by Samra Zafar
I was exhausted, and the prospect of defending myself for another hour or more was crushing. “I don’t want to talk right now,” I said.
“What do you mean?” demanded Ahmed. “You have to talk!” He stood in front of me blocking my way to the fridge.
“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t want to. Now please let me go so I can keep cleaning up.”
With that, he grabbed my arm with one hand and buried the other in my hair. Yanking my head back, he spat into my upturned face. Then spat again. “Now you can go, bitch,” he said before he released me.
I jumped away from him and ran shaking into the bathroom to wash my face. Then I escaped upstairs to the guest room. As soon as the door closed behind me, I burst into tears. “I just can’t live with that man anymore,” I told my mother, who was lying on the bed.
Mama sat up. She had seen enough over the past months and years not to seem surprised at my words. She patted a space on the bed beside her. “You’re in university now,” she said gently. “You can find ways to get out.”
* * *
My mother was no doubt thinking of this scene when she sat me down to talk just before her flight home in January. “Leave this man, Samra,” she said. “He’s not the right man for you. And people don’t change.”
I looked down at my lap. I was struggling with how to respond.
“Don’t make the same mistake I made,” my mother continued. “I didn’t have the support of my family or of the law. You do.”
Finally, I voiced my concern. “But what about my home? I love this home.”
“This is a house, Samra,” she said, shaking her head. “Not a home. A home isn’t bricks. You don’t have the love here to make a home. You need to leave.”
I sat quietly, letting her words sink in. They were extraordinary. My mother was, after all, a woman who had been raised to believe that her own separated mother was a failure and that she herself had been forever scarred by that diminished status. And she had felt the full force of family pressure to remain in her own unhappy marriage. For years, she’d been sympathetic to my intermittent moves to leave Ahmed. But now she was actively counselling divorce. In fact, she was insisting on it.
* * *
My mother’s words echoed in my mind for days and weeks. And it wasn’t only her words that haunted me.
One evening I was tucking Aisha into bed. It had been another tempestuous day in the house, and I expect my sadness was evident on my face and in my voice. As I leaned over to kiss her on the forehead, she looked me in the eyes and said quietly, “Mama, why are you with Daddy?”
I pulled back in surprise.
“He isn’t nice to you,” she continued. “Are you staying because of Sonia and me? Because you don’t have to. I will help you take care of Sonia. We could do it on our own.”
I stared at her in astonishment.
“We won’t be happy until you’re happy.” She was not quite ten years old, yet she could see clearly that things were amiss in our family. And she was offering to change her whole world for me. I leaned in and gave her a hug.
“It’s going to be all right,” I tried to reassure her.
* * *
Even with my mother and Aisha’s prompting, I made no move. I was going for counselling two times a week; Ahmed and I were sleeping separately again; we argued constantly. But it was as if I were standing at the edge of a cliff, unable to peer over the edge and find a safe way down.
And then one of Ahmed’s outbursts almost pushed us both right off. We were in the kitchen. I was setting the kitchen table for supper, and Ahmed was again arguing about my time. He was annoyed by my heavy winter-term schedule. We were getting nowhere, but the more I tried to end the conversation, the angrier he became.
“Aisha, Sonia, dinner’s ready,” I called, hoping that their arrival might distract him. Instead, he began to cross the kitchen floor towards me. I pulled out my phone.
“If you raise a finger against me,” I said, “I’ll call 9-1-1.”
Ahmed stopped in his tracks. Then he exploded.
“Talaq, talaq, talaq!”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he looked aghast. I stood frozen in place. We both knew exactly what he had just done. According to widely accepted Muslim law, if a man says “talaq” three times, his marriage is automatically dissolved. Ahmed had divorced me.
Over the past several years, I had asked him to do just this. But now that divorce was happening in the very moment, I was overcome with disbelief and panic.
Clearly Ahmed was as unnerved as I was. He turned on his heel and fled the house.
