“Yas what are you talking about, taken what?” I asked, confused.
“She’s taken a bloody overdose, go find Dad… move!” she screamed at me.
I ran out of the room and saw one of the women who had escorted us into the house earlier. “I need my dad, my dad, I need my dad please! Where’s my dad?” I begged, with tears pouring down my face. The women pointed to a room down the corridor which had the door shut; I ran straight at it and flung the door wide open, searching the room with my eyes looking for Dad as I yelled out loudly.
“Dad! Dad! Issy’s taken an overdose!” I struggled to get the words out of my mouth.
I spotted Dad and Granddad amongst the room full of men, including Issy’s husband, sat in the room chewing ghat. They all glared at me in total disgust as I stood there in front of them, my face uncovered, daring to interrupt their gathering.
Dad immediately jumped up and rushed out behind me, following me as I ran back to where my sisters were, but by then Yas has picked Issy up and taken her to the toilet that joined her bedroom and was sticking her finger down her throat trying to make her sick. Issy had been sick by the time we got there and was slightly more coherent.
“What is this, are you all trying your best to put me and my family to shame?” Dad sneered. “Issy, what have you done?” Issy was still heaving as she spoke.
“I told you, I’m not going ahead with this marriage and I won’t!”
Dad looked at us all, pure contempt in his eyes.
“You don’t leave this room tonight. If anyone asks anything you tell them she ate something bad, you will not put my family to shame, do you hear me? This marriage will go ahead!” Dad stormed out of the room, leaving us alone to try and comfort our sister as she sobbed with her head halfway down the toilet.
Yas and I knew we needed to keep an extra eye on her from then on, so we decided to take it in turns and never leave her alone for a minute – but we only had three days left with her. We knew our sister didn’t want this marriage and we didn’t want it for her either, but we couldn’t lose her, not like this. We had to convince Issy to hang in there and try to find a different way out.
We spent most of the night trying to persuade her not to do something stupid again. We told her how much we needed her and we tried to convince her that one day, in the future, we would all return home to England and things would be OK again. We tried to lighten the mood by remembering the things we used to do and places we use to go, all the while telling her to hold on to the hope that one day we would go back home.
Issy finally fell asleep so Yas and I decided to stay up and take it in turns to look after her. When morning came we were relieved that the night had gone well, but worried about the day ahead. This was the day that Issy was expected to be paraded in front of all the women in the afternoon. It was also the day that she was expected to lose her virginity to Atiq.
The flat quickly filled up with people coming to help with the cooking and to celebrate. Breakfast was brought in to the bedroom by Atiq’s sister but Issy refused to eat; Yas and I ate very little.
While we were busy unpacking some things from Issy’s cases, she went into the toilet. After a while when she didn’t come back out Yas went to check on her, and found her lying on her floor with blood dripping from her wrists. She had taken some broken glass from the mirror into the bathroom with her and cut her wrists. I heard Yas scream and I ran in and found her trying to cover Issy’s wrists with her hands to stop the blood; I instantly started to scream as loud as I could. That brought Atiq’s sister running into the bedroom to see what was happening.
I froze with pure fear at what was going on around me and the next thing I remember Dad was there, and Atiq’s other sisters were there; soon the bathroom was full with people shouting at Issy for doing what she had done.
I couldn’t understand why nobody was helping her, my sister was lying on the floor with her wrists cut and blood pouring out of them, but there was no sympathy or concern for her welfare, just shouting.
Issy was taken into the bedroom where the door was closed and her arms were bandaged up to stop the bleeding. She hadn’t managed to cut very deep because Yas had interrupted her, but she had done a considerable amount of damage to both wrists, and she was bleeding heavily.
Atiq’s family were furious and arguing with Dad, but in the end they decided they still wanted the wedding to go ahead. They told everyone to patch her up and get her ready for the wedding; she wasn’t allowed to go to hospital because they said she didn’t need it.
We could hear Granddad in the hallway telling Dad to stick to the plan and take no notice of his daughter. He told him she would come to her senses soon enough, she would finally do as she was told, once the wedding was over.
We were beside ourselves with worry for our sister. She kept telling us how sorry she was about what she was doing, but told us she couldn’t go ahead with the wedding. She told us she would never allow Atiq to lay a finger on her but knew that if the wedding happened she would be forced to have sex with him, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that happening. We knew she was right. If the wedding happened she would be forced to have sex with Atiq and nothing she could say or do would change that, but we also knew we couldn’t lose our sister!
We had nobody to turn to and nowhere to run. The one person who was supposed to protect us from this happening was the same person who was doing this to us. Dad was selling his own daughter and putting her life in danger.
Issy made it very clear to us that although she loved us and was sorry for the pain she was causing us, she would not fail the next time she tried to take her own life. We knew from the look in her eyes that we needed to be worried.
Nebat arrived at the flat and we were happy to see her. We told her what had been going on and she agreed to help us watch our sister. She had been asked by our family to bring all her gold for Issy to wear that afternoon because Issy didn’t have much of her own. Atiq had bought her gold for the wedding but Nebat had a lot of gold that she had bought over the years. Necklaces, bracelets and rings worth a fortune that she had been saving to sell one day so that she could build her own house, and now she wanted Issy to wear them all.
