Some stories are kept quiet for years before they are ever spoken aloud. Duha carried hers from 2017 until now, telling herself it was better buried. This is her account, in her own telling - a childhood handed to another household, a marriage entered to escape, a loss no one prepared her for, and the slow decision to stand on her own. It is published as testimony: every contested detail is hers to claim, and hers alone.

The child who was given away

Duha was born the only girl among brothers. When she was two and a half, her family gave her to her paternal aunt to raise. The stated reason was that the aunt could not have children - though Duha says she has never been sure that was the whole truth.

From the outside, the aunt's house looked like paradise: a large home, a garden thick with trees and palms, a small farm of its own. The aunt's husband was, in Duha's memory, a gentle and generous man who treated her as his daughter. She remembers being small, crying for a mother she didn't yet know, and being carried on his shoulders through the street to be calmed.

The aunt, she says, was loving in her way - but she did things a child could not understand.

How the violence began to grow

As Duha started school, pressure on her aunt mounted. Relatives and callers taunted the aunt for having no children of her own, some threatening to take her husband away. That pressure, Duha believes, found its outlet in her.

She describes being forced to sleep alone as a small child, and being frightened into it with a knife and a threat. She describes a day in early primary school when, over a dispute about studying, her aunt struck her head hard enough to split it open - seven or eight stitches, blood dried into thick hair. Through all of it, she says, neither parent visited. She did not know their faces. When her mother finally came once, Duha hid under a table, unsure who the woman was.

There were other injuries she recounts: a hand seared by a hidden knife, a burn from being sat on a heater. Each time, her aunt's husband intervened and warned his wife to stop.

A house full of things, empty of safety

The gifts arrived after the beatings.

Duha is careful to describe the other side of that home. She wanted for nothing material - gold, toys, her own room, a spotless house, food from a cook she still calls masterful. After each punishment, a gift would follow, to keep her quiet. None of it, she says, reached the place that needed reaching.

She also credits the aunt, plainly. She learned cleanliness, care, and a hard kind of self-respect there: never to ask anyone for anything. It is a lesson she says still shapes her, for better and worse. She says she has forgiven her aunt. She says she cannot forget.

The day she finally walked out

At sixteen, the abuse had not stopped. Duha describes being beaten in the street, humiliated in front of neighbors, and - after one final incident on the way home from school with her friend Zaynab - dragged by her hair and struck in full view of the neighborhood.

That was the day she stood up for the first time. She told her aunt to keep the beautiful house and everything in it. She climbed the stairs and refused to stay another minute. Her aunt's husband, who she says never once hurt her, tried to keep her. She left anyway - first to a second aunt, then back to the parents she barely knew.

A stranger in her own family

Returning home was not a homecoming. Duha describes it as exile: siblings she didn't know, a mother and father she had never been held by, a household where she felt like a burden. Within a year she moved between several homes - her parents', a grandfather's she had never met, and back again.

When new people entered the family home, she says the daily cruelty returned: being told to leave, being blamed, being handed every chore while trying to study for exams. Her only refuge was a nearby aunt she could flee to for a night or two. It was in this stretch, worn down and starved of warmth, that she let someone in.

The relationship she believed would save her

He offered safety. She mistook it for a way out.

A relative - someone who knew her whole history - told her he loved her and would stand by her. She gave him everything she had. His family opposed the match from the start, calling her beneath them and holding her past against her. He himself ended it once, then returned. Under pressure and exhaustion, she took him back.

She is honest about her own state. She agreed to marry him, she says, not fully herself, and not fully in love - but desperate to escape the harm she was living in.

A wedding shadowed by death

The one person on his side who protected her was his father, who insisted she must finish her education and be treated well. He called her his daughter. Two days before the engagement, he died - and with him, she says, went her protection. The blame turned on her.

They married by contract in 2013 after a long engagement. She describes a groom who brought only a ring, a mother-in-law who refused to have her near, and a henna night with no music and no groom for hours. On the wedding day itself, word came that a beloved uncle she had cared for had died. She stood in her dress as everyone around her wept.

