I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World by Eve Ensler Read Free Book Online Page B

something to blow
people up.
    Dear Khalid,
In the plaza
where they play backgammon
we were sent to our places
like we were bad in school
to stand
to get ready to explode, to die
in our places.
I knew the boy wanted to turn back
but he was a boy and had no choice.
Then suddenly the plaza became
faces
faces, faces.
My mother, my father, my aunt, and you,
Khalid, were there in those Israeli plaza
eyes.
I looked up then
It was blue
Life-giving blue blue sky
bigger than the plaza
or Palestine or the Jews
or even you, Khalid.
There was sky sky sky
and I couldn’t do it
and I turned as his body exploded
his boy head
shattered and now
there were more missing pieces.
    Dear Khalid,
I do not understand why
they are keeping me here.
I changed my mind.
I turned back.
You would think they’d appreciate me.
You would have to imprison every Palestinian
for having bad fantasies or thoughts.
How else would we survive?
I don’t really mind being in prison.
At least I no longer have to pretend I’m free.
I do not have illusions.
I do not have hate.
I do not have a boyfriend.
I cannot go home again,
I am older.
My hair is water.

THE WALL
Jerusalem, Israel
    My friend Adina takes me to the other side of
the West Bank wall.
I am surprised at what it’s like over there.
It somehow seems taller
You would need a helicopter to get over it
Hard mean cement dividing energy, houses,
land, and friends
I go back.
I hear more stories.
No water on this side,
No wells
No pomegranates or figs
No jobs
No way out.
I protest on Fridays
with mainly Palestinian boys.
They do not understand what an Israeli
girl is doing there.
    It is a secret.
No one in my family knows.
This goes on for months.
    The wall changes me.
I stop shaving my legs.
I stop eating meat.
Eventually I refuse to join the army.
I see the heartbreak in my grandfather’s
tender old face.
I am told I am not giving back.
I am told I am not a real Israeli.
My father will not look at me
the way he did.
My older brother gets louder
and brags in my face
that he killed an Arab today.
I still say no.
I refuse to agree that I have mental problems.
I will not learn to shoot a gun.
I go to jail.
I refuse to wear the army/prison uniform.
I am put in solitary
I do not say how much this scares me.
Each night
a girl my age, eighteen or so,
wanders into my cell.
Her head is shaved.
She is naked and hungry.
There is something she wants me to know.
Then she is choking.
Her bony hands
claw at the wall.
I can’t tell if she is a dream
or a memory.
Haunting
or releasing me.

GIRL FACT
    A new report says of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, about 40 percent of them are girls. The girls are often front-line fighters or used as porters or cooks.
    Many are sexually abused.

A TEENAGE GIRL’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING SEX SLAVERY
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo
    I live in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I think this guide applies to any girl anywhere in the world.
    People ask me all the time how I survived. It wasn’t that I was smarter or even stronger than anyone else. I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was just that something inside me couldn’t go along. My friends, they got taken at the same time as me. I don’t think we will ever get them back.
    RULE 1. GET OVER THAT GIRL THING: “THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING TO ME”
    When it happens, and trust me it happens to thousands of us, you will not believe it.
    You will think,
These are just crazy soldiers fooling around. They must be bored or something. They couldn’t be hurting me, grabbing my arms and legs all rough like this, throwing me into their truck
. Your brain will start telling you things.
They are old enough to be my
father. They know better than this
. This will be confusing. It will make you feel stupid. It will make you feel like what is happening is not really happening. It will make you will feel like you did something wrong.
    I watched my best friends—Alisa, Esther, and Sowadi. We were on holiday. We