A Good Wife

by Samra Zafar

  By the end of the second term of school, I had carved out my own space in the house. And while Ahmed had always claimed his separate territory—sleeping in the den and spending evenings out of the house—now that I was withdrawing, he was worried.

  So worried that he was prepared to do something about it.

  CHAPTER 13

  TIME AWAY

  I was sitting at my desk, leaning forward over my laptop, when I heard the door at the top of the basement stairs open. At this time of night, it would be Ahmed. I quickly typed “got to go” and snapped the laptop closed. But Ahmed had come down the stairs quickly and seen my hand on the computer. He had a strange look on his face and his eyes were wet. He was crying.

  “What are you doing to me?” he said, his voice pleading. “Why are you talking with this Fahad? Are you having an affair?”

  I blanched. He knew who I had just been chatting to on Facebook. There was clearly now spyware on my laptop as well as on the family computer.

  “I’ve told you before. He’s just a high school friend,” I assured him.

  I had heard fear in Ahmed’s voice when he called me in Ruwais all those years ago, but this was the first time I had actually seen it on his face. The absence of anger emboldened me to continue explaining myself.

  “I’m not interested in Fahad at all. But I am sick of this,” I said, waving my hand between us. And then, without having planned to, I blurted it out: “I think we should get a divorce.”

  Ahmed’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I love you!”

  “But I don’t love you anymore,” I said. “There’s nothing between us. It’s not like it used to be. We live completely separate lives.”

  It was an unreal feeling—this absence of fear. I had been caught, I had told the truth, and now he would leave me. Relief washed through me.

  “Just divorce me, Ahmed,” I said.

  He was shaking his head. “This is my fault,” he said. “I haven’t given you the love you need. I haven’t treated you properly.”

  Was Ahmed taking to heart what I had tried to tell him when I showed him the cycle of abuse diagram? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter much to me now. I just wanted out.

  Over the next weeks, Ahmed came looking for me as soon as he got home from work. He stayed home in the evenings, sitting with me in my bedroom after supper or asking me to come to the den to watch TV with him.

  As the heat of summer descended on us, he suggested we take Sonia and Aisha to Ottawa for a vacation. It was the first time we had ever been alone as a family. It was a calm, pleasant trip, the kind of time together that I had hungered for in the early years of our marriage. But now I could barely rouse myself to smile when Ahmed cracked a joke or said something complimentary. At night as we lay in the hotel room, he tried to talk to me about our marriage, his voice soft and low so the girls didn’t wake. But when he told me he loved me, I didn’t believe it—and I couldn’t bring myself to say it back. All I could say was that I didn’t know what to do to fix our marriage. “I think we need to separate,” I insisted.

  Ahmed refused to consider this. He clearly thought that more time together was the answer to our problems. After our holiday, he told his parents he was thinking about taking a short trip with just me and asked if they would take the children for a few days. It didn’t happen.

  Amma and Abba were incensed with Ahmed’s change in behaviour. They grumbled that we were both treating them badly, neglecting and ignoring them.

  “So he’s your slave now, is he?” Amma hissed at me one day.

  But it was Abba who let his unhappiness be known the most powerfully.

  One night Ahmed and I were sitting in his den, talking. It was late, but neither of us was ready to go to bed. “Everyone’s asleep,” said Ahmed. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?”

  We left the house and drove to a nearby coffee shop. By the time we pulled back into the driveway, it was well after midnight. Ahmed slipped his key into the lock and turned the front-door handle, but the door would not open. Someone had bolted it from inside after we left. Ahmed rang the bell, and we waited. No one came to the door. We rang again, but that didn’t seem to wake anyone either. Finally we phoned.

  Abba was furious. Sonia had got up after we left, and her cries had woken Amma and him, he told Ahmed. He had locked the door against us to let us know of his displeasure. When the door finally opened, Abba was sitting in the living room with Amma and the children.

  His face was rigid with anger. “It’s not our responsibility to care for your children when you are going around town doing God knows what!” he said. Then he turned to look me directly in the eye.