Exile in a foreign country

The couple moved to Turkey, where his sister - the fiercest opponent of the marriage - already lived. Duha describes being stranded, ostracized, and belittled by his family, with her husband silent beside her. She recounts being blamed for buying two bottles of shampoo, expelled from gatherings, and cast in a fabricated story about jealousy she says was never true.

She lists everything she gave them: building the home, laying tile, standing beside them at every celebration. All of it, she says, was forgotten.

The pregnancy, and the loss

She wrote to her child before she ever held him.

In the fourth month of marriage, Duha became pregnant. She describes it as the happiest stretch she had known - she wrote to her baby in a notebook, promising to live for him.

Then came the bleeding. She asked to be taken to a hospital and was told, she says, that all pregnant women bleed early on, and to lie down. By morning the bed was soaked in blood. At the hospital, a doctor told her the baby had died, and asked why she hadn't come sooner. She had no answer that would spare her.

A surgery she felt awake

What followed is the hardest passage of her account. A first surgery left tissue behind, she was told, and a second was needed at once - but without anesthesia, because a second dose so soon could kill her. She describes being held down and conscious through it, screaming, a doctor repeating that she was strong. She says she left that room changed, and could not walk without support for a week.

Through that week, she says, no one came. No food. No help - until a Turkish neighbor she calls Uncle Kamil found her collapsed and forced her husband to feed her for the first time. From that day, Duha decided to leave.

The diagnosis, and the fight now

Not long after, severe pain sent her back to the hospital. The tests, she says, came back as cancer of the uterus.

What she is living now, she describes as a fight to get free: an escape, a divorce she is being denied, and blackmail - threats, she says, to expose private photos, and reports that repeatedly took down her social accounts. She hints at a second story she cannot yet tell, calling it a danger to her life.

She also speaks of what is keeping her standing. A person named Raneen, she says, defended her without asking anything back, and taught her to walk with her head up after a lifetime of being told to lower it. Her health is fragile. She has been living on little more than yogurt for days. But she says she has come to believe that however deep the pain runs, what comes after can run deeper still.

DUHA'S STORY - FULL DOCUMENTARY COMPILATION

PREFACE: WHY SHE DECIDED TO SPEAK

Duha opens by saying she hadn't intended to come out and talk, but that things had gone "too far" - past what she could bear. She says she can no longer absorb the psychological pain that has piled up in her life, and that she wants to "stop everything at its limit."

The deeper motive is that she had kept this story buried since 2017, before entering social media, and now, in 2026, she is "still living the same pain." She explains the story is long and painful, and asks her audience to open their minds and hearts before judging. She sums up her character in a sentence that recurs across the parts: since childhood her nature was to bury everything inside, never letting out a sound even when she was hurt.

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CHAPTER ONE: THE CHILD GIVEN TO HER AUNT

Duha was born into a family whose children were all boys; she was the only girl among brothers. When she was two and a half, the family decided to give her to her aunt (her father's sister).

The stated reason was that the aunt couldn't bear children, but Duha says she isn't certain that was the real reason; she senses there was another, unspoken one. She points to the strangeness of the decision: a girl, the only one among boys, was taken out of her parents' home and handed over.

The aunt's house, in her description, was like paradise from the outside: a big beautiful house, a wonderful garden with trees and palms, and a private farm within the garden. And the aunt's husband was an exceptional person - a great, respectable man who loved her like his own daughter from her earliest years. She remembers - and insists her memory is clear from age three, though some may not believe it - that she used to cry in that house asking for her mother, and that the aunt's husband would carry her on his shoulders and walk her through the street to calm her. She recalls going to kindergarten, then the dawn of her awareness as a child in first grade.

The aunt herself was - as she describes her - tender and loving, but she did "strange things." Duha insists that listeners not judge immediately, but hear the whole story and then reflect.

