Today is International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women, and with that in mind I want to share this great post by the incredible charity Too Young to Wed, which centres it’s work around the fight against child marriage. Support them if you can
In my capacity as curator and senior editor, of The New York Times Sunday Review, Exposures, column I get the pleasure of working with some of the worlds greatest photographers on various personal and Op-Ed visual stories.
But this week’s column by Stephanie Sinclair from her, Child, Bride, Mother series is very special to me. Stephanie, and her Too Young To Wed team brought us an incredible series of photographs and video out of Nigeria. She interviewed and photographed an incredible group of young women there who escaped and survived the experience of being kidnapped and forced into marriages with the Boku Haram insurgents, in many cases having to bear children for them.
It’s an incredible piece of multimedia designed by Grant Gold at The New York Times. It looks fantastic Grant, thanks!
Rape as a weapon of war is a vital and important global issue that needs to stay at the forefront of the world’s issues we must address.
Hi Ali, how are you?? hope u fine!! I know you not taking request for a time, but i was missing Leon and Rebeca, and with the Christmas near, i was thinking if this year, she would come with him in the schalke`s party??
Okay, so I had to write down this drabble. I JUST HAD TO. Haha. P.S. I wrote this really quickly and didn’t actually do some timeline/continuity checks from the past stories so, I’m sorry if some things don’t match up to TYTW and Happily Sometimes After.
Enjoy!
“You look gorgeous,” Leon told her, nudging her leg withhis.
They were seated side by side on the backseat of Benni’scar. They would have taken Leon’s, but neither Benni nor Steph—or Leon, forthat matter—trusted Rebeca not to run away and disappear again like last year. Theypractically had her under 24-hour surveillance since yesterday.
“Thanks,” Rebeca acknowledged. “You look like Satan leadingme to hell.”
Leon laughed. “Come on, Rebeca. It won’t be so bad. You’vehung out with a lot of them, haven’t you?”
“Not as a group. Not on a club-sanctioned event,” she said throughgritted teeth.
Benni sighed. “Here we go again.”
“Don’t you start, Benedikt Howedes,” Rebeca said.
Steph started to laugh, but disguised it unsuccessfully witha cough. Leon kept beaming at her, like getting her to go to the Christmasparty was a personal success that deserved, like, a Nobel peace prize orsomething.
Come to think of it, maybe it did.
“You’ll have fun, I promise. I’ll even let you grab my asssecretly, I know how much you like doing that at parties—“
“I do not!”
She did.
But in her defense, he liked doing that to her too.
She lowered her voice so that only Leon can hear. “There isno ‘let’. I grab what I want, when I want.”
“This is why I want you to be the future mother of four outof my five children,” Leon said, clutching his chest. “Hey Steph, would youlike to be the m—“
“Just try and continue that sentence, Leon,” Benni said in adeceptively mild voice.
Leon winked at Rebeca who answered with an eye-roll. In therecent months, Leon had taken to teasing his captain about his increasing possessivenessabout Steph. It was funny sometimes, annoying most of the time.
Steph had mentioned to her once that he suspected this wasLeon’s way of acting out because of her badly kept secret ex-crush on Benni.
“Don’t think I had not noticed you chose to wear yellow, honey,” Leon said.
“Oh, I was aiming for you and everyone to notice,” she said.
Leon maturely stuck his tongue out at her, then leaned downto give her a soft, teasing peck on the lips, pulling away when she tried tokiss him back.
“We’re here,” Steph said.
“Ready, Rebeca?”
“Never!”
“I love you, too.”
And then Leon was opening the door, holding out his hand forher.
The year that was ('13) → Maria Kirilenko (RUS)
Highlights:
Winner → Pattaya City (d. Lisicki 57 61 76(7))
Semifinalist → Indian Wells (l. to Sharapova 46 36)
→ Monterrey (l. to Kerber 46 62 26)
Quarterfinalist → Roland Garros (l. to Azarenka 67(7) 26)
→ Eastbourne (l. to Wickmayer 26 61 57)
Fourth round → Australian Open (l. to Williams 26 06)
Year end ranking → #19
2013 singles record → 36-19 (65.45%)
The year that was ('13) → Novak Djokovic (SRB)
Highlights:
Winner → Australian Open (d. Murray 67(2) 76(3) 63 62)
→ Dubai (d. Berdych 75 63)
→ Montecarlo (d. Nadal 62 76(1))
→ Beijing (d. Nadal 63 64)
→ Shanghai (d. del Potro 61 36 76(3))
→ Paris (d. Ferrer 75 75)
→ World Tour Finals (d. Nadal 63 64)
Runner up → Wimbledon (l. to Murray 46 57 46)
→ US Open (l. to Nadal 26 63 46 16)
Year end ranking: #2.
2013 singles record 74-9 (89.15%)