"Scars"

At first we were denied the ability to meet with the prisoner. The FBI said it was too risky, and it would take too much governmental paperwork to be able have a meeting. However. A few weeks before we were due to leave the country, we received a call and were granted permission to have a one-hour meeting.

I was nervous about meeting him but never scared. In that hour, I met the man who tried to kill me and my father. His name was Sidi and I told him that I forgave him and held no bitterness in my heart against him. As we left, my mother gave the man a Bible, which was highly illegal to do in the country.

A week later we received a letter from Sidi, telling my family that we had forever changed his life and that he was beginning to understand the meaning of his life, seeing a light at the end of his dark tunnel. He called me an angel in the letter and that what stuck out to me most. We also found out later that by forgiving the man, he was pardoned of the death sentence that he was supposed to receive. The next few weeks my story was headlined in the Islamic newspapers, “Ten year old forgives her assassin.”