March 18, 2021. Sitting on the steps of the family home of a childhood friend, I contemplate, moved and melancholy, the leaves which swirl to the rhythm of a strong and authoritarian wind. I feel the brutal breath of the latter, exhausting my upper and lower limbs exposed under my flowered dress. The skin on my arms and legs tenses and stiffens at the precise places of their bruises, as this dry Harmattan breeze tickles my barely sealed scars.
I observe the most visible mark of all, the one wickedly affixed with an iron on my left forearm: a wound still gaping and painful as much as my trauma linked to its origin. I look at it with this bitter vision of the cruel moment when I suffered the most filthy and misogynistic violence. Illegitimate enslavement of my condition as a young girl still adolescent, married to an old dominant male with cynical and peremptory instincts.
I still shudder when I think of the tragic fate that had been imposed on me. I tremble with fear as I revisit in memory and against my will, each day spent in this hell which had deprived me of my part of humanity without any benevolent spring being able to grant me a respite, a hope of happiness. in this ordeal that my executioner continued without respite or respite. Until that fatal and decisive night when I decided to flee and throw everything away. After yet another insignificant argument that turned into melodrama again and again because of me, I knew that my life would be in danger if I continued to tolerate the atrocities that filled me and overflowed the cup.
I am only 21 years old but have already been overwhelmed by life as a refugee in war exile in the Middle East. I am here, at the home of this friend I found in Yaoundé where I arrived a month ago in a distraught state, and covered all over my body with the most horrible and undignified bruises. I am here, sitting outside like every morning to free my mind from these thoughts that make me gasp after each entire night filled with nightmares.
I am here, dejected and convalescing but determined to fight to regain a taste for my existence.
There is this book that I lost in my hasty debacle away from my husband. This book by Simone de Beauvoir which had a flourishing impact on the salutary trigger which allowed me to regain my lucidity and my dignity in the world of a respectable woman.
Reading “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir during these last four years of marriage allowed me not to blindly sink into the idolized meanders of an oppressive life as a docile housewife.
I received the precious book from my literature teacher in Year 1, in the first term. She had kindly passed it on to me, observing my talents for reflection on various societal subjects and my lively and diligent interest in letters. This essay by Beauvoir was in no way on the program but the teacher often spoke about it as if with the aim of awakening the consciences of the girls in the class put to sleep by the patriarchal traditions of our Northern region.
I accepted the book with all the admiration that I already had for this French philosopher whom I had previously discovered while browsing the books in our meager school library.
The same year, that of my 17th birthday, another exceptional thing happened to me, but this time in an unpleasant and reprehensible vein. It was always on the cusp of my 17th birthday, at the end of the year of my Première class, just after having been admitted to the Probatoire exam in August: I was told that I would be getting married. Meaning that this would be my last school year.
At the beginning, I did not understand this filthy choice of my father even though I was a brilliant student who was the pride of our entire commune of Tokombéré. Then, when I was introduced to my future husband, I was stunned to find that it was this old close friend of my father, the one whom I had always hated and criticized deep down for his derogatory and haughty ways.
But he was certainly wealthy, given the many businesses he owned in various sectors of the region. I had then apprehended the venal interest of linking myself to the one who would bring a more noble and coveted status to my parents, poor peasants and breeders of meager livestock.
Mr. Ahmed, as his name was, I met him for the first time when I was 13 years old. And since then, he was always tucked into my father’s side, accompanying him to the mosque on Fridays, or showering him with gifts during Tabaski or Ramadan celebrations. He seemed to show care for me because of the questions he always asked as I grew up. When he came to the house for a visit, he always stared at me and one day I heard him make a salacious remark about me, suggesting to my father that I had attractive chest and generous hips that would suit him. pleased. I was 15 years old. And these allusions to my femininity had made me furious as much as my father’s casualness in letting this character reveal his pedophile fantasies about his daughter had outraged me.
It was also he, Mr. Ahmed, who made jealous remarks which denigrated my education which he found superfluous, and this every time my father tried to praise my qualities as a model schoolgirl.
Despite all the resentment and disgust I had against this forced union with this man disconnected from a decent world, I had tried to resist as much as possible to have the opportunity to continue my studies.
I hesitated, doubted, then wondered about this logical sequence of things that we want to force for their convenience to the detriment of my feelings. I had pleaded for a postponed marriage for several years without success. I was told that it would be great once the milestone was reached, that I would be the last wife, the youngest of the three and therefore necessarily the most pampered.
I had been told of the happiness of being married to a respected man who had set his precious sights on me. Without anyone being offended that he was a robust, repulsive fifty-year-old who had children the same age as me. This crippling age gap had been ignored and I had been told about the prestige of a luxurious and fulfilling married life that awaited me.
I was then intimidated by brandishing the excuse of gratitude, recounting the sacrifice that I could willingly make to lift my family out of poverty. They who had already done so much for me, a girl who had been allowed to study up to this level which seemed sufficient to them.
In my opinion, I was as desperate as I was trapped. How can you say no, faced with your family who have taken care of you since your birth and who are asking you for a return? My adolescence was going into a tailspin and I was totally helpless, helpless and I gave in to their unanimous wish.
After the marriage celebrated in the Islamic customs of both families, I took my place at my husband’s house where, from the first evening, he abused me in an embrace as violent as it was abject. The other wives had no pity for me, knowing full well who was the master of the house to whom they obeyed like sheep.
Very quickly, I suffered all the reproaches and bullying from the one who belittled me for nothing by showing his frustration at seeing me respond to him and be so rebellious.
Having no support from my family who urged me to endure the ups and downs of marriage, I started reading to try to maintain that part of me lucid that did not want to give in or accept my fate.
I explored the words of Simone de Beauvoir with surprise and wonder. A woman who had the foresight to uncover, from a young age, the enormous separation established between the genders. I had come across interviews with this remarkable avant-garde artist in whom we perceived this fascination with decrying her society.
At age 15, she firmly knew she wanted to be a writer. There were no other possible spaces for her to give free rein to her opinions. Being a writer and breaking away from a common life had been her goal, her resolution, her passion, her certainty, her obviousness.
She had her destiny in hand by rightly choosing to be a free woman, even if this freedom was one that shocked and destabilized the male gender. For a lady of her time, she made an impertinent commitment and she delivered.
For her, it was necessary to break the forms of masculine arrogance which attribute to women household chores and domestic work as proof of their unique value. It made society guilty of maintaining fallacious standards to which women adhere without existential questions.
It is thanks to this tenacity borrowed from the book “The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir that I was able to have the courage to put together a plan with the help of a friend who lived in Yaoundé to extricate myself from my cocoon oppressive. She welcomed me into her family where her parents listened to me and consoled me without judgment.
They had promised to help me recover and then take steps so that I could go to school again. I hope to have my baccalaureate one day, and to actively campaign against the abuse of minors in my region.