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under a single fluorescent light doing her homework. “Why is she doing this?”, “she’s just
a kid let her be” was what she heard from her parents. It was often fright and doubt that

would engulf her alive, however her hope and determination always paved the way for

her dreams. Her dreams were something as foreign and distant as a faraway island which
one could only imagine.

Gifted and presented with garlands and roses that bounced and danced on her skin on
her sixteenth birthday, it was beyond her what was about to unfold, while they drew her

towards bags of sweets and boxes filled with jewelry that gleamed brighter than the
scorching sun she would have to walk under every day to get to school, they unfolded

carpets that could outshine the rainbow however regardless of their color they could never
beam brighter than what Fatima confined and had. It was later when she was guided to

a stage embedded with roses and a man sitting on a sofa wearing a golden turban her

senses had come alive. Tears pricked from her eyes dragging the dark black of her
mascara along with them, all the sweets now bitter nostrums and all of the jeweler now

worthless, but what could she do.

Her days now are spent slaving at a new distant house, one where the bed would not hug
her and where the people would not greet her. What did she do to be here? Fleeting from

her high school to the house where she would prepare an infinite amount of bread, sitting

in the kitchen where the heat accompanied her, she would finish up her schoolwork and
then sweep and clean toilets and bathrooms that were crevasses of mold and dirt. As she

dusted and swept, she could hear planes fly over, the gusting of the wind always calling

her towards it, towards a new world that was yet to be discovered by her. Her husband
was now a stranger who had fled the country for the promise of a greater life, one that

did not include her, her days were now blank pages waiting to be written upon, waiting to
be read by the whole world, it was truly her determination and her will that would take her

NASA, where she dreamed of flying in rockets and spaceships, her grasp was beyond
the realm of gravity. Whenever her hands were not occupied in sweeping cleaning or

dusting she would find old newspaper scraps and search for anything related to NASA or

Space, she would fly high over the stars and galaxies as she would cut and twist and fold