Tunis, Tunisia - Algeria - Paris, France - 1950's

In 1950 in Tunis, Tunisia, a girl named Kheira Chekiri was born; she has seven older brothers.

For the first eleven years of your life, you have lived in Tunisia because your home country, Algeria, has been at war for the past decade. You live in poverty, with barely any food and water.

After the war ended, you moved back to Algeria with your family despite never having lived there before.

At the ripe age of twelve, your mother died of an unknown sickness, which took a big toll on you. After all, you still are a child.

While grieving your mother's death, your cousin, Masouda, who is 26 comes from France to take you to your aunt's house. You had no choice in whether you wanted to move away from your family or not, but you still ended up leaving everyone you knew behind anyway, so it didn't matter much.

Six months fly by quickly, and you are now thirteen. You had captured the eyes of many men at this age, mostly because of your long hair and beautiful face. Many women have approached you with their sons of all ages, all older than you, of course. However, they didn't matter at the time, as it was time to move to Kaya’s house, another aunt of yours.

It has been 4 years, and you have been living in your Aunt Kaya’s house. You are now sixteen, which is a good age to marry. You don't want to get married to a guy you don't know. But does it matter? No. Because you'll still end up being married anyway.

Being forced into an arranged marriage at 16 is not something you want, but the wedding is happening soon, and there is nothing to be done.

You're a sixteen-year-old teenage girl who is now married to a 25-year-old man named Ammar. You don't like him at first, but despite your not liking him, he’s kind and nice to you, which eventually makes you fall in love with him.

You give birth to your first child at eighteen. The celebration of having your first child is short-lived, though, as a year later, you're pregnant again.

After giving life to 9 children and going through 10 pregnancies (the last one was stillborn), you finished having children, and your husband is now satisfied.

You have been married to your husband for 30 years now.

He has been aggressive and abusive. He has been coming home drunk with multiple women almost every day, and it has been starting to worry you.

With your husband drinking all the money away, you have resorted to stealing money from your drunken partner to feed your children.

You need to find work. You were never given the opportunity to pursue an education because your father claimed that you were “only good for marriage,” no matter how much you wanted to become a pilot.

You’ve decided to work as a building janitor and a housekeeper. Your husband is upset with you for working, but you insist on it since there is no other way to earn money.

His mother found out about you working. She says he must leave you for another woman back in Algeria, as she had arranged the wedding for him already. He’s going to leave soon.

When you arrive home from work, you realize that two of your children, Nassima and Ibrahim, are gone. You call around the neighborhood to ask if anyone has seen them. Right then, you receive a phone call from Algeria: your husband had just kidnapped your children.

Three months later, you get your brother to drive you from north to south Algeria; however, on your way there, you get into a bad accident, and your brother gets sent to the hospital. You tell him that it's ok to go back home, but he insists on calling his son to drive you the rest of the way.

Hours later, you find your two children coming back from school and tell them to get in the trunk of the truck. They recognized you immediately and ran inside. You drove away from the city in a hurry, away from your husband and his wife.

You were able to get back to France with your children in time before your husband realized they were gone. He had called everyone in town and the police, but it was no use. He had finally resorted to calling you to ask if you had them, and your response was, “I do. You took them from me, and I took them right back.”

Years later, you file for a divorce, and you both go your separate ways. You have been renting out apartments and selling gold while working as a housekeeper to earn enough money to support your children.