Chapter II:
Hiba grew up in a house that possessed none of the warmth of a home; it was a silent sepulcher where dreams were interred before they could even be born. Her childhood was unlike that of any other girl; she never knew the thrill of racing through narrow alleys behind colorful plastic balls, nor did she ever share in the boisterous laughter that filled the neighborhood at sunset. From behind the cracks in the walls, she listened to the voices of other children—sounds that seemed to emanate from another planet, a world she had no right to visit.
When she reached the age of six—that magical milestone when little girls don their crisp school pinafores and carry backpacks adorned with vibrant characters—Hiba stood before her cracked mirror, waiting for her turn at life, waiting for the door to swing open toward the light. But her father, with a face carved by cruelty and suspicious glares overflowing with distrust, announced his draconian decree: "No leaving this house. No school. No education. Your place is here, within these walls."
The father hid his tyranny behind hollow pretexts, wrapping his oppression in a veil of false concern. He claimed he feared she would be "corrupted" and follow in the footsteps of her mother, who he falsely alleged had "run away." Thus, the door was bolted shut, and Hiba was sentenced to long-term solitary confinement at the very dawn of her youth. Her room became her entire universe. Her small window, overlooking a dilapidated roof, and her fleeting escapes to the rooftop during her father's absences, were the only threads connecting her to existence. She felt like a bird whose wings had been clipped before it ever learned to catch the wind.
The years crawled by, heavy and agonizing, like an eternity of monotony and heartache. The frail child blossomed into an eleven-year-old girl. Despite the pallor of her prison and the darkness of her soul, a breathtaking beauty emerged—an innocent charm mingled with a profound sorrow in her eyes. She caught the attention of neighbors who caught glimpses of her like an angelic ghost appearing and vanishing on the roof. Marriage proposals began to knock on her father's door; men saw in her a rare flower ready to be plucked. But the father met every suitor with an eerie ferocity, rejecting them all with a repelling sharpness, claiming she was "still a child," while his eyes hid a much darker secret.
The neighbors did not realize, and the grandmother—drowned in her own silence—did not know, that behind this rejection lurked a monster who had stripped himself of every paternal instinct. He was a monster who watched his daughter's growth with the eyes of a predator, not a protector. On a pitch-black night, when the stars vanished and the conscience of the universe slept, this human shadow slipped into his daughter's room, shattering the final sanctuary of safety in her heart. Under the weight of terror and cold, merciless eyes, he stole her innocence and transformed the house that was once a prison into a personal hell. Hiba could not grasp the nature of this evil; she could only weep in a terrifying silence. This nightmare repeated itself night after night, as the father, who was supposed to be her "shield of protection," became the "greatest danger," systematically tearing through his daughter's spirit with cold indifference.