Suddenly Hanin recalls the past.

I met Ali, for the first time when I was only six years old. His family was so rich and powerful . My mother worked for them as a servant and my father worked for them as a driver.

Ali was very weak since his childhood and was lonely and always sat under a tree in his garden.

Once I went to him while he was sitting under the tree and I talked to him back then he was very shy and did not have any friends to talk to them.

We have talked a lot since then we became friends.

(A month later)

Ali noticed that his father was coming toward us while we was setting and talking under the tree . Ali ordered me to hid as fast as I can .

After his father left, I went to my mother and told her everything that happened.

She warned me and ordered me not to talk to him in the future and she said that,"I was lucky that his father did not see me talking to him otherwise he would have fired both of my mother and my father."

Every day after that day I watched him from afar while he was waiting for me to come to him day after day but I did not go to see him.

Until one day when I saw him weeping from despair I could not stop myself and went to him and took him in my arms and wiped his tears and I told him,"In this life, every year, every day, every minute and every second as long as I breathe, I will take care of you and put you before myself."

Since then we have been meeting every day secretly.

He was always telling me his pains ,feelings and his matter's .We grew up together as friends.

When I became a teenager I became of the age of fifteen years.My parents told me that ,"We Arabs have strict customs and traditions and that it would not be suitable For an teenager girl to stay with a teenager boy at the same age under one roof no matter what the reasons.It is not suitable for us as Arabs to do such thing .People will spread rumors about us therefore I will have to go and live with my grandmother in the countryside."

At that time I realized that I had to wake up from the sweetest dream Ihave ever had.

I am now fifteen years old and throughout the previous nine years I used to meet Ali every day .He is my only friend with the passage of time I knew that I considered him more than that I realized that I consider him as a life partner and this means in Egypt marriage in the future.

Now I have to go away from him,but how can I do that after I promised him before to stay with him and take care of him until the end of my life.

After all this is my punishment for ignorance our customs and traditions that prevent any girl from establishing a friendship relationship with any boy.