Guernica Editions

"I was called Lady Whore so often that the guards finally picked up the name and started teasing me with it too, except that they would add my full name to it and bark Lady Whore Sheyda Porrouya before collapsing onto their backs in thigh-slapping laughter. Within three days, my real name had become so out of use that when I was called Sheyda, it took me a few seconds to realize that I was the one being addressed. A few more weeks in here, I thought, and my whole identity would be annihilated. Maybe that's the point of incarceration: Erasing you from the world's memory and from your own memory in fragments … until you realize that you never really existed in the first place. Who will mourn you then?"