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CHAPTER TWO: HOW THE VIOLENCE ESCALATED

As Duha started school, social pressure on the aunt intensified. People were "at war" with her because she couldn't conceive. According to the account, phone calls would come threatening her: "We'll take your husband because you don't bear children." This daily pressure pushed the aunt into a difficult psychological state, and she began to vent her tension onto the child: beating her, biting her, burning her.

Among the most prominent things she recounts of this period:

The sleeping-by-threat: The aunt forced her to sleep alone in a room, while young Duha cried and begged to sleep beside her. When she refused, the aunt - according to her account - would bring a knife and tell her she would kill her in the morning if she didn't sleep, to frighten her.

The head-splitting incident (grade 3/4): On the occasion of a death among the aunt's husband's relatives, the aunt told her to study, and Duha replied that she'd studied for her exam. The aunt grew furious and threw a kitchen tool (a ladle) at her hard, striking her head, which split - "literally down the middle" - with blood spurting. The aunt ran into the street screaming, the neighbors came, wrapped her head and moved her, and the wound was stitched with seven or eight stitches. She recalls her hair was thick and the blood dried on it until it clumped, and that it was extremely painful.

The absence of her parents: Throughout this stage, neither her father nor her mother came to the house. She didn't know what they looked like. She says: even if people give their child to someone, they're supposed to visit and check on her - but no one came.

First meeting with her mother: Once her mother (who later passed away) came. Duha was hiding under the table out of shyness, and the aunt said, "Come out, this is your mother." Duha didn't know she had a mother; she thought she only had "an uncle and an aunt." At school they'd ask her: Where's your mother? Where's your father? And she didn't know how to answer. After that visit she began to imagine her mother's features and cry and long for her from afar.

The knife-under-the-abaya incident: Young Duha kept begging the aunt for pocket money to buy "habb" (seeds) while she watched cartoons. The aunt stalled her, then called her over and told her to reach her hand under the abaya to take the money - and it was, according to the account, a heated knife that seared her hand. The hand became infected two days later and turned very painful.

At this incident her father came - the first time she got to know his face and voice - and told the aunt: "If you keep treating the girl this way, we'll take her from you." But Duha, when her mother later asked about the wound on her head, was afraid to tell the truth, so she claimed she had fallen down the stairs in high heels.

The heater incident: They used to place a heater inside the bathroom back then so the child wouldn't get cold. Once Duha complained that the water was hot and cried, so the aunt - according to her account - sat her on top of the heater, and she screamed. The aunt's husband rushed in, wrapped her in a towel, and warned the aunt: "Enough, is this how you treat someone else's child?"

The other side of the house - material abundance: Despite all this, Duha stresses that she was a "queen" in terms of things: gold, toys, belongings of the finest kind, her own room. The aunt was an obsessively skilled cook, and the house was clean as a palace. After every beating, the aunt would buy her a gift "to keep her quiet." Duha sums up: all this beauty meant nothing in her eyes.

Also notable in this period was pressure from the aunt's husband's relatives, who came daily and told the aunt they would give her a boy "of their own" to inherit her husband, and that this girl had come to take the inheritance.

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CHAPTER THREE: THE RUPTURE WITH THE AUNT (AGE SIXTEEN)

The violence continued for years. Duha would go once a year to her family, begging them to keep her, but - according to her account - they would return her and refuse. At sixteen the violence was still ongoing: she was beaten in the street with a pot, and her lip split; she was beaten in front of neighbors and relatives; she was publicly abused.

Here the matter of sectarianism appears: the aunt's household and her husband were of one social/sectarian group, and Duha feels she is of another; she was - according to her account - prevented from sitting on a chair in the bus/on the way to school, and left standing.

The final explosion: One day her leg hurt, so she sat on the chair, and they forced her to stand, so she said she'd get off and go. She went home with her friend Zaynab on the bus. The aunt's husband lied to Zaynab, saying Duha had refused to come. And when she arrived, in front of everyone - students and their parents, the schoolgirls and her friends, and Zaynab in the street - the aunt dragged her by her hair, beat her in the middle of the street, then pulled her into the house, dragging her head along the rough, pointed plaster ("nathr") at the garage entrance all the way in, and then beat her severely.