As I fed the girls dinner and then got them ready for bed, I tried to keep myself from crumbling. I realized that since the abuse had restarted in our new house, I’d been carrying around a little script for how our marriage might end—I would finish university, get a good job and then leave, financially able to build a life as a single mother. But that was an abstract part of the future. This was too soon, too abrupt. I wasn’t ready.
When Ahmed came back to the house, his anger had vanished, as had mine. We huddled together, talking about what we needed to do now. We agreed to go to a mosque the next day to ask whether or not our marriage had truly been terminated.
The imam told us that three repetitions were three repetitions. We were no longer married in the eyes of Allah. It wasn’t what either of us wanted to hear. We went to a different mosque. Shaken by the bad news from the first, Ahmed’s regret was on full display before the second imam. While I sat nervously in the chair next to him, he weepily told the imam how much he loved me, how much he wanted to change, how sorry he was to have uttered those dangerous words. The imam looked with sympathy at both of us.
“This is not an ideal situation, but Allah is forgiving and merciful,” he assured us. “But you must be careful. There are no second chances after this.” Ahmed and I knew whose guidance we wanted to follow.
The talaq scare knocked us into another period of peace and ersatz harmony but, not surprisingly, it was short-lived. Our verbal swords were taken up again, as were Ahmed’s pushing and slapping. And the facade I was trying to present to the world—the pretty life that matched the pretty home—was disintegrating. At one of the neighbourhood ladies’ lunches, I arrived trembling and fragile, hoping that the foundation I’d carefully applied to my cheeks was covering up the deep-red hand mark Ahmed had put there just minutes earlier. My host, my friend, could see immediately that something was wrong, but when she inquired I put her off, telling her I would explain later.
I got the sense, however, that she already knew.
* * *
It had been a miserable morning. We’d been fighting since breakfast about an upcoming dinner party at Amma and Abba’s house. I had an exam the following morning and didn’t want to be out that night. Ahmed was insistent.
The girls were in school, so our acrimony could be given free rein. When shouting and yelling didn’t move me, Ahmed picked up my laptop and dashed it to the ground. He sent my carefully ordered study notes flying around the room. Then he angrily retreated to the basement rec room. Ordinarily I would have left him alone, but after spending twenty minutes on my hands and knees, crabbing along the floor to pluck my papers out from under the furniture and put them back in order, I was too agitated to let things be. I marched into the basement and told Ahmed that I was sick and tired of his tantrums. I was ready for another fiery exchange of words. I was not ready for what happened next.
He leapt off the couch and flew towards me, knocking me hard. I tumbled back into a chair, where Ahmed pinned me, his thumbs across my collarbones, his fingers wrapping up around the base of my neck. He was squeezing hard.
“You don’t listen to me!” he was screaming. “You’re the one who makes me angry!”
I had been grabbed and pinched so many times, but he had never put his hands so close to my throat before. I could feel his thumbs pressing into my collarbones, just a small slip away from my win
dpipe. He’s going to choke me, I thought. Fear shot through me and I reached out, slapping him. As he jumped back I sprang from the chair and made for the stairs, but before I could reach them Ahmed had grabbed me from behind. I screamed—a horror-movie scream—a long, electric peal of sheer terror. As the sound escaped from me, I hoped that it might pierce the shared wall and our neighbours would call 9-1-1. Instead, my scream caught Ahmed off guard, and I felt his grip loosen.
I pulled away, taking the stairs two at a time. When I reached the top, I snatched my car keys from the hall table and burst through the front door. Once in the minivan, I squealed out of the driveway and was gone.
I drove through neighbourhood streets as quickly as I could, looking in the rear-view mirror to make sure Ahmed wasn’t following me. After I was certain I was alone, I pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car and started to sob.
This was a new and horrifying low. I had never truly thought Ahmed would or could kill me. But sitting in the van I could still feel his hands on my skin, his thumbs terrifyingly close to my neck. I could imagine them sliding up just an inch. I could imagine them squeezing the life out of me.
