt Baba’s gaze on me for a long moment. Assessing. Judging. Then he turned away, his attention shifting to the other side of the bathroom where Zahara lay exposed and trembling.
“And the other one?”
The silence that followed was the longest of my life.