For the first time in her life, Duha stood up to her aunt and told her, in effect: keep your "paradise," live in it alone; it's impossible for me to stay in it a single minute. She climbed the stairs and declared she would not stay in this house.

The aunt's husband came, climbed up to her and said, "Come, baba, eat." Duha stresses that this man never once hurt her with a word in her whole life; he advised her and brought her the finest things, adored his wife madly, and would travel and go out with the aunt while leaving her alone on the excuse "you're a responsibility, not my daughter." Duha addresses her aunt directly at this point: she wishes the aunt had been, even for a moment, aware of what it meant that there was a child living this pain.

Transfer to the second aunt's house: The aunt's husband ordered her moved to her other aunt's house. While waiting for the taxi, the first aunt threatened her that she "wouldn't let her go, she'd die and never come back," and when the car moved she lunged at it, and the driver braked hard. Duha refused to eat at the second aunt's house and insisted she wanted to return to her family, even though she didn't know them or what awaited her in the "unknown." But she said her body and soul could no longer bear the violence.

An admission of fairness: Despite everything, Duha insists on recording the aunt's "good deeds" before moving to the next stage, and says she has forgiven her. She clarifies she isn't speaking out of spite, and that when she grew up she understood what the aunt was going through, but as a child she couldn't grasp it. She says: "You hurt me a lot; I've forgiven you, but I can't forget, and I can't hear your voice." She credits the aunt with teaching her cleanliness, elegance, good food, and "self-respect" - that is, never to ask anyone for anything, a lesson she says is hurtful but that she carries to this day.

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CHAPTER FOUR: ESTRANGEMENT INSIDE THE FAMILY HOME

In the family home a completely different life began. She describes it as "exile": she didn't know her brothers, her sister, her mother, or her father. Her feelings weren't understood by them, and theirs weren't understood by her, and there was no understanding between them. She always felt she was "extra" and a "burden" on the place.

Practically, the difference was vast: at the aunt's house she never worked, cleaned, or cooked (she was treated like a "doll"); at the family home she learned to depend on herself, to clean and to work. She says her mother completed what the aunt had begun in teaching her self-reliance.

After a short period in the family home, a "fierce war" (upheaval) broke out, so the mother decided the girls would go to the grandfather's house (the mother's family), while someone took the boys, and she and the father went elsewhere. So Duha moved, in the same year, between several houses: the aunt's house, the second aunt's house, the family home, and the grandfather's house, which she had never seen in her life. At the grandfather's she faced a harder life in terms of estrangement (she didn't know them and they didn't know her), but they were kind to her; no one beat her and no one abused her, and they never fell short with her in anything. She stayed with them half a year, then returned to the family home to begin a hard new life.

New people enter the house: After her return, new people entered the family's life who - according to her account - hurt her greatly, to the point that she was expelled from the house daily with ugly words ("What brought you here? Go back to your aunt"). Her psychological state began to crumble. Her mother tried to keep balance and preserve the household, and would see her suffering but warn "the second person" gently; yet that person wouldn't listen. The problems spread even to the mother, and the whole family's spirits changed. Duha also refers to being subjected in this period to "sorcery" and to the ugliest kinds of harm. And all the household's responsibilities - cleaning, cooking, working - were on her shoulders while she was a student during her exam days, so her studies fell apart.

Her only refuge was her nearby maternal aunt's house, where she'd go for a day or two whenever things closed in, then the aunt would come to fetch her. She emphasizes that her father and mother never embraced her, and that she was even too shy to embrace her mother, because she wasn't raised with them.

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CHAPTER FIVE: THE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE RELATIVE

In the thick of this stage, a "person" entered her life - a first-degree relative - who knew her childhood and how she'd been hurt, and knew everything about the aunt and the house. He made her "world rosy": he said he'd stand with her, and that he loved her. Her feelings moved toward him because she felt he was the only place giving her love, tenderness, and hope. She gave him "everything inside her," defended him, stood by him, and offered - in her words - "things that shouldn't be offered" and years of her life.

