I returned home, and later that night, after I had put them both to bed and walked back on my crutches into the kitchen, Asghar stood in the doorway. “Why aren’t you talking to me? You haven’t said anything since you came back.”
I kept my eyes down and started on the dishes.
“I helped you. It was me who called the ambulance, me who made sure that you were taken care of . . .” His voice trailed off. I kept my silence.
“Why are you not happy with me?”
I had done a lot of thinking that day. The usual thoughts and fears had been pressing down upon me—could I really put my family through the shame of losing another husband? How would I survive on my own with two children? If I stayed and Asghar put me in the hospital again, what would happen to the children? Back in Iran they’d be left alone, but here in Denmark Social was bound to take them away if they thought the kids were in danger.
I had kissed the Bible more than once by that time, sending up prayers for I-didn’t-know-what to I-didn’t-know-who.
I hadn’t yet come up with a plan to get us away that I was convinced would work, but as I stood with my back to Asghar, watching his reflection in the window above the sink, I heard myself tell him that I wanted a divorce. Finally, after wanting to leave for so long but not being able to, I was ready. I had to do it. If I didn’t get out, he wouldn’t just end up killing me; the children’s lives would be in danger too.
Asghar didn’t hesitate with his reply. “No,” he said quietly before walking out. “You either live with me or you die. That is the only choice you can make.”
I decided to miss college the next day to begin planning our escape. After I said good-bye to Daniel and took Roksana to school, I picked up the phone and made some preliminary calls to start getting us out.
At some point, Asghar woke up, came out of the bedroom, and stood, arms crossed, watching me on the phone. While I was mid-sentence, he snatched the phone out of my hand, told me I was bluffing, and swore into the phone. “I don’t care whichever of her friends you are. My wife’s an idiot, and there’s nothing you can do to help her.”
Then he grabbed the handset with both hands, pulled the wires out of the wall, and marched to the nearest window, from which he hurled the whole phone.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said, turning back toward me.
He didn’t use the knife that morning, and he got tired quickly. When he stopped, I grabbed my bag and went to college. At least I would be safe there for a few hours. This time, I didn’t bother to try to cover up the bruises or to disguise the fact that I could not lift my left arm away from my ribs. There didn’t seem to be any point pretending anymore. I needed to escape, and the more people that knew it, the better.
Later that afternoon, I arrived home with Roksana and found Asghar waiting outside the apartment, a broad smile across his face, his arms held out wide for an embrace. “She’s coming!” he said. “Next week. She’s finally coming!”
“Who?”
“Cherie. We’re all going to be together again, and we’ll be happy. It’s all going to be okay, Annahita.”
His news threw me. Five years had passed since I last saw Cherie, and even though she was not my daughter, I had always felt a mother’s love for her. If I left her alone with Asghar, would she really be okay? Could I trust him not to hurt his own child?
I couldn’t think clearly. I was trapped beneath fear and confusion. One thing I was sure about, however, Asghar wasn’t going to change. No matter how much he smiled and hugged and talked about the family getting back together, I knew his words were meaningless.
And I knew that Cherie needed me.
One night soon after Cherie arrived, she couldn’t sleep. I jumped from my bed as soon as I saw her standing in our doorway and managed to get her back to her bedroom before Asghar woke up. She said she was upset and had had a bad dream, and as I lay down with her, she whispered about what life had been like with Ziynab in Iran. Cherie told me that she didn’t like her at all, that she hurt her. “Everything is bad in Iran,” she said. “Not like here.”
Since Ziynab had come to Denmark with Cherie, it didn’t take long to see that though Cherie was no longer in Iran, she had not escaped pain and fear. Ziynab was angry almost from the very start, and now her focus turned to Daniel.
“This is my son’s home, so why is he here?” she’d say to me when he was at school. “Why did he have to come to Denmark? Why are you so soft with him? When are you going to learn how to be a good mother?”
After a few days, she started talking about me to Asghar while I was in the same room. “Your wife’s a whore. You should divorce her.”
“Why do you put up with her? A real man wouldn’t accept it.”
“You forget what women are like back in Iran. They don’t disobey their husbands like she does.”
Asghar’s anger fed on her lies. He had always punished Daniel more readily than Roksana, but within a week of his mother’s arrival he was slapping both Roksana and Cherie as well. The whole apartment regularly filled with shouting and tears as Asghar prowled and hit like a wounded bear.
I would try my best to protect the children, to give Asghar a different target to aim at. It worked most of the time, but the way he attacked me changed too. His box cutter came out of his pocket quicker, his fists moved faster, and while he used to stop when he grew tired, he seemed now to be driven by a new passion. More than once, I was sure he was finally about to kill me. And yet, somehow, he didn’t.
Asghar’s attacks on me created a special bond between Daniel, Cherie, and Roksana. Daniel learned to get them quickly to safety, scooping little Roksana up in his arms, placing his hands over her ears, and singing soft lullabies to her while Asghar cursed and screamed at me.