Atiq’s family had hired a woman to come and do Issy’s makeup for her that afternoon and Issy didn’t kick up a fight, she just went along with whatever people told her to do. She put on her wedding dress that Atiq had brought with the suitcases and the gold and had her makeup and hair done.
We didn’t understand the way the wedding arrangements worked in Sanaa because after she had been made up, Atiq was called into the room to ‘inspect’ his bride. We didn’t have to leave the room although all the women covered their faces; he just looked at her, a big smile on his face when he saw how beautiful Issy looked in her wedding gown. Issy didn’t look at him or say anything as he spoke of his approval to his sisters, and then left the room to carry on with his own celebrations that were happening in the flat next door.
Issy looked weak from the events of the past week or so; she hadn’t eaten and she had lost quite a bit of blood from her wounds, which were still bleeding even though they were bandaged up. If only she had been happy on that day then she would have looked beautiful, but the blank, lifeless look in her eyes, took away the beauty that was in the rest of her body.
Nebat tried to reassure her that everything would be alright and that in time she would learn to love Atiq. She told her that she herself was forced to marry her husband Ahmed when she was very young and on her wedding night she had contemplated jumping from the roof and taking her own life, but she didn’t, and now she loved Ahmed.
As Issy was taken into the room, the women filled the air with their whistles as she was escorted to her throne. Issy had shut off all her emotion that day, she had stopped crying and fighting and was just doing as she was told, but that didn’t stop us from worrying; in fact it made us worry even more.
Yas and I sat either side of her as she sat on her throne and
all the women stared at her. They spoke of her beauty and commented on how well Atiq had done for himself finding such a young, beautiful, English bride. The women danced and drank their teas as they celebrated yet another forced wedding.
Issy left the room many times that afternoon to use the bathroom; she said she was feeling sick from the heat. The dress she had on was heavy, so was the gold, and it was difficult to keep up with her once she was up because there were so many women dancing and chatting in the hallway, but we did our best to stick to her.
On one occasion she told us she needed air and asked Yas if she would go with her so Yas went with her up to the roof top. Issy begged Yas to let her jump, she told her she no longer wanted to live in this life and just wanted to end everything. She begged Yas over and over again to let her jump while I was not there to see her go, but Yas refused to even think about such a thing and brought her back down.
Yas spotted Dad as they were coming back down the stairs; he was going into the flats next door so she told him what had happened. He asked if he could speak to Issy alone for a few minutes in her room. They went into Issy’s room and Yas came to the room where I was sat with all the women to tell me what had happened. I saw her wave to me from the doorway and I instantly got up.
A tight knot pulling in my stomach told me something bad was about to happen, and just as I got to the room door I saw Dad come out of Issy’s room. Dad walked over to Yas who was stood in the middle of the huge hallway that was packed with women.
“She’s OK now, she’s just brushing her hair, she will be out soon,” he said with a smile. But just as he was speaking Yas spotted Issy leaving her room and running for the stairs! I could hear the fear in Yas’s voice.
“She’s gone for the roof, she’s going to jump!”
Dad was closest to the door and first behind Issy. He ran as fast as his legs would take him with Yas right behind him, trying her best to catch up and get to Issy before she got to the rooftop. I pushed my way past the women in the hallway and made my way to the roof as fast as I could.
The next thing I remember, we were on the roof and Yas was screaming while hanging over the top looking down onto the street. Dad was on his knees, not far from the entrance to the roof; he had run into some metal bars as he got to the roof and that had stopped him from getting to Issy on time. He was slapping his head with his hands and crying like a child. I ran to Yas and grabbed her.
“I tried, I tried to stop her!” She kept saying as we both collapsed to our knees and started screaming with all the air in our lungs, as we clung on to each other as if our lives depended on it. Once our minds came back to us we staggered to our feet to look over the edge.
A huge crowd had gathered down below and we couldn’t see our sister, but we knew we needed to get to her and take her to hospital. Dad had disappeared by then so we ran downstairs and pushed our way past the people on the stairs, who tried to stop us from leaving. We ran out onto the street but when we got there we couldn’t manage to push our way through the crowd. So many people had gathered to see what had happened, there were hundreds of men on the street and we couldn’t get past them!
We saw a car nearby so we just crouched behind it and curled up in each other’s arms and cried, not knowing what else to do.
When the crowd eventually started to leave we pushed our way through them, but we couldn’t find Issy.
We started screaming at everyone, demanding to know where our sister was, pushing people around and getting cursed at by them for our behaviour, when suddenly a man came over who we recognised from the wedding. He told us he was a relative and said Issy had been taken to hospital, and then he offered to take us to where she was. We went with him to the hospital and found Dad already there; his face was red and swollen from his tears.
“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I should have listened to her, she’s gone,” he wept.