She had no phone, so she'd call him from her mother's phone without her knowing. One time the mother read one of his messages and gently warned her daughter: you know him, he's a first-degree relative, and these people - after everything you've been through - "won't value you and won't respect you." Duha couldn't tell her mother how hurt she was. The mother went quiet and said, "You're free." Only the mother and sister knew about the relationship, while he didn't know the mother knew.

His family's rejection: When his family found out, they opposed the marriage. They said she was "the one who abandoned her aunt after the aunt raised her and toiled over her," and that she was "not of their level." The young man was struggling in school, always failing, without a diploma, but he worked a good, clever job; while she began her relationship with him in the fourth secondary year, then completed the fifth, and graduated from the sixth, and had a diploma and an ambition in drawing and art. Yet they kept "belittling" her.

At one point he called her and said he could no longer continue the relationship, "you're free." So she told her mother she'd ended it, and stopped going to their house (they were first-degree relatives; the mother would go, she wouldn't). His family were surprised by her sudden withdrawal.

A holiday and coercion: On one holiday the mother went but Duha and her sister didn't. His family asked about the girls' absence. Her mother forced her to go. She wore her finest clothes, walked in and greeted them with "formality" as if she were a guest meeting them for the first time, and passed in front of him without looking at him. Everyone was astonished. Then - according to her account - she busied herself with work: washed the dishes, tidied, looked after the children. She describes this as "stupidity" on her part: they called her "Cinderella." At midnight he woke her, pulled her aside and said, "Is this how you treat me?" She said, "I don't want you; you ended the relationship." He kept apologizing, and under pressure she gave him a second chance, but with little contact.

Then - out of nowhere - his family flipped: they began saying they wanted to marry her to him, and asked to betroth her from her mother.

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CHAPTER SIX: AGREEING TO MARRY, AND THE STORY OF THE FATHER-IN-LAW

The mother was surprised: did the girl want this young man? Duha agreed - and she later admits she was not in her full mental capacity because of everything she'd been through, and that she didn't love him so much as she was attached to the idea of escaping the harm. He gave her a sense of safety and promised she would complete her studies - noting she had already been prevented from continuing her education (her papers were withdrawn so she couldn't enroll in university, and her GPA didn't come out well, then her studies ended). Her constant condition with him was that she complete her education. All she wanted: "a place to sleep where I'm at peace, and a person who respects me and whom I love, without problems."

The father-in-law - the protector: His father was - according to her account - a great man, treated her wonderfully, and called her "my daughter." He was the one who bound the matter: he said, in effect, that "Duha is a trust upon his neck," and that she must complete her studies and succeed, and that his son must stand by her even if he himself didn't finish his education. He even worried about her hair, telling her not to cut it because it was beautiful.

The death and the reversal: Two days before the date of the betrothal both families were preparing for, the father-in-law died. The betrothal was cancelled. Duha collapsed because she had genuinely loved the man. After his death, "everything changed": the bullying and bad talk returned, and they said she was "the one who brought the poverty," that she "impoverished the family, and he died because of you." At the same time, problems flared in her own family's home, and the mother changed - in her words - "180 degrees," and someone began pushing her toward her brother; her family said, "Take her, we don't want her," while the other side refused.

The betrayals: She recounts that he betrayed her two or three times; the first betrayal she saw with her own eyes, about nine months after his father's death.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: THE 2013 MARRIAGE, THE USED-GOLD STORY, AND THE WEDDING

After a long engagement, Duha married in a court marriage (contract) in 2013. He brought only a ring. Her family began to complain: "People have driven us mad - why didn't he bring gold?" So she would beg her family to lie in front of people and say he'd brought gold, just to end the problem.

He said he had no bedroom set, and his family was well-off yet kept repeating "we have nothing." Her mother took her to buy the gold, and they bought her used gold from second-hand gold shops, and she kept silent and chose without making a fuss. She said: even if we sleep on the floor, all that matters is that the problems end.

The mother-in-law's rejection: The mother-in-law said she didn't want Duha living with her, so they set apart a house for her alone on the upper floor, with harsh words. Her family was shocked.

