A familiar stench diffuses through the town of Cashma Goth every morning. A remote and impoverished fishing community off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan, the locals have grown insensitive to the unique whiff of carbon fuel and rotting fish that has come to define the village. As the catch of the day is transported, colorful and boisterous pickups make their way through the dirt-laden roads, inadvertently sprinkling mangled fish carcasses throughout the nameless neighborhoods. The swarms of flies that conjure as a result are what caused 11-year old Humera to start sleeping with a cloth on her face. A preemptive safeguard, she explains, against the flies that would otherwise tickle her nose all night.

Fatherless, one of seven and the first in her family to study beyond the second grade, Humera often walks to school barefoot. She insists that she always takes caution to avoid the stains. Oblong, speckled and textured brick-colored stains of saliva blemish every square-inch of the streets, a testament to the chewing tobacco dependence rampant in her community. Addiction in her own family is what motivated her desire to be different.

"I want to be a doctor to help the poor", she says.

But the odds are steeply stacked against her. With no male figure in the household, the burden of financially supporting the family will soon be on her shoulders. As she watches her 14-year old sister marry a man over a decade older, she makes a determination about her own future.

“I’m never getting married”, she exclaims. “Marriage is an utter destruction!”

But the pressure to uphold tradition looms in her conscience. When the only school system in the community comes under financial duress, Humera’s mother is asked to contribute financially to her daughter’s education, a request she outright refuses. With the school under threat of closure, Humera’s mother insists that she, too, forego her education for an arranged marriage.

A DESTRUCTION follows the trajectory of Humera's life as it reaches a critical point: when she must maintain the determination to stay in school or risk falling prey to the cycle of poverty.