A Moroccan Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl - we'll call her Cinderella - who was enslaved by her fiendish stepmother and stepsisters shortly after the death of her father. While she was forced to endure endless hours of arduous labour, these crones luxuriated on soft cushions passing the hours by concocting novel ways to humiliate the girl and new tasks to assign to her. One day it came to pass that the King and Queen of the land decided to hold a ball in the hopes of finding a suitable match for their son the Prince. ...

Hold on. Wrong story. Let's start again.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young Moroccan girl - we'll call her Lamia - who was enslaved by her fiendish aunt and uncle shortly after her parents had sent her to the U.S. to live with them. It had been decided that this most fortunate of daughters would receive the boon of all boons - an American education - in exchange for watching her young cousin and doing some light housework. In reality, she was forced to endure endless hours of arduous labour, which included working at her aunt and uncle's espresso stand, during which time our villains neglected to pay her a fair wage for her employment. Little did Lamia know that it was illegal in the United States for 12-year old girls to be thus spending their time but, when her visitor's visa expired, her uncle had threatened to have her deported and she had felt compelled to comply with his threats requests to work beyond her means.

One day it came to pass that Federal Prosecutors in the land discovered the nefarious activities of the aunt and uncle and opened an investigation. In no time at all, charges were filed against Uncle Abdenasser "Sammy" Ennassime and Aunt Tonya who eventually pleaded guilty to enslaving their niece. These fairy godmothers now anticipate that the pair will receive a sentence of six months' house arrest, three years of probation, and will also have to pay Lamia more than US $65,000 in back wages. That should buy Lamia a lot of frappuccinos.

Hopefully, Lamia will live happily ever after.

Sentencing is set for December 1st, 2006.

Wishing Sammy and Tonya a Ramadan karim (hope they choke on their harira).