The sick uncle and his death on the wedding day: During this period the groom's maternal uncle fell gravely ill (gangrene, his leg amputated, his condition bad for years). Duha used to care for him and respect him, and he loved her, and no one looked after him as she did. Her family refused to hold a party, and she refused too because of the problems, so the groom's family said they would hold a party "at theirs." On the henna night, only the elderly sat, without her family inside (as if they were guests), with no DJ, no songs, nothing. The groom - who was supposed to bring the DJ - didn't show, and his phone was off until past midnight. She recalls that her friends had invited her to a press conference (she was a working woman), while he left her as a bride and went to fetch the DJ. In the end it was patched together with difficulty, everyone left, and she - the bride - cleaned the house herself.

On the wedding day, the makeup artist came, and she put on the dress, and suddenly the calls poured in with weeping: the sick uncle had died. She stood in her wedding dress, stunned, amid everyone crying. She said to herself, "This is my luck" - before later discovering the worst had not yet come.

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CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MOVE TO TURKEY AND TOTAL ESTRANGEMENT

They decided to move to live in Turkey, where the groom's sister had traveled a month earlier. This sister had been the fiercest opponent of the marriage, to the point that she told her brother - according to the account - in effect that he could find ten girls, and that Duha was "nothing."

They traveled and landed in Istanbul, but were late and missed the Ankara flight, forcing them to stay one day in Istanbul. Calls erupted from his family: "How can you stay a day in Istanbul? You'll burn through your money; you have a Fatiha to attend; don't waste money." Then they went to where the sister who hated her lived, because they had no house yet. Throughout, according to her account, his family stabbed at her and hurt her, and he never stood with her for a single moment.

The sister's husband: She describes him as a straightforward man; his words were harsh but he was single-faced, and she respected him for it - unlike others who are "two-faced," calling her "dudu" to her face and describing her in the vilest terms behind her back. But when they went looking for a house and found only a terrifying "basement" that Duha refused, and she returned to the sister's to talk, the sister's husband met her with cutting words, in effect: if it doesn't please her, "let her father come spend on her and rent her a house, let her family house her." A man speaking to her like this while she was a one-week bride, and her husband silent in his corner, not defending her dignity. She kept quiet.

Hunger in the first week of marriage: They came back hungry, so she wanted to cook, but the sister's husband said "it's past eight" - meaning cooking time was over. There was no food in the house. Her maternal aunt - whom she'd always turned to - had given her a bag of "kleicha" before the trip. The hungry bride sat eating the kleicha and crying.

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CHAPTER NINE: EXPLOITATION AND OSTRACISM IN TURKEY

They finally found a house, but his family wouldn't leave her be. The sister would come and inspect what they'd bought and where they'd put things. Once she saw two shampoos Duha had bought, and immediately called the brother who lived abroad (who sent them money since the husband had no job) to report that the wife was "squandering." The calls became daily: "Why two shampoos? Don't spend."

Also - according to her account - a person in the family who had abused and beaten her in childhood decided to come live with them in Turkey, on the pretext that the family would pay half the rent; so the problems multiplied.

They ostracized her at the uncle's house, she was expelled from a gathering, and they said, "We don't want her with us." Then - according to the account - they fabricated a "Hindi film": they claimed Duha had "envied" a beautiful, sick girl whom Duha had been treating kindly; the trigger being that he moved her chair so she could sit closer. Duha flatly denies envy, saying it's not her nature and that he knows this well, yet he didn't defend her, telling her he "couldn't stand up to his family."

Her bitterness reached the point - as a foreigner with neither mother nor father - that even her brother near her was no support; when she'd complain to him he'd say, "None of my business, don't burden me with your problems." And she recalls all she gave this family: she built the house with them, carried the tiling, sold her stove and swapped its glass, set up the electricity with their son, stood by them at their parties and birthdays and with their children and in their Ramadans - "and they forgot all of it." And, as with the relationship's pattern, after every big problem he'd bring her a gift, exactly as the aunt used to do.

