Her first memory was hunger. But not the usual kind of hunger, the kind that eats away at you from the inside out. Like worms eating an apple, leaving only rottenness behind. Forcing you to steal even when you don't want to. Makes you take from those who are hungry too. Takes you to the point where you become a terrible person—not only in the eyes of others, but in your own eyes too—angry and insensitive to other people's grief, just because you can't be insensitive to your own.

  Her second memory was of a man. Or rather, his rough hands groping her still childlike body; his hideous laugh, which she dreamed of for days and nights; and his eyes glittering with the observation of her suffering, which she had nightmares about.

  Her third and fourth memories were again of men. One of them had beaten her to a pulp, punishing her for a theft he had witnessed; she still remembered the iron odor and taste that belonged to the blood streaming from her mouth, nose, head, and other parts of her body, which she no longer, fortunately, remembered. And the other, seeing her suffering from hunger, had offered her food — but only if she repaid him with her young body; her refusal had displeased him enough to beat her and then try to take her by force.

  At first she had counted each of her memories: first, second, third, fourth... tenth, eleventh... twenty-fifth... thirty-seventh... forty-third...

  But then, one day, she realized that she had lost count. She forgot which time she had almost been raped, which time she had almost been murdered, which time she had almost been kidnapped, which time—

  All her memories merged together: they became one huge memory of her endless suffering, which she thought would never end...

  But she was wrong.

  They were over.

  It was when she had lost all hope; when she thought it was the end — the end of her life, the beginning of which she did not even remember...

  One day, once again on the verge of death from hunger, she gathered all her last strength and went to the night bazaar — she remembered as she did now the many appetizing aromas emanating from the food, which caused her starving body the most real, physical pain.

  As she approached one of the most flavorful counters, she grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on. But the moment she was about to turn around to run away, her head spun violently causing her to stumble and fall, dropping the freshly baked bun onto the dirty sand.

  "No... Why did you fall..."

  For the first time in a long time, tears came to her eyes.

  Without even trying to stand up on legs that had weakened in an instant, she crawled over to the bun, and taking it in her hands, began to shake it off the sand.

  "Don't be so dirty... No one likes dirty..."

  Tears rolled down her own dirty cheeks and fell onto the bun wetting it.

  But none of that stopped her from eating it.

  "Girl, what are you—"

  The man had no sooner finished his sentence when she suddenly choked and started choking on the crumbs caught in her windpipe. She wheezed and coughed; tears spattered from her eyes as the sudden panic attacked her like a spider on a fly entangled in a web.

  A frightened expression appeared on the man's face: the poor little child was choking before his eyes. Running up to her, he reached out his hands to her body, going to help her and pat her on the back, but she, still coughing violently, crawled backwards, hitting the counter with her back, causing the food laid out on it to fall to the sand and her owner to shout angrily.

  "Don't—" she coughed again, "touch... don't touch—" coughing again, "me..."

  She didn't want him to touch her. He was a man. Just another man who like everyone else was going to take advantage of her helplessness and—

  The man ignored her.

  He ran up to her again, ignoring her weak hands trying to push him away. Her brittle nails scratched his hands until they bled, and her cracked voice mumbled something between sobs and coughs as he clapped her on the back, holding her in place with ease.

  At one point, coughing violently and blushing from the sheer exertion, she was finally able to push out the crumbled pieces of bun, which despite their small size, proved to be a near lethal weapon that nearly killed the girl.

  But the long-awaited relief never came.

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  She continued to choke and choke, while the man continued to hold her down and pat her on the back.

  When she was no longer able to resist and cough, when tears, snot, saliva and urine flowed out of her body uncontrollably, when her eyes rolled back, her face turned red, and her body began to convulse from suffocation, the man, afraid that she was about to die, hit the girl on the back with such force that he worried about breaking her back.

  She felt something viscous and warm literally fly up her throat, leaving behind the tang of iron.

  Blood.

  Utterly exhausted, she opened her mouth, letting the bright red colored stream flow out of her mouth directly onto the sand, mixing with her other fluids, soaking into the bun as well as her crumbs she had spit out moments ago.

  This wasn't the first, or second, or third, or even tenth time she'd almost died.

  She knew for a fact that she would survive again. She knew for a fact that she would wake up again. She knew she would starve again. She knew for sure that she would run and hide from men again. She knew for sure that this was not the end again.

  And she knew for sure that right now it only felt like she was dying again.

  But she sincerely hoped that this time, she finally didn't just feel like it.

  Finally exhausted, she fell forward, and had it not been for the strong but surprisingly gentle hands of the man who had saved her from death, she would have fallen, face down into her own waste.

  "Just kill me..." she whispered, closing her eyes and hoping she would never open them again. "Please... just do it… But if you want to... use me... then do it quickly... just don't laugh..."

  And that's when she—bloodied, trembling, and too small for the pain her body carried—passed out.

  The man, however, did not hesitate for a second and carried her to his home.

  But through his certainty that he had done the right thing, a sense of guilt crept in: what about the other children?

  What about the others, the children like her who are forced to starve, steal, sleep outside in the middle of the sand and cold wind, and the people, most of whom he simply ignores, and the rest of whom he either helps or beats, rapes, or kidnaps?

  What about them?

