This short fiction was an entry for the contest (Inntales5) by Artoons Writing room.
Prompt: “There is an isolated village that sits in a valley. This village has one rule everyone follows without question”
Good Girls Stay Still
The first thing Khadija noticed was the singing. Low, steady, almost forced whispers.
The women’s voices drifted across the courtyard as dusk settled into the Gubaan valley.
She was an eight-year-old once again- bare feet covered with sandy dust, her Hooyo’s hand tightening around hers, copper pots steaming near the lone well.
As if woken from a trance, Khadija rushed towards her humble childhood home. The house was too quiet. Heavy.
“Where is my daughter?”
Eedo Safiya emerged from her bedroom, eyes lowered and continued folding the white cloth. It had stains.
NOOO… not Sahra
The copper pots lay still, now bereft of water. Halima habaryar walked out of the room, wiping her eyes and holding… the little pink-bead bracelet.
A ghost of a cry escaped Khadija.
“SAHRAAA….”
“Stay still.” Eedo glared at Halima and patted Khadija’s shoulder. “Wallahi, child. The rule has been followed. Nabad to this house… Ameen.”
That afternoon…
Khadija stood near the courtyard well, arms folded tightly across her chest as women moved around her with unsettling calm. Soaked white cloth, copper pots, whispered prayers.
She was sucked into her past.
“You will not touch my daughter,” she declared.
Halima barely looked up. “Lower your voice.”
“Habi, she is just eight.”
“So were you… You know the rule”
Khadija felt the hot valley closing around her, the same women who once held her down now moving through the courtyard as though preparing an ordinary meal.
“Habi, this is not love… we just buried Hooyo…” Kadija protested, her voice losing steam as it always did in Gubaan.
“Love isn’t what you see in the city…” Eedo argued softly yet sternly. “… Love is making sure your Sahra survives her people before surviving the world. Hence the rule.”
“Nonsense, Eedo…” Khadija choked as memories flooded, threatening to break the dam of her sanity.
Eedo’s dark eyes smouldered with subdued rage.
“Allah sees stubborn daughters. You know the rule. No girl left Gubaan… untouched.”
Sahra’s laughter came in from somewhere in the courtyard.
The world spun and Khadija collapsed onto the hard floor.
Eedo brought her a glass of water. “A daughter carries the honour of seven houses…”
That morning….
The house smelled of camphor, wet cloth, and something metallic. Soft chants flew in from the courtyard.
Khadija stood beside her mother’s body while the village women washed her for burial.
No one cried loudly. They never did…
The women moved in silence, rolled-up sleeves, scarred hands glistening with water. The thin pale cuts on their wrists screaming for an audience.
Her mother’s body looked smaller now. Harmless.
An old woman cleaned beneath the corpse’s fingernails with a wet white cloth… with unsettling care.
“Her hands never shook,” she murmured.
Several women nodded.
Khadija stared at her mother’s fingers — thick knuckles, short nails, tiny white scars near the thumb. Did Hooyo really…?
In the fifteen years since Khadija left, time had changed Gubaan, yet somehow left it untouched.
Outside, a little girl laughed near the well. Was it Sahra?
The sound cut through her like a blade.
Eedo smiled faintly.
“Even the frightened ones became calm with her,” Eedo whispered to the corpse. “She executed the rule perfectly.”
Something cold unfurled within her soul.
Shutting her ears, Khadija screamed.
“Wallahi be quiet…” Eedo snapped. “…Hooyo will hear you”
Khadija no longer recognized her dead mother.
She stumbled backwards.
Halima habaryar, her favourite aunt, held her close as she wept.
“… it will pass”
The earlier evening…
The road into Gubaan narrowed as the sun dipped behind the valley hills. By the time the run-down jeep dropped Khadija and Sahra before making a hasty retreat, the village already felt suspended outside time… no electricity, just darkness and the dry acrid wind carrying distant women’s voices across the dust.
They neared the courtyard.
Sahra pressed closer, her pink-pearl bracelet digging into Khadija’s arm
“Why are only women here?” Sahra asked.
Khadija glanced around. Men smoked silently beyond the outer fences, never stepping near the well or the house.
“Funeral custom,” Khadija answered hastily.
Near the well, women stirred steaming copper pots, while strips of white cloth soaked in water. Several little girls sat nearby singing softly together.
“Hooyo, big girls don’t sing? There are all so little…. Younger than I.” Sahra looked up, her eight-year-old innocent eyes filled with curiosity.
Khadija felt something tighten painfully within.
Before she could answer, Eedo Safiya appeared from the doorway and rested a hand on Sahra’s head.
“Because women learn… the rule of silence,” she said gently.
That night, Khadija woke briefly to muffled movement in the courtyard.
Women walking. There were whispers. Water being poured.
The incessant singing…
In the fractured haze of waking, did she hear…
…rule?
…Sahra?
Years ago…
Her Hooyo braided her hair beneath the old acacia tree as dry seed pods rattled in the evening wind. Heavy smoke drifted across the courtyard. The white cloth fluttered along with the singing.
Seven-year-old Khadija sat between Hooyo’s knees, listening to goats bleat beyond the thorn fences. But where was her older inaadeer Ifrah? She had promised a doll-game.
A cry rose suddenly from behind the cloth partition….
…Swallowed instantly by the singing.
Ifrah?
A while later Ifrah walked slowly and strangely… with her legs wide. Eedo held her.
Khadija tried to rise but Hooyo tightened her hand gently on Khadija’s shoulder.
“Good girls stay still,” she whispered.
And Khadija stayed still.
Author notes:
Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The practice has no health benefits for girls and women and can result in severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, menstrual difficulties, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.
According to the UNICEF Somalia has one of the highest rates of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the world.
Hence, I have based the narrative close to the region.
Glossary:
- Hooyo — mother
- Eedo — maternal aunt (often used warmly for older women)
- Habaryar — aunt (maternal side)
- Inaadeer — cousin
- Wallahi — “I swear to God” (very common conversational emphasis)
- Nabad — peace/calm
- Aqal — traditional home
{word count: 900}
