Protect the brain, Rajan used to tell her. She had seen men reduced to children when their brains collided with forces stronger than their own. She had seen the hearts of children stop and starve their brains to death. And she had seen people who should have died—but didn’t. Someone’s life in her hands.

Protect the brain or protect the hands?

The soldier pulled her upright by her hair. She cried out. She wanted to push him away. Instead, she wrapped her own hands around her body, not to protect herself, but to protect her hands. She knew where this was going. Protect the brain or protect the hands? She had heard the stories. She prayed that she would live and that her hands would not be broken.

‘Take off your clothes,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Take off your clothes.’

‘No.’ She was so tired. She tasted more blood. She bent her fingers and closed her palms slowly, sheltering them. He noticed.

‘Are you going to hit me?’ he asked.

The man behind her laughed quietly.

‘No.’ She wasn’t going to fight, she was going to protect.

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘No.’

‘Take them off or I’m going to take them off you. Tamil women are easy to undress.’

Her fists clenched in earnest.

‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Do it.’

•

She remembered something: ‘The first incision needs to be confident and slow.’

•

She lay on the floor, her hands pressed hard between her legs to stop the bleeding. The room was cold and dark. Scattered around her were fragments of thoughts and memories. There was one, shaped like the shard of a broken mirror that reflected a moment from decades ago. Its edges were sharp and each recollection lacerated her anew.

She was eight and cowering in the corner of her parents’ room. Amma lay on the bed, trapped underneath the weight of a demon. Her skirt had been torn from her, exposing her legs, which twisted and kicked with no effect. Her eyes were squeezed tight like raisins, drying in the sun. She screamed as the demon drove himself into her. The demon had ten heads and each one wanted a turn. Dhara didn’t know people could make sounds like that. She didn’t know Amma could make a sound like that.

The demon slapped her mother and threw her on the floor, like one of her dolls.

‘I told you to shut up, you Tamils howl like dogs.’ He stood up and shook the bloodied snake that was attached to his body. ‘Get me the girl, she’s quiet,’ he said, motioning to the others in the room. Someone reached towards her. She could see the hairs on his arm moving, black ants poised to bite her.

‘No, no!’ Amma cried. She tried to stand but couldn’t, collapsing towards the demon and holding onto his legs. ‘I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet, I promise.’