My hands shook as I read Gaia"s words and as I delved deep into the person whose soul I thought I already knew. She was a child of war, forever scarred by public killings – worst of all seeing her own father gunned down before her eyes. She was an orphan of war, ripped from her parents in an effort to save her from the same fate; vainly trying also to wipe away the memories of the atrocities she had lived to see.
Gaia, or was it Karimi, was a young woman with bloodshed and murder laced into her very being; a woman who could rise above the wreckage of her society but who could never put the parts of the culture she loved back together again.
And yet Gaia was also a warm, loving woman whose smile could light up the room and whose love could rescue my lonely heart. She could bring me, a man