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CHAPTER TEN: THE PREGNANCY, THEN THE LOSS OF THE BABY

After constant nagging - "Why aren't you pregnant?" - Duha replied she'd only been married four months. In the fourth month she conceived. She rejoiced greatly at the baby, and on the first day of her pregnancy she wrote to him in a notebook: that she would live for his sake, give him all happiness, and make up for what she had lost.

The flour and bread incident: The husband was asked to prepare bread for the day of "tashreeb." So Duha asked him to go down and get flour - even though the household shopping was her responsibility anyway. He dragged his feet and refused on the excuse "I have no strength, these aren't my family." And she was pregnant at about three and a half months, on the fifth floor with no elevator. She was forced to go down and up the stairs twice, and her back began to hurt and her state to weaken, and she quarreled with him because he didn't help her, and her belly began to hurt. She baked despite it.

The onset of bleeding: She went to the bathroom and found bleeding. She asked him to take her to the hospital, so he asked his family and they reassured him that "all pregnant women bleed in the early months; raise your leg and lie down." She begged them to take her, and they refused.

Discovering the death: In the morning she lifted the bed cover, and the bed was all red blood. The ambulance came. The doctor looked at her (speaking broken Arabic) and said: the baby has died. He asked her: Why didn't you come? When did you bleed? If you'd come we would have stopped the bleeding and given you an injection and done something. She said, "They didn't bring me." He told her she had to have surgery immediately before her body was poisoned.

At that moment she had recently eaten, so the surgery couldn't be done that same day, and she was told to come in the morning. She went out, entered the bathroom, washed, and burst into tears alone where no one could see. Outwardly she remained "strong," not crying in front of people.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE TWO SURGERIES - AND THE SURGERY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA

The first surgery was delayed about eight hours because of an accident at the hospital, then it was done. Only on the first day did the groom's sister come (the first time she saw her). A Turkish friend and his wife visited, and were moved by her condition, as no one from her family was near her.

After the first surgery she was told the doctor had left remnants of the baby's tissue, and that if not removed immediately her body would be poisoned; so a second surgery was needed. But the shock was that it would be without anesthesia, because she'd been anesthetized the day before, and a second dose could end her life.

She describes the moment as terrifying. They put her alone into a room where a woman was giving natural birth, and they held her leg down, and the instruments began to come. The surgery began while she was conscious, and she screamed violently, calling his name. The doctor kept telling her in his broken Arabic: "Duha, you're strong, you'll forget this feeling." From the severity of the pain she kept saying she wanted no more children. Then she lost consciousness, and felt someone "dragging" her by her leg, her vision blurred, and she let out a scream at the door - which she describes as "her soul leaving and another soul entering her."

From that day - according to her account - her appearance changed: her hair, her eyes, her features. They gave her injections and sedatives and she slept. She woke alone, with no companion. When she looked at her face she found it covered in blood, and her form looked smaller and more exhausted. She couldn't walk because her muscles had cramped from how hard she'd clenched during the surgery without anesthesia; so she walked leaning on a walker like a crutch, her body stiff.

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CHAPTER TWELVE: THE WEEK OF RECOVERY AND THE UNCLE KAMIL INCIDENT

She stayed a week in this state, and no one came. When she'd ask him for food he'd say, "I have no money." He would take from her food and fill himself without feeding her, while she was the sick, exhausted one. She began to be shocked at whom she was living with.

An important irony she documents: she had health insurance, so the husband paid not a single dinar for the surgery, and the hospital food came to her free - and yet he claimed he had no money.

The day she collapsed: They returned home (five floors she climbed with difficulty). The next day she needed her medication, which required food, so she went to the kitchen and found the fridge completely empty. She called him from nine in the morning, and he stayed asleep until three in the afternoon, not answering. Her brother wasn't home. She collapsed weeping from hunger.

