When I was five a man came to see my mother. We were living in a house with one room. I remember that but I do not remember if I had a brother or a sister. When it was dark my mother would light a tallow candle and put me in a corner, behind a veil. She would tell me to lie still and make no sound and I would sit there, in the shadows while men came to see her.
 
They would spend time with her, in her bed and sometimes after they left she would cry and use the sponge and tub in our corner and compulsively scrub at herself. The eyes of a five year old see much that is not understood until later. Later it makes sense.

One man once used a stick to beat her and do other things to her. He must have paid a lot for my mother did not see anyone for a while after he left. We had food, we were warm and we were happy.

At night she would tell me stories in her sing-song voice about far away places and distant seas and ships and sailors. Where we lived I had never seen a ship or a sailor. I would listen to her say things I did not quite understand but it the tone that captivated me. The tone of a yearning deep inside for a world she missed and where she believed she could be happy. Where, perhaps, we could be happy.

She liked cooking and she and I would spend long hours at the local market looking at the produce and talking to the farmers’ wives who brought the food to the market. They would look at me and smile and some would playfully rub my hair and bend down and give me grapes to try or exotic apples that were red and smelled of places far away.

My mother would chat to them and we would buy something and then we would move on and on and repeat this until we had enough for our food that night. It was like a ritual. I now believe my mother lost herself during those times, became just an ordinary woman out with her daughter, buying food.

During those times she was genuinely happy.

One day at the market we came across a stall that made my mother stop in her tracks and look around in alarm. This was a different stall to all the others. It did not sell food but piled high upon it were little grey leaflets of all sorts and there was a space around it and the other food stalls.

The person behind it was a man. Completely bald and dressed in black. His face closed and grey like the leaflets. There was something about him that felt dangerous and the laughter left my mother’s face the moment she saw him. She looked around in alarm and then kept her eyes on the ground and if the man behind the stall was ever aware of her existence I will never know because he never moved a muscle, his eyes never followed her.

We went past the stall quickly and cut our routine to the market short and my mother was nervous for a few days after that and we did not go anywhere as if there was some danger.

On the fourth day there was a knock at the door and my mother opened it and let out a small cry. There stood a group of men, dressed in the same identical black with the bald man we had seen at the market. The men stood there emanating menace and my mother took a few steps back into the room and they followed her and the door swung shut behind them.

The bald man from the market stepped forward and without a word back-handed my mother and she dropped to the floor on her knees, her lips dripping blood. They stood silently in a knot around her, their bodies obscuring from me what was happening. My mother was on her knees and she was sobbing, making choking sounds and they were all around her, moving closer.

It was a scene that lasted some time.

When they finished they all stood back and my mother was on the floor in a heap, sobbing. I would have cried out and ran to her but one of the man noticed me just then and swept me up in one dark clad arm and lifted me to his shoulders.

I cried out and my mother lifted her head, lips bruised but one of the men placed a black booted foot at the base of her back and kept her pinned down until we were all out the door. The last thing I remember as the door swung shut again hiding my mother from my eyes was the grin on the man’s face as he looked at her, helplessly pinned by his boot, his hands already fumbling with his clothes.

I never saw my mother again.