A Few Women

The red brick buildings around them were mostly silent, with yellow and white lights illuminating the pathway. The girls had come a long way to be here and had no intentions of being caught, so it took them a while to navigate their way around the place without asking any of the numerous security guards for help. It would’ve been ironic for them to ask a man for help in the current political climate, especially for what they were about to do.

There were three of them, each of them different in what was in their head and their looks, but united underneath the same banner. They were all connected to each other through a string of pain, to all the women in the world. The world was an unfair place, but especially if you were a woman. Even from a young age, girls begin to realize how the system and primarily the family, discriminates against them. Most girls are brought up to accept this difference but it is only when they grow up to dislike this treatment and wish to break free of the shackles that bind do they realize, that it is not merely difference, but inequality they suffer.

The three of them huddled close to each other, the cold wafting over them in waves. On the way, they had been stared at by men in cars parallel to theirs and so they had treated the man with his own eyes; all three of them had turned their sharp gazes onto him and it took him only a second to whip his head away. The younger of the lot had hoped for him to get whiplash out loud. The other two grinned back at her, nervous and excited at the prospect of reaching their destination.

It was almost as if the atmosphere changed. They could feel the energy of the woman even before they saw them.

The circle did not look suspicious. In fact, it looked just as if a group of women had come together for a picnic, even in the cold, but men often underestimate the power of female circles, mostly because they cannot bring themselves to believe in the collective power of women, too threatened to even think of it. Others, perhaps even smarter ones try to keep them apart, knowing that anything can happen when women come together.

They quietly murmured their hellos and went to sat on some of the picnic blankets set out. They were passing around tea, like a gathering meant solely for the fulfillment of social obligations but there was nothing farther from the truth.

This was an obligation alright, to the women who suffered through their days, who did not see a drop of happiness in their life because of men who controlled them, beat them, suppressed them and ensured they would never make it out on their own. It was an obligation to make the world safer for the future girl child.

The female revolution emerged in the grounds of Alhamra.