  “Prostitutes come home this late at night. Is that what you are?”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. But before I could make a sound, Ahmed was shouting. “How can you say that? She’s my wife! If that’s the way you are going to treat us, we’re moving out.” Then he turned to me. “Samra, take the kids downstairs.”

  I picked up Sonia and grabbed Aisha’s hand, disappearing from the room as quickly as I could. For the first time in our marriage, Ahmed’s angry words were aimed at his parents. And he was the one talking of moving out.

  The next morning, however, he was beset with remorse. “He’s old. I shouldn’t have talked to him that way.”

  As I started to put breakfast together for the children, Ahmed disappeared upstairs to apologize to his parents.

  * * *

  Remarkably, Ahmed didn’t seem to resent me this time for “causing” a rift between him and his parents. I had to admit, this was a change, but I couldn’t tell if it was actually any different from “honeymoon” phases we had had before. The real difference was that I just didn’t care. I couldn’t care.

  As the new school year approached, I felt as if I were walking around in a stupor, a heavy weight in my arms. Even the smallest efforts to do anything were taxing. Perhaps realizing that it didn’t matter to me if Ahmed and I loved each other was more unsettling than I had acknowledged at first. Perhaps it was just the fatigue of being caught in the endless cycle of abuse that I now recognized.

  When classes started in September, I was surprised to find that I simply couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm of the previous fall. My counsellor remarked that perhaps my suggestion to Ahmed was a good one—what I needed was a break from the marriage, a little distance so I could figure out how I was feeling.

  Once again, a family wedding offered a route away from Ahmed and our bloodless life together. Saira was getting married in the new year. She was working full time, and on the phone her voice spiked here and there when she talked about everything she needed to do to prepare for the wedding. If I were in Abu Dhabi with her, I could help and ease her stress.

  I told Ahmed that I would leave with the girls in October, and he could join me closer to the wedding.

  * * *

  Ahmed was upstairs, playing with Aisha and Sonia, and I was in my basement bedroom, sorting through the things I would need to pack for my trip. I heard his heavy footsteps move across the kitchen floor and then fall upon the stairs. Then he was in my room, lowering himself slowly onto the bed, looking sadly at the piles of clothes—Aisha’s, Sonia’s, mine.

  Earlier in the day, he had snapped at me. Now he was clearly feeling regret.

  “You know I love you,” he said.

  “I know.” My voice was flat.

  I had been thinking about what to say before I left. “When we get back, I am not coming back to this life,” I said. “Things have to be different—we have to get our own place.”

  Ahmed nodded.

  “And not like last time,” I continued. “We can’t pay the mortgage on this place anymore. We need our money out of this house.”

  “I know,” said Ahmed. “I’ll talk with Amma and Abba. But they can’t carry this place. We’ll have to put it on the market. They will have to move too.”

  I looked over at him. I could tell by his troubled brow
that he was serious; he was imagining how this conversation with his parents would go, how difficult it would be. But he wasn’t resisting. A year or two earlier, this would have made me ecstatic—and hopeful. Now these emotions were firmly in check. I would wait and see.

  A few days later, I went into the registrar’s office and withdrew from all my courses for the year. Then I told Amma that she could take the two children who were still my responsibility at the daycare. I knew she wouldn’t object. Our little business had been hit hard by the financial crisis of 2008, and Amma had only one charge of her own. Then I called the travel agent.

  Before the girls and I flew out in early October, Ahmed came to me bearing a peace offering—a BlackBerry. (In a fit of anger, he had broken my previous phone several months earlier.) I was shocked at the extravagance of it.

  “I just wanted to get you something special before you left,” he said.

  Ahmed’s unusual gesture put a little chink in my apathy. It was the first real gift he had bought me in years and years. I was touched.

  * * *

  The girls and I had been in Abu Dhabi for three or four days, staying at the apartment my mother now shared with her new husband, when my old friend Fahad called me. We’d been chatting on MSN messenger once in a while since the winter, but now that I was away we decided to have a proper conversation.

