They took away my son who, at the age of seventeen, was at the end of his adolescence. As well as feeling the loss of someone I loved, anger at the possibility of his being maltreated, physically and mentally, and fear about his future, there was the frustration of knowing that his education was not completed. I was (I felt) responsible because he still did not have autonomy. Everyone knows that to be able to move about freely in this country, an adolescent needs written authorization from his father, and that without a father's authorization going abroad is unthinkable. His brothers were stunned. They could not understand why I was so powerless and incapable of preserving the family unit. This forced me to face up to a feeling of emptiness, to my own misery, Isn't it a nightmare? Every day I have to come to terms with the fact that I am still living
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