I was shaking so hard I could barely hold my phone as I called the Assaulted Women’s Helpline.
They advised me to tell Ahmed to move out. But first, they said, I should call the police and report the attack. “Just to warn you,” the counsellor added, “you have to tell the whole story, and it won’t be easy. The police will try to poke holes in it.”
I hung up and sat in the van, staring out the window. It was March. The time of year when winter is on its way out but not yet gone. The time of year when the trees are skeletal, the skies undependable and the earth sodden and grey. I could see a line of little houses, much like mine, stretching before me. They looked quiet and dark, as if they might all be vacant. There was not a soul on the street. It seemed that the entire world around me was just waiting for life to start.
I was tired of waiting. I did not want to call the police. I did not want to see Ahmed arrested. I did not want to earn the wrath of his family. I just wanted it to be over.
I felt a sense of calm descend on me. I had made a decision.
A few days later, I called my mother. “I need you to come back,” I told her. “I’m going to end it with Ahmed, but I’ll need your help with the kids . . . with everything.”
* * *
When I returned home after our big fight, Ahmed had looked both happy and greatly relieved. He had thrown his arms around me, buried his face in my hair and told me how sorry he was. I hugged him back, knowing that I would have to play along until my mother arrived.
But the scene in the basement seemed to hang in front of us as we moved about the house. Ahmed acknowledged as much when I told him that my mother was on her way. She would be intruding during a difficult time, he said. We had things we needed to work out in private. I shrugged at his objections. My mother was coming because she needed my support right now, I lied, and I wasn’t about to deny her.
* * *
On April 19, 2011, my 29th birthday, my mother’s plane landed at the Toronto airport. I was in the midst of exams, but we found the time to talk about everything that had happened since she left just three months earlier.
I recounted the recent abuse, including the near-choking incident. And I told her that I was worried not just about my own safety but about the girls’, too. I knew Ahmed would never put his hands on them. But the counsellors had been telling me that children who witness partner abuse often either commit it themselves or accept it from others. I’d been haunted by this for a long while and was finally realizing that I had no time to lose. By staying with Ahmed, I would be causing the girls real harm—and putting them in danger in the future. We were all drowning. I needed to pull us out of the river.
My mother looked both sad and concerned. But when I recounted the business of the three talaqs, her expression changed. She sat up straight and her eyes widened.
“I don’t think that imam you listened to was right,” she said. “I don’t think you and Ahmed are married any longer.” She insisted we go back to the same imam.
When my exams were over, Mom and I made an appointment. This time, I told him about the abuse.
The imam looked surprised. “I did not know that. You are no longer married,” he said. His tone invited no questions or challenges. Now I had a way out.
As we drove away, I couldn’t stop my heart from hammering. “I don’t think I can tell Ahmed,” I said. “I’m afraid.”
“Don’t worry,” said my mother. “I will tell him.”
* * *
On April 26th, my mother descended the basement stairs to talk to Ahmed. I stayed, hovering, in the kitchen. After a few seconds, I could hear voices drifting up from the rec room. Ahmed was apparently refusing to listen to what my mother had to say. I decided I had to join them.
When I got downstairs, my mother was talking quietly and politely. “Ahmed, this is not my opinion. This is the opinion of the imam whom you went to see and whom you listened to earlier. He did not have all of the information. You have been divorced since January. You have been living improperly for three months. You can’t continue that. You have to leave.”
Ahmed looked offended. “What do you mean? This is our house!” He was now looking intently at me.
I felt a pang of guilt but managed to get a few words out: “I’m sorry, Ahmed, but you’ll have to go back to your parents.”
