From here began the turning point—from catastrophe, suffering, loss, and orphanhood to mercy, humanity, and success.

I still remember that cruel moment when I lost my mother and my father, and part of my family, in a single instant. A nine-year-old girl suddenly became a mother to her infant sister and responsible for protecting her siblings—fleeing from death and from revenge sought by the closest of people.

Those were unbearable moments: escaping from death to death, unable to tell friend from foe, while everything warned of torment, fear, and death. I was running with my infant sister and my younger siblings—or rather, we were all children, too fragile to bear such suffering. We fled from vengeance through several villages, not knowing how this nightmare would end. After more than three days of hiding and escape, I did not know whether to cry for my mother, or for her killer—my own father—or to cry for myself and my siblings.

When we left my uncle’s house in secret, fearing that they might hand us over to be killed in retaliation for my father’s act—an act driven by his crushing loss of my mother—I felt that he had found no way out but murder. If only my father had killed us all, so that we might live together in one grave; that would have been better than leaving us alone.

But do not worry. By the grace of Allah, when we left our village for neighboring ones, we reached a man of mercy in our village after a grueling escape along harsh roads that left our bodies bleeding. We arrived at a sheikh who was Allah’s compensation for us. We threw ourselves into his arms and felt that there was a new father—one who cried for us and embraced us with longing, grateful that we were still alive: children who knew nothing of life except that they were paying the price for the ignorance of a society whose only crime was that it came from a village that did not recognize the sanctity of a child.

After all that tragedy, fear, illness, and the bitter taste of losing both mother and father, the sheikh—our father, our imam of mercy—took us to Al-Rahma Foundation. That first day there was the true turning point in our lives. We found there what we had never found in our village.

There was a mother—worth a thousand mothers—whom no one could take away from us as they had taken my mother from my father. There was no father who would kill my mother and leave me alone. There was Mama Ruqayya, who gave us tenderness, safety, and love—things I had not even received from my older sister, who could not protect me, not even by holding me in her arms. She did not even give me a sip of water to wash away the taste of kerosene I swallowed while hiding in my aunt’s stable as I fled from my uncles who sought revenge on helpless children for their mother’s fate.

From the heart of disaster comes relief that mends the bleeding of the heart. Ruqayya of Al-Rahma became my true home—this home that resembles the House of Allah. In it, I was raised with my siblings, and we were never separated.

Even the baby girl I once silenced with a piece of cloth so we would not be killed for no fault of our own—taken from our mother to force my father to remove her from everyone—has grown up. That infant became radiant like the full moon, excelled in her education, and graduated from high school. She now lives in my brother’s home. He, too, is married and has become our support.

As for me—the girl who could never have imagined holding a pen—I became a university graduate and earned my degrees. I succeeded. I overcame my tragedies, my pain, and my suffering. Today, I am proud of myself.

My God, if Al-Rahma Foundation had not existed, how would my life have ended? I lived the worst days alone. No one supported me. Relatives would contact me out of curiosity, then leave, thanking God that they were not me. But everything ends; nothing remains the same. It is sorrow that matures us, not years. If I appear strong today, it is because I cried alone many times before.

Entering Al-Rahma was like a new dawn. My life changed. I felt that destiny had written survival for me and my siblings, rescuing us from the hell that had spread its grip over us.

O Lord, You compensated me through this great institution, which gave me mothers in place of one mother, and countless family members in place of family. I loved my orphanhood because of my love for my great home—Al-Rahma Foundation.

At Al-Rahma, I learned sewing, embroidery, and handicrafts. I write my future and my dreams on a glass board. I weave, with threads of hope, a large fabric of optimism for tomorrow, believing that my days will be more beautiful, God willing.

Writing my story does not mean that I am the only one who suffers. To every girl who reads this: all souls are alike; the pain is one, even if the expressions differ. Perhaps this eases the weight of suffering and serves as comfort to myself. In my own world, I will not surrender to despair, nor bow to hardships no matter how many they become. My confidence in myself exceeds all piles of sorrow and hopelessness. Today, I am different from what I once was—and from what they expected me to become.

Finally, I extend words of thanks, appreciation, and gratitude to everyone who stood by me and my siblings in our darkest moments and bitter collapse, when we were burdened with pain and shackled by ignorance and grief. No words of thanks are enough for your status. To you belong love and peace, and lasting reward in this world and the Hereafter.

To Mama Ruqayya, the owner of the tender heart who welcomed me and my siblings, I say:
O my heart that beats with life, O all my days and joys—
you restored my smile and my dreams.
May Allah grant you a renewed life filled with days of goodness.

O Lord, I ask You by all Your Most Beautiful Names to gather us with the Noble Prophet in Paradise—Mama Ruqayya, every supporter, and every person who mended our hearts and contributed to building this great home: Al-Rahma Foundation, a monument of motherhood, brotherhood, and solid construction.

Bushra Sharah Allah