We both collapsed on the floor. Dad knelt beside us as we screamed and cursed and shouted abuse at him while everyone in the hospital stared at us in disgust, but Dad just let us be. In the end, all three of us huddled together on the hospital floor and cried.
It was late when we were taken to Nebat’s house, where she was already waiting for us; she came to the door as soon as we arrived. She stood right in front of us, ripped off her head scarf, and then she stuck her fingers deep into her hair. She tangled her hair up in between her fingers, twisted it in her hands and started pulling her hair out as hard as she could while screaming at the top of her voice. People were trying to get her fingers out of her hair by bending her fingers back one by one but they couldn’t because she had such a tight grip on her hair.
Yas and I wanted to hug her and comfort her but we couldn’t, we could barely comfort each other. Eventually Nebat stopped and let her hair go. She had pulled out chunks of her own hair and everyone was cursing her for being so stupid and ruining her beautiful long thick hair.
Nebat’s house was full of women who had heard of Issy’s death and who had come to mourn her. They were making this horrible wailing noise that was a custom for them to make when someone died, but it sent shivers down my spine. It made things worse for us because we didn’t want these people mourning for our sister, they didn’t know her, and they certainly didn’t care about her, or us! However now they expected us to join them in this awful gathering and come together to mourn our sister. We refused to join them so Nebat took us into her room where we sat alone and wept uncontrollably.
We tried to understand what had happened, but how could we? Dad had taken away the most important people in our lives. Mum was gone and we still didn’t know the truth about her disappearance, now Issy; we had also lost all hope of ever see Ablah again.
We were in a situation where we couldn’t stick up for ourselves or each other because anything we said or did made no difference. Only time would tell whether or not our sister’s death would change the way Dad saw us, or treated us.
We didn’t see Dad again until mid-morning the next day. As soon as we got back from the hospital Dad had left us alone with Nebat and all the other women who were staying at her house, her friends and neighbours. Dad came to tell us to gather our things because we were going back to the village.
“Please Dad, we can’t go without seeing Issy, we need to say goodbye,” we pleaded with him, but it was too late.
“I’m sorry girls but that’s not how it’s done here, she was buried this morning,” Dad said, fighting back his own tears.
“Why Dad, why did you do this to us? We didn’t even go to her funeral,” Yas wept.
“Why couldn’t we go to her funeral, where’s her grave?” I cried.
Dad was struggling to hold back his tears. “Women are not allowed to funerals and her grave is just another grave, your sister killed herself and that’s frowned upon here so just leave it please!” he snapped.
“She killed herself because of what you and your family did to her so I hope you all rot in hell! I really hope she comes back to haunt you like she promised she would!” Yas screamed, full of rage.
“Yes, Yas, I know what I did and trust me, I’m in hell already, just make sure you are both ready to go this afternoon,” he said, wiping the tears from his face as he walked away.
Granddad had already left the night before to tell everyone about Issy’s death so by the time we got to the village everyone already knew. We arrived at the house early evening, Farouse ran down to the car and we could tell from her face that she had been crying a lot. She hugged us and started crying again, telling us how sorry she was, and as we hugged her we knew we could believe someone when they told us they were sorry for Issy’s death.
Gran came down and went to kiss us but we refused to kiss her and she started to argue with Dad who for once told her to leave us alone, telling her we had just lost our sister and we were upset. She started to go on about how upset she was so Yas turned on her. “You’re not upset! You hated her and so did your husband, you wanted her gone, well no
w she is!” she screamed in her face before running upstairs. I ran after her, past a house full of women who were sat in the middle room and straight up to the top landing where we sat on the stairs and started to cry again.
We refused to go downstairs where everyone was and stayed upstairs. Dad came up and tried to reason with us, saying that people just wanted to pay their respects to Issy, but we still refused. We wanted to be alone; we needed to come to terms with our sister’s death in our own way. Only we knew how the other one was feeling.
Once again we stayed upstairs alone that night and out of the way. Farouse spent some time with us and we all cried together. Farouse told us the women would be coming to the house for days, maybe weeks, to mourn Issy’s death. It wasn’t something Yas and I wanted to hear, we really didn’t want to have to sit and grieve our sister with these people, but we knew sooner or later we would be forced to.
The next day the house filled up with women, and because there were men upstairs chewing ghat and mourning with Dad we were forced to sit downstairs with everyone. They all dressed in black, sat around and cried, making the most awful wailing noises that sometimes broke into a song of mourning. Farouse told us this was what they sung when someone died, but it was horrible, and it got too much for us.
We both stood up to leave the room but were stopped halfway by an old woman who was sat next to Gran.
“Where are you going? Sit down!” she ordered us in a demanding tone.
“We are going out to get some air,” I replied as we continued to walk off. Then the old women said in a loud voice so that we could hear. “She was young and had a good life ahead of her, now she’s going straight to hell!”
I saw Yas’s face change; she was full of rage, and for a moment I thought she was going to hit this woman, but she turned around to look her in the face.
“What did you say? You all pretend to come here to mourn my sister and you didn’t even know her! She was our sister! Ours!” she screamed.
A Father's Betrayal Page 11