Ahmed’s gaze changed direction. I could see emotions flicker across his face—stubborn resistance, dumbfounded shock, bitter realization. In our relationship, he had always been the defender of the faith. He worried constantly that my exposure to non-Muslims would weaken my observance and lead me away from righteousness. He even talked me out of taking an Islamic history course, worried that the Shia professor would corrupt my Sunni faith. How could he now ignore religious law—or ask me to?
He had just been caught in an inescapable trap. And it was a trap of his own making. I wasn’t leaving him—because he had already left me.
Finally, he looked at me again. “I can’t go back there,” he said quietly. “I’ll stay in the basement until we sort this out. I won’t interfere with you or the rest of the family.”
That evening, Ahmed moved his belongings down into the rec room.
* * *
For the next day or two, Ahmed would slip silently out of the house in the morning and disappear into the basement after work.
Despite everything I’d been through, his sad acquiescence and shadow-like presence tugged at my heart. I felt sorry for him and guilty that I had made him a ghost in his own home. I wished I could have handled things better; I wished he could have changed.
On the second night, I decided to go into the basement to see if Ahmed was okay. He was asleep in his clothes on the sofa. I brought a blanket over and covered him up before heading back upstairs. I was relieved that my mother was with me. I could sense that if I’d been on my own, I would have told him to stay.
After a couple of days, Ahmed moved back to his parents’ house. As soon as he did, Abba phoned me. Amma was in Pakistan, visiting family. Ahmed’s father wanted to know why he had returned.
I told him that my husband had given me three talaqs, an imam had ruled we were no longer married, and we could not live together any longer. There was silence on the other end of the line. This was something Amma and Abba could understand. And they would accept that there was nothing I could now do about it.
“Well, what can we parents do,” Abba finally said, “if our kids turn out this way.”
* * *
Within a few days, Amma returned from her trip and immediately appeared on our doorstep. She was in tears. “Please, can we see the children?” she begged.
I reassured her that she, Abba and Ahmed could see the girls whenever they wanted. I had no desire to keep them away from their grandparents and their father. We made plans for Aisha and Sonia to
go over to Amma’s house for the day.
Shortly after that, I got a call from the imam. Ahmed had been in touch with him, and now the man was backpedalling. He told me that Ahmed’s version of events differed from mine, and since he was so remorseful, Allah would forgive him and allow the marriage to stand.
It seemed Ahmed was not going to slip out of the marriage quietly after all. Mom and I decided to seek out another religious ally. We met with a different imam, a man who had written a book about Islamic marriage and divorce. He insisted our union was over and wrote a fatwa to that effect. Along with the ruling, he gave us a copy of his book.
Ahmed showed up in the driveway a day or two later, awash in tears and apologies. Seeing him so distressed made me feel weak with guilt and pity. His remorse had drawn me back so many times that I knew I needed to resist it. I held the book out towards him like a shield.
“I’m sorry,” I said, making him take the book and the fatwa. “It really is over.”
But the visits continued. The next time Amma showed up at my door, she was standing next to one of Ahmed’s friends. I did not like the way the man’s eyes travelled over me as I stood in the front hall.
In Islamic law, divorced partners can re-marry each other only if the wife has been married to and divorced or widowed by another man first.
“Bhabi”—the man was calling me his “brother’s wife”—“I’m willing to help you out.” He was staring at me with lecherous anticipation.
I looked at them both in disbelief. “Leave,” I said to Amma. “Leave right now.” Then I turned and closed the door in her face.
* * *
The next time Ahmed called, he seemed to have accepted our fate. “Let’s keep things amicable,” he offered. He sounded calm. Pleasant, even. “I don’t want the girls to suffer. I think we need to sell the house, so I will have money to pay child and spousal support. I will co-sign a lease on a condo for you and the kids.”
Even a few months earlier, I might have been heartbroken about the loss of the house. But now I could see it for the empty shell it was, and I was relieved and grateful that Ahmed was willing to be so financially supportive. Unemployed and with the consumer proposal on my record, I wouldn’t be able to sign for a decent apartment on my own.