When each storm finally passed, I would go find them in the bathroom. The door would always be locked, and I would have to convince Daniel that it was me and that it was okay for him to open up.
“We are going to the Christmas party tonight,” Asghar announced one evening as I cleared away the dishes. The children were playing in their room. “Soleyman has invited us, and you need to be ready in time.”
Sadaf had become a good friend in the months since we’d first met, and any other time I would have been happy to go. But not now. I was tired of all the lies that were being told about me by Ziynab. I was exhausted by the weight of having to protect the children from a man whose heart was scarred with hatred and evil. I had struggled for so long, tried so hard to keep going, but I had nothing left anymore. Everything had grown dark. I could see no light in the world.
It was nothing new. Twice before I had felt this same way: the day I took the taxi to the court in Isfahan, hoping to get a divorce, and the cold morning in the mountains as I pulled Roksana’s silent body from the rocks. I had wanted to end my life on both those occasions, but this was something different. This darkness was even more suffocating.
I knew that I had responsibilities, that my children depended on me. I could hear the voice within that said how could I leave them? but I did not feel strong enough to continue on. Asghar had said that he’d kill me, and I knew that one day he would. Sooner or later, my children would lose me.
The only power I had was this: I did not want to die at his hands. I wanted to die differently. I did not want to give my life to him. I wanted to take it myself.
“I don’t want to go to the party,” I said. “I’ll stay behind.”
“Are you surprised she doesn’t want to go?” Ziynab said, her face souring as she drank her tea. “She doesn’t want you to see her with her boyfriend.”
I finished the dishes, laid the dishcloth on the side of the sink, and left the kitchen. She was still talking about me, calling me a whore and telling Asghar he was weak for letting me behave so scandalously, as I walked away.
I peeked in on the kids and breathed a final prayer for them. In the bathroom I reached up and pulled down the sleeping pills the doctor had given me. I hadn’t t
aken many at all, since I hated the idea of not waking up whenever the children cried.
I walked to the bedroom, sat on the bed, and swallowed every last pill. Then I lay down.
It was Daniel who called the ambulance. I know that, because when I came around two days later, yet again in the hospital, there was an older lady standing by my bed, looking concerned and telling me everything that had happened since I last closed my eyes.
“You told the doctors about your husband. You said he beats you, that he’s the one who caused all these injuries.”
I was so tired, but somewhere inside I could feel myself panicking. It was like a scream coming from another room, gradually growing louder until it burst out of me.
“No!” I said. “Nothing’s wrong at home. I just want to leave.”
I knew they could see through my lie, but there was nothing they could do. I stuck to my story as other staff came in. Everything was fine. I had just felt depressed. I wanted to go home.
Asghar collected me from the hospital but didn’t take me home straight away. He said that we needed to put things right, and that if I just sat back and closed my eyes I’d soon be back home with the children.
Everything was slightly blurred, and I was grateful for the chair he guided me to when we sat down at a desk in the bank. Asghar talked to the clerk about taking out a loan, a conversation I was only able to partly follow in my haziness. At some point I noticed the manager sitting beside me.
“Are you okay? You seem a little ill.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Fine.”
I lifted up the pen that Asghar had placed in my hand and signed the paper he guided me toward.
We left.
Once we finally got home, the warmth of the children as they cuddled in beside me on the bed sent me back off to my dreamless sleep.
I stopped going to college when Asghar’s mother arrived, at least for the time being. It wasn’t worth the taunts and abuse she threw at me whenever I got home. But my friends had not abandoned me. Sadaf visited me one day, and I told her why I had been taken to the hospital again and what had happened when I got out.
“What happened to the money you took out from the bank?” she asked.
“Asghar took it. He gave it straight to his mom.”
She rolled her eyes. “How much?”
“About $2,000.”
“That’s crazy, Annahita. You can’t live like this. You have to change something.”
Up until that point, a part of me always thought I deserved this life. Even though I often kissed the Bible I hid on top of the bookcase and whispered desperate prayers, I couldn’t escape the belief that God was angry and this was my punishment.
That afternoon, though, something about Sadaf’s words struck home. Maybe things could be different.
“But how?” I asked.
“I want you to talk to my friend at Social.”
I arranged to call Sadaf’s friend from a pay phone one morning after I had said good-bye to the children. Even though I knew Asghar was nowhere nearby, I scanned the street for any sign of him.
“Annahita?” The woman’s voice was unfamiliar to me. “Sadaf has told me about you. We want to help.”
“How? He’ll find out.”
“No, Annahita. I promise that he won’t find out. We can get you somewhere safe to stay. The children too.”
“But you don’t understand him. He’ll find me and—”
“I know you’re scared, but trust me when I say we can help you. All you need to do is call me when you’re ready, and I’ll tell you what to do.”
I walked home quickly, not wanting to give Asghar any reason to be suspicious. Could I imagine myself calling the woman back and telling her I was ready to leave? That all seemed like a fantasy. But a nice one, nevertheless.
