By: Manal Rabiey
I have never been a battlefield nor an arena for petty quarrels. Since my childhood, I learned that purity is not weakness but a sharp light that strips hearts bare before their own mirrors. That is why I have no true enemy; everyone who collided with me was not fighting me, but the shadows within themselves. They approach me and find in my calm an unspoken provocation, in my silence a hanging question, and in my smile a reminder of what they once lost inside. Some were drawn to me in admiration; some wanted to wear my face and live inside my skin; and some saw their own ugliness revealed as they came close to my purity and recoiled back into themselves.
I have learned to walk among them without fear, like someone walking barefoot on river stones, unharmed because the water surrounds her with its tenderness. I listen to the sounds of them shattering around me, like falling glass that never reaches my heart. I no longer see them as enemies, but as unpolished mirrors, each reflecting something I once carried inside and have since healed from. Even the faces that tried to frighten me became statues of salt melting with the first rain.
Today I am content to simply be myself. I do not run after correcting my image in their eyes, nor drain my soul explaining my innocence. It is enough for me to keep walking, planting tiny seeds of light along the way, writing my footprints in the sand to testify that I have passed in peace, leaving them free to love, to hate, or to break apart. Pure hearts carry no swords; they simply walk, and shine, and leave behind a fragrance like dawn.
