By: Manal Rabiey
I used to hide from the light like an old wound under a bandage.
The clay walls around me felt rough under my fingers, crumbling into grains of fear.
The white curtains of my balcony fluttered with whispered sounds, like the wings of wandering doves beating with my breath, awakening my trembling heart.
Whenever I reached to remove my dress, my limbs would shake and I would silently gasp for forgiveness:
“Forgive me, angels of light… do not examine me.”
My modesty was not a garment I wore; it was my very skin, my trembling, my self laid bare before the sky.
I saw in his eyes a hidden smile and suspicion, as if he were saying, “Her innocence is an act.”
He didn’t know my fear — like a leaf trembling in the wind — was only the mirror of my inside.
I hid behind his shadow, folded myself so he wouldn’t see me, tapped on my heart with trembling fingers and whispered:
“Close the windows… the angels are watching… close the windows.”
At night, a faint inner voice, like the child inside me, said: “Hide… you are shame.”
And another voice, deeper, farther, repeated in the dark: “You are not shame… repeat after me: you are not shame.
Your modesty is life, not a prison.”
That second voice came like droplets from a sacred spring, carrying divine names I recited in secret, my soul fluttering like a bird inside my chest.
Then came that morning.
I rose with my heart’s trembling as though rising from an old death.
The deep voice grew stronger:
“You are not shame… you are not shame… repeat it with the light.”
I reached for the window handle. It was cold like fate in my palm.
I opened it wide.
The light entered at once, warm as water, washing me.
I trembled for a heartbeat, then found myself breathing the light instead of hiding from it.
It was like a river of heavenly mercy, like a bird’s wing landing on me to lift me.
I turned to him. He still stood in the shadow, watching with stunned eyes.
I looked back and spoke with a voice bursting from my chest, not my throat:
“I no longer fear the light… I will not hide from it.
My dress is my purity. My modesty is life, not dread.”
I saw his astonishment; the one who thought my innocence feigned now saw me defying my fear, standing tall before the light letting it flood me without hesitation.
My modesty had become a force of light, not a dark pit.
I heard him whisper inside: “You are beautiful now that you see your inner light, not what you receive.”
I smiled and closed my eyes.
A shiver of birth crept into my heart.
I had overcome the tremor of my own pure, free soul.
The angels no longer watched to expose me but to guide and protect me.
I began to see God not with the eyes of fear but with the eyes of safety.
I stepped onto the balcony, lifted my face to the sky, the sun on my cheeks like a gentle hand.
I remembered the child who used to tremble behind doors and knew I had emerged from her now like a bird from its cage, like a drop of water finding its sea.
I am a woman before angels…
but now I am shy in my freedom and purity, not in my fear.
