The house was unnervingly silent that day.
No sound of Farida screaming, no heavy footsteps pounding the floor as usual.
Lamia was busy with her phone calls, laughing, feigning tenderness, sending pictures of herself with fancy coffee cups to please Sabri, her so-called future husband.
As for me... I was breathing freely for the first time, without having to count each breath.
I passed through the long corridor on the upper floor, where the old rooms were.
There was a dark wooden door that was never opened.
Farida always shouted at me whenever I came near it, claiming it was just an old storage room, unsuitable for entering.
But today… there was no one around.
I approached it cautiously, my fingertips trembling as they reached for the doorknob.
Cold — as if time itself had abandoned this room.
I pushed the door lightly... and a long creak echoed, as if the room was groaning from years of loneliness.
Dust filled the air. Heavy curtains covered the windows.
The furniture was hidden under white sheets, and the stagnant air smelled like forgotten memories.
On the wall, there was an old photograph of a girl with short, curly hair, wearing a simple dress, smiling a sad, half-smile.
Underneath it, a small frame read:
"Sherine – but she preferred to be called Sherry."
I froze.
Sherry?
The same name I was now forced to carry?
My heart raced.
I began pulling the sheets off the furniture.
A small desk, atop it a worn leather-bound journal.
I opened it eagerly.
Pages filled with delicate handwriting... confused words... unsent letters.
All written by Sherine — or Sherry, as she wanted to be known.
"I never understood why being different is a crime... why my mother insists I become someone I'm not. Why I'm forbidden from being myself."
"They told me girls shouldn't speak loudly, shouldn't run, shouldn't love other girls... They told me I must marry, bear children, and stay silent… but I just wanted to live."
The journal slipped from my hands.
My eyes could no longer see the page — only tears blurring my vision.
Sherine... or Sherry... wasn't just an aunt.
She was me.
An old version of my soul, crushed before I was even born, hidden away in this room… so that "the shame" wouldn't repeat.
I sat at the edge of the dust-covered bed, holding the journal to my chest, and whispered:
"I promise, Sherry... this time, we won't stay silent."
I turned the pages, and each one was a blow — to my face, my heart, and my memories.
Sherine — Sherry — had written without fear, or perhaps she wrote to be less afraid.
"The first time I saw her, I was fifteen… the neighbor's daughter, her laughter a melody, her hair smelling of freedom. My heart raced, my cheeks burned. I didn't know if it was love or anger."
"When my mother caught me looking at her, she pulled me by my hair and shouted: 'A girl must be like her mother, her life decided by her father. Don't you dare dream of being wicked like her.'
From that day, I knew... I wouldn't be like them, nor one of them."
My hands trembled as I turned the pages.
"I thought of running away so many times... Once I wrote a letter and left it under my pillow. Another time I packed my clothes. Another, I tried to catch a train…
But every time, I returned.
Not because I was a coward — but because I was alone."
"They told me people like me belong in hell.
And I thought: if this isn't hell, what is?"
I smiled bitterly.
The same words... the same fire.
But she had lived it first.
She had been me before I even knew myself.
I looked around the room again, noticing the details:
A black dress hanging from a wooden hanger, a small tear at the hem.
A small metal box, inside it a star-shaped pendant, engraved on the back:
"Love is not a crime."
And a faded photograph of two girls laughing under a sunset — one of them Sherine, the other an unfamiliar face, but radiating warmth I had never felt in this house.
In the last pages of the journal, her handwriting weakened, as if written through exhaustion:
"I'm tired... Every time I try to be myself, the world beats me down.
But I won't forget.
She once told me:
'If you can't find a place for yourself, build one.'
And I will. Even if it's at the end of the world."
"If someone finds this notebook one day... know that I was real.
That what I carried inside wasn't sickness, or delusion... it was love, freedom, and a scream I couldn't voice out loud."
I closed the journal.
I had found her.
I had found my voice in hers, my body in her rebellion, my tears in her sorrows.
Sherine hadn't died.
Sherine was me... before I was born.
I rose from the bed, my heart heavier than ever… yet for the first time, it felt real.
I opened the small window.
A strange breeze entered, as if — for a fleeting moment — the house allowed me to breathe.
Sherry (whispering):
"I'm not alone. I was here before... and I'll keep going."
---
The next day, as soon as I got a chance, I returned to Sherine's room — or rather, Sherry's room, the first Sherry.
I searched carefully, not just through the items, but through the spaces… behind drawers, under rugs, even inside an old pillow sewn tightly.
In a forgotten corner of the closet, I found a small wooden box, its lock broken.
