In The Name of Hunger

The evening air was heavy, thick with the stench of bodies crammed too close and the lingering smoke from makeshift stoves. The tents flapped weakly in the wind, fragile shelters against a world that had forgotten them. Inside one of these tattered homes, two figures sat in the dim light of a flickering lantern, their voices low and burdened with the weight of a decision that hung over them like a curse.

Um Salim sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands clasped tightly together, her knuckles white. Her eyes, once bright with the fire of a woman who had seen too much but still hoped, were now dull, hollowed out by the relentless cruelty of life in the camp. Across from her, Abu Salim sat in silence, his shoulders slumped as though the earth itself pressed down on him. Between them, a conversation neither of them wanted to have, but one they could no longer avoid.

“He’s offering money,” Abu Salim muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. He didn’t look at her, couldn’t look at her. His eyes remained fixed on the dirt floor of the tent, where the dust seemed to swirl in mockery of their predicament.

“Money,” Um Salim repeated, the word tasting like bile on her tongue. “Is that what we’ve come to? Is that what our worth now?”

He flinched, as though she’d struck him. “We have no choice,” he said, his voice cracking. “You see how things are here. There’s no food, no medicine. What do you want me to do? Let her starve with the rest of us?”

Her hands trembled, fingers digging into the thin fabric of her dress. “She’s fifteen. Just fifteen. And you want to give her to a man—an old man. He’s fifty. Fifty!”

Abu Salim’s jaw clenched. “He’s willing to take her as his wife.”

“Wife?” Um Salim’s voice rose, incredulous, bitter. “Do you really believe that? Wife? She’ll be the third, fourth—who knows how many more will come after her? He doesn’t want a wife. He wants something young. Something he can take and use until she’s no longer of any use to him.”

Her words hung in the air, sharp and cutting. She wanted to scream, to tear at the flimsy walls of the tent and demand the world look at what it had reduced them to. But her screams would do nothing here, in this place where cries for help were swallowed whole by the silence of indifference.

“She can’t stay here forever,” Abu Salim said, finally looking up at her. His face was gaunt, shadows etched beneath his eyes from too many sleepless nights. “The camp is falling apart. There’s nothing left for her here. Do you want her to end up like the others?”

Um Salim knew what he meant. She had seen the other girls, younger even than their daughter, coaxed out of the camp with promises of work, of safety. She had seen them vanish, heard the whispers of what really happened to them. Smuggled across borders, sold to men who saw them as nothing more than commodities. Their innocence was trafficked for a price, their bodies reduced to currency in a world that had turned its back on them.

“And what do you think this is?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re giving her away just the same. Don’t pretend it’s marriage. Don’t hide behind that word as though it makes it right. It’s nothing but trafficking, dressed up to make you feel better about it.”

He looked away, his throat tight, words stuck somewhere deep within him. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t hate myself for even considering it?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, the weight of shame pressing harder than the hunger gnawing at his belly. “But what choice do we have? We can’t protect her here. We can’t feed her. And if we don’t act now, someone else will take her, and we won’t have any say in it.” His voice cracked at the edges, revealing the fear that had driven him to this point. 

“We had already discussed this. We discussed it.” he kept repeating, the fear that had gnawed at him every time he saw men in the camp eyeing the girls—his girl. The fear that one day, she would disappear into the night, taken by someone who wouldn’t even bother with the pretense of marriage.

“Polygamy,” Um Salim spat the word like it was poison. “They use it to justify this. To pretend it’s holy, that it’s sanctioned by God. But this isn’t faith. This isn’t what the Prophet intended. This is men using religion to hide their sins, to excuse what they do to girls like our daughter.”

Abu Salim rubbed his hands over his face, worn and weathered like a man ten years older than he was. “I know. God forgive me, I know. But what do you want me to do? If we refuse, if we fight it, he’ll just take her by force. Or another man will. You’ve seen how they look at her. They all know we’re desperate. They see it. They smell it. And they’ll take what they want.”

Silence filled the tent, thick and suffocating. Outside, the wind rattled the tarp, the sounds of the camp a constant, miserable hum—children crying, women bargaining over scraps of food, the heavy footfalls of men patrolling the outskirts of their prison.

Um Salim pressed a hand to her mouth, her chest heaving as she fought back sobs. She had failed. As a mother, she had failed. She could not protect her daughter from the vultures circling above them, waiting for the right moment to descend.

“I’ll talk to him,” Abu Salim said, standing slowly. “I’ll make sure she’s treated well, that she won’t be… passed around like the others.”

The words tasted like ash, and he knew they were lies, even as they left his mouth. But he had nothing else to offer. No power. No hope. No way out.

“She’ll hate us,” Um Salim whispered, her voice so small it was barely there. “She’ll never forgive us.”

Abu Salim’s face crumpled, his eyes filled with a pain so deep it was almost unbearable. “I know,” he said softly. “But at least she’ll be alive.”

And wasn’t that all they had left to bargain for? Survival, in the most twisted sense of the word. To keep their daughter alive in a world where girls were not daughters, not human beings, but property—bought, sold, and discarded when they no longer pleased.

The wind howled outside the tent, and the world outside kept turning, indifferent to the suffering of those trapped in its shadows.