  Fahad had been one of my most steadfast friends over the years. Despite the fact that I had gone months and years without contacting him, when I did he responded with relentless good cheer. And he had always been unfailingly supportive and encouraging.

  We started our phone call with the possibility of his coming to Abu Dhabi for a visit. Then we moved on to the state of my marriage. I told him about the abuse and my feelings of despair.

  “You should leave, Samra,” Fahad said. “Just leave.”

  “But how would I manage?” I said. “I’m so afraid of being alone.”

  “You wouldn’t be alone, honey. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  Just then there was a beep on the line. I could see that Ahmed was calling me. I ignored this—I’d ring him once I was off the phone with Fahad. The beeping kept up as Fahad and I tried to continue our conversation. Then the home phone began to ring, Ahmed’s name flashing on the caller ID. I told Fahad I had to go.

  As soon as I picked up the home phone, I was hit by a volley of questions: “Who are you talking to, Samra? Who is that guy? Why is he calling you honey and telling you to leave me? Why are you making plans for him to come to Abu Dhabi? Are you two planning to run away together?”

  I was unable to respond for several seconds. “How do you know what I was talking about?” I finally asked, shaken.

  “I can hear your entire conversation. I gave you that phone for a reason.”

  Ahmed had put spyware on my phone before I had left Canada. That’s why my phone has been working so poorly, I thought. It had been losing its charge after only short bursts of use. The blood was pounding in my ears as Ahmed continued to talk. He wanted me to come home. I felt too sick to stay on the phone. I told him I wasn’t doing that and hung up.

  I immediately went online and followed the instructions to do a factory reset on my phone.

  * * *

  Ahmed called me incessantly in the coming days, asking about Fahad, asking whether he was the reason I had come to Abu Dhabi. And then my mother started to ask me questions, too.

  One morning, as I was about to run some errands, she stopped me. “Wait, Samra. I want to talk to you. What have you been up to? Ahmed tells me you’ve been talking to another man.”

  “It was nothing,” I protested. “Just an old friend.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one Ahmed had been phoning.

  “But you’re a married woman! I can’t believe you’d do that. I can’t believe you’d be so shameless!”

  I felt my face growing red. I muttered a few more excuses before I slipped out of the apartment.

  I tried to busy myself in the coming days, helping Saira with everything that needed to be done before the wedding, but I couldn’t get my mother’s words out of my mind. I’d been able to shrug off Ahmed’s upset—after all, my relationship with Fahad was innocent, and my counsellor had reminded me that the social isolation I’d been living in wasn’t healthy. If Ahmed couldn’t live with the fact that I had friends, so be it. If he left me he would be doing me a favour. But my mother had gotten under my skin. Her words had made me feel culpable and my behaviour sordid.

  I messaged Fahad that I couldn’t be in contact with him anymore. And then I threw myself into the wedding plans with even more fervour.

  * * *

  By the time Ahmed arrived at the end of December, we had put the incident with the phone behind us. Although he had missed the girls and they had missed him, he insisted on time alone with me. He suggested a trip, just the two of us, to Dubai. We left Aisha and Sonia with my mother and spent a few days in the city.

  It was in many ways a mini-honeymoon. We stayed in a luxurious hotel, ate in romantic restaurants, wandered the city like two young lovers. But as we nibbled on treats or cuddled in bed, I couldn’t help feeling that it was all play-acting. Ahmed’s tender gestures and loving behaviour seemed rote, as if someone else had scripted the lines and he had memorized them. And the purpose of the play was to keep me close and under his control. In turn, I was acting the part of the good wife. But the small flame I had kept alive for so many years had been extinguished. Was I just too afraid to hope again? Too frightened that my heart would be broken once more? Or was there truly nothing left? I just didn’t know.

  And then, in a flash, the wheel turned to the next phase.