I opened it... and it felt like my heart opened with it.
Letters.
Dozens of them.
All written in Sherine's handwriting, addressed to one person: "Yasmin."
"Yasmin, I always dreamed of taking your hand and running away, living far from their eyes and their cruel words."
"I told you we should wait… wait until I turned 18 so we could run away properly.
But the waiting grew heavier, became a prison, and every day I lost a little more of you."
"This house hates me, Yasmin.
My mother started drugging my tea, telling me to 'rest'... forcing sleep upon me.
Every time I spoke up, they said: 'Sherry is mentally ill, she needs treatment.'
"Today they brought a Sheikh to recite over me.
He shouted: 'An evil spirit is trying to corrupt your soul!'
I laughed... but inside, I was dying."
The letters shifted from longing to pain… from hope to loss.
And in the last letter... written with a faint, torn hand:
"Yasmin, they said you left.
That your father moved you abroad.
They said you forgot.
But I'm still writing... in case you remember."
"I'm going to try again — one last time.
If I can't escape this time, then I have already left — left this house, this pain."
The date of the letter was a week before her disappearance, according to the few old whispers about a "crazy aunt" and "a buried shame."
I returned to the journal and opened its back cover — there was a small folded paper inside:
"If you find this...
My name is Sherine, without a father's name, without a family.
I'm not sick.
I'm not a shame.
I was a girl who loved a girl.
And this house killed me before death ever did."
I sat on the floor, the box in my lap, the letters scattered around me like fragments of a shattered heart that no one ever cared to mend.
Sherry (whispering):
"I found you, Sherine… and I will uncover the truth — no matter what."
Would Aunt Mona help me?
Maybe even… my mother?
I clutched Sherry's photo tightly and walked through the house until I reached my mother's room.
I decided to start there.
I found her sitting before the mirror, smearing layers of makeup on her aging face.
Lamia:
"Come here, sweetheart, don't be shy. Let me teach you how to wear makeup. A woman without beauty has no worth."
I approached her cautiously — or maybe fearfully — knowing too well the darkness inside this woman.
Sherry:
"Mama, I want to ask you about a photo I found here in the house..."
I showed her the picture.
She stared at it, then tossed it aside, laughing hysterically.
When she finally calmed down, she looked at me with wickedness and said:
"Do you know why I named you Sherry?"
I shook my head — I had never dared ask before.
Lamia:
"The name Sherry is a curse in this house.
A wound carved into every wall here.
The name of a girl who thought she could change her fate.
When your father heard it, he lost it — he remembered how weak he had been to kill her."
"Sherry was a living reminder that the men of this family were men only in name, too weak to bury their shame."
Seeing the confusion in my eyes, she kicked me out of the room.
---
Aunt Mona was, as usual, in the kitchen — the embodiment of traditional womanhood.
Mona:
"Sweetheart, come here! I made cake, you must try it."
I sat beside her without hesitation — if there's one thing Aunt Mona excelled at besides kindness, it was making the best cake I'd ever tasted.
She watched me eat with a distant look in her eyes, as if her mind was trapped in a memory.
Sherry:
"Auntie... who was the crazy aunt?"
She froze, tears welling up in her eyes.
Mona:
"Sherine... my baby sister."
"Sherine always spoke her mind, no matter how much Mama beat her.
She refused to wear black like the other girls.
She said no to marriage.
She wanted to finish college and travel the world."
"But most of all… Sherine loved.
And she dared to run away for love."
"They called her crazy... but she was the sanest of us all."
"Don't go back to that room, sweetheart...
And don't ask anyone else about her.
No one here truly knew Sherry."
Sherry:
"What happened to her?"
Mona's voice broke:
"They said she went mad from the confinement… and jumped from her window."
"When I arrived, I didn't find my sister.
I found a body.
Maybe... maybe that's when she finally found peace.
Because no one ever truly understood her... except him."
Sherry:
"Him?
Who?"
Mona continued weeping over the house's buried victims.
---
Who was "the murdered memory"?
Who was the one who truly understood Sherry?
Sherry stood up, the words echoing in her mind like an unending whisper:
"Another memory murdered here…"
"Only he ever understood her."
Her heart raced as her mind started stitching the threads together faster than she could comprehend.
She rushed back to her room, closed the door, and pulled out the old photograph from her pocket — a teenage boy whose face looked just like Amir's, smiling with soft makeup adorning his features.
On the back of the photo, a note:
"To Miro, Sherry's Heart."
Maybe he was the murdered memory.
But who was he?