  Though he had helped other children: bringing them food, clothing, and guarding their sleep like a faithful dog ready to pounce on anyone who dared touch an innocent child; still, to his home, to permanent safety, to cozy warmth, and to a place that smelled deliciously of food, he had taken only one child.

  "And yet," he said to himself then, "there is something different about that girl."

  The other children begged to be allowed to live. The girls begged not to be touched.

  But this one... this one begged him to kill her. And if he was to use her body, to do it quickly and without laughing.

  It was the first moment in his entire life—which had been very, very long—when his heart truly split.

  When she finally woke up, she wasn't talking.

  She was making sounds that resembled animal sounds with both startling and painful precision. Whining, growling, howling.

  What's more, she wasn't walking upright like a normal person.

  She crawled. Sometimes she tried to hide under furniture, like a cornered dog. Sometimes she bit their hands—the man and his wife—trying to help her.

  They constantly had to hold her down to wash her wounds or give her healing tinctures. Even when his wife tried to hide the medicine in her food, the girl would sniff it out with amazing accuracy, growl, throw the food away, and refuse to eat for days.

  But there was one person she didn't bite.

  It was their son.

  Irai.

  Maybe because he was a child too — almost as old as herself, only a couple years older. Maybe because there was no condescension, no lordliness, no fear in his voice. Or maybe it was because he didn't look at her like a broken toy thrown away without a shred of regret.

  He sat quietly with her, close enough to be near her but still keeping his distance, not wanting to make her even more uncomfortable.

  He told her that her teeth were strong enough to scare even a wolf, and her nails were as sharp as a cat's claws. He said he wished he too possessed such animal-like traits to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. But if the latter was true, the former was an obvious lie: her teeth were crumbling from decay and her nails were brittle from starvation.

  But she didn't know that.

  Or maybe she did, but she just wanted to believe the lie.

  Once, when she first woke up, she refused to eat for many days for fear of finding poison in the food. And then Irai had brought her food himself, and had taken a bite of it first, to prove that the food was harmless — moreover, healthy and very tasty.

  "They wouldn't poison their own son, would they?" he smiled, holding out the bowl of fruit to her.

  And since that day, she'd taken the food from his hands; always with suspicion, with the feeling that maybe this was the time he'd betray her and slip her something that would hurt her, something that would allow him or his parents to take advantage of her; and with the hope that her fears would not be confirmed. Never.

  Slowly, she began to change.

  Though she still flinched at the sound of footsteps, still wouldn't let anyone touch her when Irae was around, she was different-she was real: still cautious, still frowning, but sometimes—very, very, very rarely—she smiled.

  And though it was out of character for her, Irai did his best to change that.

  One day, he gave her a name.

  "Ife," he said proudly, stroking her head — not condescendingly like a puppy, but teasingly, like a little sister. "It means 'new beginning'."

  She found out later that it didn't. The name meant love, affection. A 'new beginning' was out of the question.

  Irai had lied to her.

  But she didn't care.

  And though she tried to get angry and resent him, she simply couldn't do it.

  For the first time in her life, she didn't have any negative feelings after learning that she had been deceived. Moreover, she felt happiness upon learning about it.

  Happiness that someone had lied to her not to hurt her, but to give her joy.

  But unfortunately, as is often the case, they were unlucky and their happiness, as bright as the morning sun, didn't last long.

  Their mother became ill.

  The man sold everything he could to buy medicine—including the counter and the house—but the disease was merciless and did not let up even when they were out on the streets, deprived of the safety, food, and warmth so necessary to any human being, and especially to a grief-stricken family.

  Irai stayed strong — at least he tried to: he smiled unnaturally wide and laughed hysterically loud, doing his best to cheer up a hopeful mother, a despairing father, a traumatized younger sister, and himself as he watched their once happy family fall apart into pieces so small that it was impossible to put them back together — no matter how hard he tried.

  He tried not to cry in front of his parents and sister, but when Ife caught him crying one day, he couldn't help himself and hugged her tightly and burst into tears on her shoulder, begging her to never die, and to live, to live long, no matter how much she wanted him to.

  It was not only the first time Ife had let him hug her, but the first time she had hugged him back — ineptly and awkwardly, but as sincerely as she had ever been hugged before.

  When her loving mother and caring wife died, it was Ife who held the hand of her father and brother, whose souls were crumbling like stale bread that no matter how much you reheat it, it would never be as warm and soft as it once was.

  Soon mother was followed by father.

  He died—but not of illness, but of a broken heart, unable to bear the grief of losing his beloved—when once again returning from the market, clutching a stolen medicine in his hand and saying that he had found a way to save his wife, he realized that she was gone, and he would never be able to save her again. Never.

  When the caring father and loving husband also died, Ife held her brother's hand again.

  "Even at the very end, he was trying to save someone who was no longer there," Irai said quietly.

  That night, Irai cried for two: for himself, bereft of parents and home, and for Ife, also bereft of parents and home, just unable to realize it.

  But soon, she realized: the safety was gone, as was the warmth and comfort; that familiar and cruel hunger was back, as were the men wanting only one thing from her.

  And when that happened, Ife finally cried—as hard as she had never cried before—and felt Irai's strong arms around her and his gentle whisper assuring her that everything would be all right.

  And in that moment, she realized something else: though she had lost her caring parents, she still had a loving older brother.

  Who, later on, replaced all the people she had missed so much.