Difret adjusted her black jacket. It wasn't a jacket like the ones you wear at funerals, no, but a suit jacket. A jacket she wore at the court in Addis Ababa. Today was not for sure a funeral day, but a day of celebration, because Hirut had just been found innocent. The judge had decided that killing her kidnapper had been the only solution available to her at that very moment. After greeting the taxi driver, she walked around the block, a little sweaty... It was only 11 AM but it was as if she had just come back from a long day of work. The trial had started very early. It hadn't even lasted 2 hours and yet it represented months of stubborn and relentless battle. A battle against whom ? Against everyone...

Difret got back to the apartment shortly after dropping Hirut off in the street. In the middle of the street. She had dropped her off there, little Hirut, coming straight from her native countryside, in the din and chaos of the bustling city center. She said she knew the route to the orphanage by heart. At least that's what she had asserted with aplomb, before letting herself be taken in the arms of her benefactress and heading straight ahead without looking back. Was it a farewell or a goodbye ? Neither of them knew, but what was certain was that the young girl had left with great conviction... She knew where she was going.

This girl was only 14 years old, yet how independent she was, given her age ! But didn't it take independence to cling so tightly to this dream, the one of going to school and moving up socially, when you live in a sort of hut in the middle of the Ethiopian countryside and your father needs hands to look after the sheep ? Didn't it take strength of mind to shoot your kidnapper at point-blank range, the one who kidnaps you in the middle of the day, locks you up and rapes you in order to force you to marry them, according to the official local tradition ?

The little girl had had a lucky escape anyway. Thanks to Difret's women's defense association, she had not been sentenced to death. Difret had gone to find every person who could potentially help the young girl thanks to their testimony... And she had managed to get two of them to testify. Flanked by her company car, she had crisscrossed the muddy roads of Ethiopia, until she was shot at by the family and friends of the kidnapper, this horde from the village who was demanding revenge...

It was all over now. Well, almost. She had certainly marked a turning point in Ethiopian jurisprudence, but the fight wouldn't stop there. Firstly because this judgment was precisely a case law, and its guiding principle (the fact that self-defense could take precedence over tradition) would take a very long time to be enshrined in Ethiopian law, and also because her own life would never be the same again. Her, who was already disturbing that society was now exposing herself even more. Difret looked mechanically throughout the window, towards a round street. A man was crouching down and looking in her direction. She could clearly see that he was carrying a camera slung over his shoulder. Without trying to understand, she drew the curtain...