Chamss Eddouha El Gouirti, 17, Touanate. The power of a woman My community is filled with strong women. Khadija, my aunt, happens to be one of them. She might even be the strongest. She inspires me. She makes me believe in myself and be strong when everything seems to be going wrong. Her smile gives me power, and she always tells me, “Stay positive even when your whole world is falling apart.” Life has knocked her down a few times, and showed her things she never wanted to see. She experienced sadness and failure, but one thing is for sure: Khadija always gets back up. She spent her childhood in a small village, but went to school in a city far away from her family. She felt lonely, frustrated, and anxious. When she got her baccalaureate degree, she suffered from a disease which made her hair fall out and caused her psychological trauma. Now she doesn’t have eyebrows or eyelashes or any hair at all, but I still see her as my beautiful role model with her blue eyes. There was no effective treatment to stop this sickness. Khadija accepted her new shape, but society didn’t. She was harassed, was subject to insults, was treated mercilessly, and she lost a lot of her friends because of something she didn’t want or choose. At the age of 23, after studying in university, my aunt worked in a cabling company in Tangier and after in another city called Bouznika where she met her husband who originally seemed open-minded. He was a personal guard. She thought she would live the perfect love story, but after marriage the story of torment began. At the age of 29, she started taking medicine to make her hair grow again, but it affected her eyesight, so she stopped the treatment. After three years of marriage, she become
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