Beauty and scars

Ich habe einen Text gefunden (ich habe ein neues Buch angefangen),

welcher mich sehr berührt hat:

...

This small plastik bag is what i was holding in my hands when the detention officer told me to go and stand in the queue for the telephone. The first girl in the queue, she was tall and she was pretty. Her thing was beauty, not Talking. I wondered which of us had made the best choice to survive. This girl, she had plucked her eybrowns out and then she had drawn them back on again with a pencil. This is what she had done to save her life. She was wearing a purple dress, an a-line dress with pink stars and moons in the pattern. She had a nice pink scarf wrapped around her hair, and purple Flip-Flops on her feet. I was thinking she must have been locked up a very long time in our detention center. One has to go through a very great number of the charity boxes, you will understand, to put together an outfit that is truly an ensemble.

On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moon on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar Is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and i, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because, take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, i survived!

In a few breaths' time i will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story-teller Is alive. The next thing you know, someting fine will happen to her, someting marvelous, and then She will turn around and smile.

...

Little Bee - Chris Cleave