Aisha is twelve years old, she is from Mosul, Iraq. She arrived in Erbil two years ago, she fled her city with her dad Mahmoud and her sister Shatha the night before Daesh took their home. Every morning Aisha wakes up, gets dressed and just before jumping on the bus that takes her to work she puts some lipstick and she draws a line of mascara on her face, careful that her old sister doesn’t notice she’s using her new make up. Aisha works all day, she collects plastic with her father in the big landfill placed on the outskirts of Erbil, one of the biggest cities in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
When we meet, Aisha tells me she used to go to school every morning before leaving Mosul, but now there’s no time to study because she has work at the dump. Aisha is a curios little girl, she asks me many things, where I come from, what I am doing in Iraq and why I can speak Arabic even though I’m Italian. Before we say goodbye Aisha looks at me with her big dark eyes and says “Marta, you should put on some lipstick, as I do. We are girls, we should change the color of our smile every day.” Aisha has a different life of mine. At her age I used to go to school every morning, I used to play with my girlfriends messing up my mum’s lipsticks and I used to dream the day I would have become an adventurer carrying a nice camera and taking photos all around the world. As a woman and a forever girl child inside,
I demand the same light heartedness for all my little sisters like Aisha in this world.
I demand the right to dream.
All girls must have the right and the access to education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care, and protection from discrimination, violence and early marriage.
Happy International Girls Day to you, my beautiful Aisha.
And to all of us, forever girls and women united in the common struggle for human rights.
Erbil, 11 October 2016 - International Day of the Girl Child
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