  Ahmed and I were out shopping for a new suit for the wedding. We had been in and out of a dozen stores, and I was growing tired. Entering a menswear shop, I trudged to one of the couches to get off my feet. Ahmed disappeared into the change room with a few suits. After a couple of minutes, he came out, ready to leave.

  “Are you done?” he snapped. The anger in his voice was unmistakable.

  “Done with what?”

  “Ogling that guy, like the whore that you are!” He was glaring at the cashier, a man I hadn’t even noticed.

  This time, Ahmed’s jealousy pushed me into fury instead of fear.

  “Are you crazy?” I said. “What is wrong with you? I was looking at suits for you! I’m done. I’m not shopping anymore.”

  With that I stood up and marched out of the store. Ahmed followed. I hadn’t cooled down by the time we got to the car. He was silent as he pulled the car onto a busy eight-lane road. “You’re a psycho!” I ranted as he drove. “You’re always so suspicious. You show me no respect.”

  Suddenly, he veered onto the shoulder and threw the car into park. “You think I’m psycho?” he said. “I’ll show you what a psycho I am.”

  Then he was out of the car, racing into the middle of traffic. Horns blasted as cars zigged and zagged to avoid him. An enormous truck slammed on its brakes, squealing to a stop.

  I was screaming—calling Ahmed to come back. He turned. Somehow he managed to make his way through the chaos of speeding cars and get back to the side of the road.

  By the time he scrambled into the car, I was both baffled and livid. “Why did you do that?”

  “To show you how much I love you,” he said. He looked like a wild-eyed child. I felt my anger dissolve in a wave of pity. Ahmed pulled back into traffic, and we drove to the apartment in shaky silence.

  When we got into the parking lot, I made a plea. “Ahmed, we’re here for my sister’s wedding. Let’s not make any scenes. Or distract from her celebration in any way. We can deal with our issues when we get back to Canada.”

  By the time we all boarded the plane to Karachi for the wedding, Ahmed and I were back to playing the happy couple.

  * * *

  At Uncle Ali’s house, the last-minute work of putting the wedding together got underway in a serious fashion. Ahmed was right in the middl
e of it—driving my sisters and me to the florist and to the bazaars, setting up tents and chairs for the various pre-wedding parties, asking everyone what he could do to help. Whenever anyone asked him to make a decision or give a preference, he would look at me with affection and quip, “Ask Samra. She’s my queen!”

  My extended family were besotted with this perfect damaad, this ideal son-in-law, commenting on how generous Ahmed was with his time and attention. But I knew he was simply trying to stay close, to keep an eye on me.

  A few days before the wedding, the entire family assembled at my uncle’s house for a dinner and musical night. I had put on a stylish white-and-blue shalwar kameez and had my hair loose. For years, my only clothes had been either the things I brought with me when I first married or Amma’s faded, baggy castoffs. And I had avoided makeup or anything that might suggest I was looking for attention. When Saira and Bushra visited Canada, I had been struck by the difference in our appearance. They looked young and fashionable; I looked tired and drab, like someone who had given up trying. But I was beginning to push back.

  Back in August, I had appeared at one of Amma’s dinner parties without my hijab. She and Ahmed had grumbled but had not stopped me. Once my sister’s wedding festivities got underway, I decided that I would continue to embrace my new look. At a small party we held in Abu Dhabi for family and friends who couldn’t make the wedding itself, I had dressed in a sari, with my hair curled loosely around my shoulders. And I had kept my head uncovered and worn clothes that were slightly more form fitting than a shalwar kameez at the parties here in Karachi. My appearance was bolstering my confidence—I was more talkative and upbeat at the social events than I had been in my previous trips back home.

  So my mood was high as I ran back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room with platters of food for the music-night supper. Each time I entered the dining room I kicked off my slippers so that I didn’t track anything onto the carpets, and then had to bend over to put them on again when I left. It made for an awkward dance, and at one point my uncle almost bumped into me from behind. But eventually, the table set, we gathered to eat together.