Nabila Sharma - Brutal - The Heartbreaking True Story of a Little Girl’s Stolen Innocence

The Heartbreaking True Story of a Little Girl’s Stolen Innocence

Cover

Title Page

Prologue

1 The Girl with Ribbons in Her Hair

2 Living on Sikh Street

3 The Wolf, the Witch and the Wallpaper

4 The Mosque

5 Arrival of the New Imam

6 The Imam’s Secret Handshake

7 The Chosen One

8 Secret Lessons

9 The Imam’s Bite

10 Treasure under the Carpet

11 The Trip to the Petrol Station

12 A Lost Innocence

13 The Trip to London

14 The Sickly Boy

15 Washing Away My Shame

16 The Protector

17 Self-harm and Scourers

18 Saying ‘No’

19 The Special Dinner

20 The Card in the Kitchen

21 Being Found Out

22 An Arranged Future

23 Rebellion

24 My Sikh Boyfriend

25 New Beginnings

26 Starting Again

Acknowledgements

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

I’m running around the garden in the sunshine. My brother turns to throw a red rubber ball towards me and I watch as it sails high up into the air. I stretch up my hands to try and catch it and, as I do, the sunshine blinks between my fingertips. It’s a hot day and I can feel the sun baking my skin.

My dolls are sitting in a neat line in their pram. I’ve brushed their long glossy hair and dressed them in nice clothes and they look beautiful. Their hair isn’t as long as mine, though. Mine stretches below my bottom and attracts comment wherever I go. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ they say. ‘What a beauty!’

Maybe that’s why the new imam at the mosque singles me out from the start. ‘You’re a pretty one,’ he says, and asks me to help with the cleaning. I feel very proud. He’s a strange-looking man, with his freckles and protruding belly and the funny sarong he wears, but he’s the imam, the leader of our community, the one all the parents want to impress. The other girls are jealous of the attention he pays me.

Every evening after school I go to the mosque for lessons with seventy other children. We all line up to shake the imam’s hand and say ‘Salaam alaikum’, to which he replies ‘Alaikum salaam’. But one night as he holds my hand, he does something odd. He strokes the inside of my palm with his index finger, wiggling it around, tickling me. I’m confused. Should I do the same thing back? Then he jabs his finger hard into my hand, as if to make a point.

I watch carefully as he shakes hands with the other children and I don’t think he does the funny handshake with them.

It’s on my mind as I play in the garden. Why me? There are times when I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m only seven. I feel like I’ve been chosen for something. But I don’t know what.

I slipped on my shoes without stopping to fasten them, opened the back door and shot straight out into the back garden. My brother Asif was holding my favourite doll by the hair, swinging her round like a helicopter.

‘I’ll get you!’ I shouted crossly, waving my tiny fist in the air.

The shoes slopped off my heels with every step I took, slowing me down.

‘Give me my doll!’ I demanded as I tried to catch him.

‘Nope,’ Asif teased.

‘Give her back now or … or …’ I couldn’t think of a strong-enough threat.

‘Or what?’ he challenged.

‘I’ll tell Mum.’

‘Oooh, I’m really scared,’ Asif laughed. The doll spun faster and faster around his head, her arms and legs splayed out. She was already naked and muddy from being kicked around the garden.

With all my might I stretched up on tiptoes to try and grab her, but it was no good. Asif was much taller than me. I hated my brothers. They were mean to me. Why didn’t I have a sister instead?

I rubbed my eyes and began to sob.

‘Anyway, it’s only a stupid doll,’ Asif teased, knotting her hair between his fingers. He was eight years old to my five, and an expert at winding me up.

The sky had clouded over and it began to rain. I felt utterly miserable as the drizzle fell on my upturned face.

‘Nabila!’ Mum’s voice called suddenly from the back door.

Asif froze. Had Mum spotted him tormenting me from the back window? He dropped the doll guiltily on the ground and took a giant step away.

I seized the moment and, scooping her into the safety of my arms, surveyed the damage. Her ice-blonde hair was knotted and ratty and her face was caked in mud. With the sleeve of my dress I wiped a big dollop of mud from her forehead.

‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’ I soothed, rocking her in my arms.

Asif was still watching the back door to see if Mum was about to come storming out, so I grabbed my chance and gave him a swift kick on the leg.

‘Oww,’ he groaned, rubbing his shin bone.

‘Nabila!’ Mum called again, her voice impatient. ‘Come in now. I need to do your hair!’

I rolled my eyes skywards and called, ‘Okay, coming!’

Asif’s face broke into a sarcastic smile. ‘Go on then, pretty little girl,’ he teased in a whiny voice. ‘Hurry up and get some greasy oil in your stupid hair!’

I stuck my tongue out at him, and hurried inside to where Mum was waiting.

The room was too hot. She had the gas fire on full blast and the flames flickered from yellow to blue. I thought how pretty they looked as they danced across the front of the fire.

The room smelled of coconuts. Mum had melted some coconut oil in a little silver bowl balanced on top of the gas fire. She swore by it because she’d heard that it made your hair thick and strong but, more importantly, that it made it grow even faster. Mum was obsessed with my hair.

‘It’s your crowning glory, Nabila,’ she insisted. ‘You must look after it.’

I hadn’t had my hair cut since the day I was born and by the time I was five it hung down below my bottom. When I sat on the floor the ends would flick out along the carpet like black spiders’ legs trying to crawl away from me. Every day Mum would oil and plait my hair in front of the fire. I hated it because it always took ages, and when she pulled too hard it hurt. Sometimes it felt as if she was sticking a thousand pins into my scalp as she tugged and plaited it all with ribbons.

Everyone noticed my hair, and the comments were usually admiring – but not always. One day, I was walking down the street holding Mum’s hand when a lady passed us. As soon as she saw the plaits swishing around my bum, she stopped and did a double-take.

‘It’s cruel letting a child wear her hair so long!’ she exclaimed to Mum. ‘It must be so much work.’

Mum just stuck her nose in the air as if she didn’t care. I don’t know what the woman’s problem was. I loved the fact my hair was so long I could sit on it. It made me feel special, like Rapunzel.

It wasn’t just my hair Mum fussed over; she also made all my clothes herself. She shopped around for different fabrics and ran them up into outfits on her little sewing machine. I had tops and trousers in every colour of the rainbow. My favourite dress was a sunshine yellow one with a zig-zag red trim along the bottom of the hem. It was bright and beautiful.

Whenever she did my hair Mum would be sure to match the colour of the ribbon with the outfit I was wearing. She threaded the ribbons inside my plaits and the colour streaked through, making them look even longer.