She opened the door, and there was her Turkish neighbor Uncle Kamil and his wife. Duha had treated them like her own family, taught them to make kibbeh, and hosted them at fine meals, so they loved her to the point of saying: plant a tree with your own hands and we'll name it "Duha's tree." (She later hints at a suspicion of Uncle Kamil himself, accusing him of being "a sorcerer who ruined her life" - an accusation of hers that is unproven; it is recorded here as stated.)

Uncle Kamil saw her collapse. She spoke to him in simple Turkish and told him her husband hadn't brought her food. The Turkish man and his wife came in; the wife sat with her, and Uncle Kamil went into the bedroom, reproached the husband, and forced him to get up and bring food (potatoes) - the first time in his life he prepared food for her, though she is a cook whose food delights everyone. And when he reached out to eat from it, Uncle Kamil struck his hand and said, "Don't reach for her food." Then he told the husband, in effect, that Duha would pack her bag and go with him, because "this treatment is forbidden."

Duha documents a contradiction here: the groom's sister later claimed she used to knock on her door and bring her food, whereas - in her account - no one knocked on her door that entire week, no one worried about her, and no one brought her any food except those potatoes from the neighbor.

The decision: From that day she decided to stand on her own feet and get out of "the farce," and she put an "X" on him, and erased him from her life completely.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE CANCER DIAGNOSIS

After more problems and daily harm, she suddenly fell ill with severe pain and went to the hospital. After tests she was told she had cancer of the uterus. She went home in shock. At this point the fourth part cuts off.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE ESCAPE, THE DIVORCE, THE BLACKMAIL, AND THE SABOTAGE OF ACCOUNTS

The fifth part begins from a later scene: Duha comes out of the sea with her clothes soaked in water, and the coast guard is searching for her. She describes a scene of pursuit and threat: he tells her, in effect, that he has photos of her, that he'll kill himself and never let her go, and that they're still chasing her.

She sums up what is happening in the present as blackmail: he wants something in exchange for divorcing her, and they go - according to her account - to anyone who supports her on TikTok. She mentions they filed reports against her that affected her channel, and that her Instagram account was taken down three times after she created an account announcing she was "under threat," and that they display her photo and send her pictures while she is "on the run." She appeals to her audience, sincerely, to stand with her this time in particular.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE PRESENT - RANEEN, THE SUPPORT, AND HER HEALTH

In the fifth part Duha also thanks her audience with all her heart, and says that for the first time in her life she feels "the world has good in it" and good people. She apologizes for the "negative energy," and explains she would not have brought out this pain had the other side not begun publishing the photos and going after her audience.

What has not yet been told: She hints that there is a "second story," far more painful, but she cannot tell it now for two reasons: first, it poses a danger to her life, and second, a threat of another kind she cannot explain. She denies that she has "rested and begun a new life"; rather there is something hurtful she has been living for years. She says she has recorded material, videos, and evidence, and asks her audience to pray for her to get out of this stage, promising to tell everything then. She attributes her staying home most of the time to "things they don't know."

Raneen: She devotes a large space to a person named Raneen, saying he defended her without any return, accepted her as she is, feared for her, and taught her to raise her head when she walks - after a whole life in which they told her, "Walk with your head down." And she describes that in this house she passed through days where she'd draw while her tears filled the notebook, then come out to the audience holding herself together, laughing and smiling, showing nothing.

Her current physical and psychological state: She admits - for the first time - that her health isn't good, her state of mind is exhausted, and that the pressures have become very strong. She says she can't eat, that her face has become bones, that she's lost about two kilograms in four days, and that she's been living on "laban" (yogurt drink) for four days, because her stomach is tied to her psychological state. She explains that she can't form relationships or trust anyone, because she doesn't know who might expose her secret or hand her over.

The evidence and the farewell: She mentions she'll post a photo of herself as a child (which she posted on TikTok) because some people asked for "proof" of her being abused as a child, and that it shows a mark from a burn on her hand. And she ends on a farewell note: if she suddenly disappears or "goes to another place," let them remember her by the beautiful things - her laugh and her strength - not by anything bad. And she says she came to believe that however severe the pain, the happiness to come is greater, and that everything has a wisdom to it.