I got back to the apartment to find Ziynab making plans to return home at the weekend. She had been with us four months already, which, as she said, “was far too long to spend sharing a house with a whore for a daughter-in-law.”
Asghar reminded her that she still had two months left on her visa, but her mind was made up. “I don’t want to stay here a moment longer that I have to,” she said.
I smiled inside. With Ziynab gone I might finally be able to get Social’s help.
One afternoon when Daniel was playing with a friend and Ziynab had taken Cherie outside with Roksana to ride her new pink tricycle, Asghar launched another attack at me. Something had gotten into him again, and as his fingers closed tight around my neck I wondered for the hundredth time whether this would be the moment when he finally killed me.
I heard the front door open and Roksana call for me. I tried to reply, but Asghar’s grip was so fierce no sound came out.
Asghar dragged me into the coat closet, jamming my back up against the wall and pulling the door almost closed.
“Mom?” cried Roksana. “Mom!”
Asghar stared into my eyes, both hands on me now. I couldn’t breathe at all and was frantically scratching at his cheeks. I didn’t want Roksana to see it end like this. I could see the blood on his cheeks, but nothing seemed to be stopping him.
The closet door opened. Roksana was standing there, her pink trike in one hand, her other held up to her face in horror. She opened her mouth wide to scream, but no sound came out.
Asghar let go. I pushed past him and picked up Roksana. She didn’t stop trembling for the whole rest of the day. She did not speak. All day, all night she stayed the same, her body locked in silent terror.
She stayed like that for almost a week. I was terrified that she would never speak again.
I wish I could say that once I decided to take the woman from Social up on her offer that I had a surge of confidence or a sense that all would be well, but the truth is that when I waved good-bye to the children and walked to the pay phone the next morning, I still felt as though life was barely worth living. I still felt deeply worried about the impact that my leaving would have on my family back home. And I still thought that if any single part of the plan failed, Asghar would almost certainly kill me.
But in spite of all that, I dialed. And in spite of the way my heart raced and my mouth suddenly went dry, I was finally able to say the words that I had tried to say since the very first night of our marriage, seven years earlier.
“Annahita?” said the woman, her voice familiar this time.
“I want you to get us out.”
After I finally made the call to Social, I couldn’t concentrate. I worried that my fear would show, that Asghar or Ziynab would suspect something was wrong. Fortunately, between packing her bags and telling Asghar why he should discipline me more, Ziynab was too busy to pay me much attention.
Asghar drove us all to the airport early on Sunday morning to drop Ziynab off for her flight back to Iran. After her bags had been checked he returned to wait in the car, which he’d double-parked outside, telling me to make sure his mother knew where to go. As I watched her clear passport control and climb onto the escalator, she turned back to me. “Make sure you take care of Cherie.”
“I will,” said. Without thinking, I carried on. “Everywhere I go, I’ll take her with me.”
It took a moment for the meaning of my words to register with Ziynab. When they did, I had just enough time to see the look of complete shock on her face before she ascended up into the ceiling.
I was committed now. I was confident that she would not be able to use a payphone in the airport, since she had changed all her money into Iranian currency before she left us. But as soon as she got home, in forty-eight hours time, I knew she would call Asghar and warn him. If I wasn’t away by then, he’d kill me for sure.
When we got back, I cleaned the apartment and tried to think of a way to smuggle the bare minimum of clothes out for the children. The next morning at seven I collected one outfit for each of us, threw them in a trash bag, and opened the front door.
“Where are you going?”
I froze. Asghar ne
ver got up early. “I’m taking the garbage out. Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
He grunted and went into the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave the children in the apartment with him awake, if even for a few minutes, but if I didn’t go down to the dumpsters, he’d surely be suspicious.
I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, hid the bag down the back of the bin, and rushed back to the apartment, checking on the children as soon as I returned. They were eating in silence, just as they had been when I left. Asghar had gone back to bed.
I breathed a sigh of relief and bundled the children into the car for school. They all attended the same one, and the car was full of happy chatter as I drove them, following the tracks that had been cut into the February snow by other motorists. Ziynab’s departure had put all of them in a good mood.
As soon as I said good-bye to them at 8:30 a.m., I doubled back to the apartment block, pulled out the bag of clothes, and got back into my little beige Lada. There was no way Asghar could see me from the apartment block, but my nerves were so frayed that my hands fumbled the key in the ignition when I got back in. I pulled away, checking my mirrors for any last-minute sight of Asghar running after me. All I saw was snow and parked cars.
I made my way to my college and phoned social services as they had instructed me to do. They gave me the address of a safe house thirty minutes’ drive away. I went back to the car and checked the fuel gauge. I could go forty miles, max. I prayed it would be enough. I had $15 in my purse, but I had other plans for that money.
I sat in the parking lot, a piece of paper on my lap and a pen in my hand. I thought of all the things I wanted to say to Asghar. I wanted him to know how much he had hurt me, how much pain he had caused the children, how great the suffering he had inflicted on us all. I wanted to rage at him, but there was no time for that. Instead I put down everything I wanted to say in the simplest possible form.
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