Courage to Say No

  My mother sat beside me, weeping. The look of fear in her eyes was palpable. The worry on her face almost made me cry.

  “What happened, my child?” she asked. “Why did Erfun drop you here? You are bleeding and shivering.”

  I wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t. If that woman hadn’t perforated my uterus, she had at least given me septicemia. My head and face were on fire. The pain in my uterus told me the entire story. Already, the infection could be spreading through my organs. I knew it was an incomplete abortion. I could bleed to death if I didn’t get help. And Erfun, the man I insisted on marrying, had done this to me. How could I tell her all this and burden her further?

  “I have called a doctor; she will be coming soon.”

  “No. Take me to a good gynecologist, now.”

  “What happened to you?” She placed her cool hand on my forehead, then my cheek. “You are burning up, my child. Tell me.”

  I turned my face to the wall.

  “I’ll call your father. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Please don’t,” I insisted. “Just take me.”

  She rose to take me to the hospital.

  About then, the monster Erfun called. I could hear my mother’s tearful voice saying that I could be dying and she was taking me to the hospital. After she hung up, she came and told me that he would be here soon.

  It took him another agonizing hour to come over. He carried me to the car, and set me down in the back seat. We didn’t speak on the way to the hospital. Staring out the window at the passing city, I still could not fathom what he had done to me.

  We pulled up in front of the Fatima Hospital, and he carried me inside. Someone rolled out a wheelchair, and I was soon in a bed. Dr. Fatima attended to me. After an examination, she confirmed that the uterus was intact. The profuse bleeding and clots were due to an incomplete abortion. First, the sepsis had to be controlled, and then she would complete the abortion with a D & C. She ordered an infusion of powerful antibiotics. The next day she performed the procedure. After another day of rest, I went home. With all my years of study and preparation for a medical career, I never imagined this taking place.

  I didn’t see Erfun for my entire hospital stay. He only showed up to take me home.

  The house was quiet and looked strange when I arrived. I convalesced. In the mornings, I lay staring at the ceiling for hours. My life had turned into one long, languid moment. Nothing I ate tasted good to me.

  Since Gezala always answered the phone, when Erfun called, she never told me. In the first weeks of our marriage, Erfun had complained to me that I was always too busy to come to the phone when he called. I told him I didn’t know about his calls. I suggested he ask his sister why she never told me he had called. But he wouldn’t confront her.

  Now Erfun refused to let me use the phone to talk to my mother. She seldom visited, and I couldn’t call to invite her over. I was cut off from my professional colleagues and contacts.

  Gradually, I regained my strength, and for a while, at least, I resigned myself to my secluded life. My energy returned, and I found it easier to dress and care for myself. And in my room, when I could close myself off from Gezala, I returned to my studies. I believed one day, Erfun would change his mind again and remember what he had promised me, that I could practice medicine.

  One day a visitor arrived at the door. A woman whom I had never met was here to visit me. She introduced herself as Erfun’s friend, Roohi. I invited her in, served her tea, and made her comfortable. She was dressed very nicely, like a modern businesswoman. I could tell she was a nice person.

  Our first visit was congenial. She asked me how Erfun and I had met. I didn’t know what to think of her at first, but she was so friendly. She assured me that she and Erfun were only friends, and she just wanted to know more about the woman Erfun did marry. I told her about how Erfun had chased me for two years until I relented to marry him. She seemed amazed—not that Erfun would chase me, but that I actually married him.

  Over several visits, we became friends.

  One time she asked where Erfun was. I said that he was out of town on business and would be away for a few days. Right after my forced abortion, Erfun had begun traveling for business, and he was only home a few days a week, and even when he came home, he arrived very late.

  She laughed, holding her hand over her mouth. Then her look sobered up, and she gazed at me strangely, almost sadly.

  “You are so innocent,” she said. “He has no businesses outside Karachi. He is not out of the city. Maybe he is staying in another house he is renting. Or maybe he is staying with another woman in a hotel somewhere.”

  I did not know what to think. If he was not out of town, then where was he?

  “You have to put your foot down with him. You have to be strong,” she said. “You have to demand that he come home every day after closing his business. You have to insist he stop drinking and make sure he takes care of you. You are his wife.”

  I told her, confidently, that I trusted Erfun. If I saw it with my own eyes that he was doing something objectionable, then I would confront him.

  “You are surely very different from other women. Your husband comes home late, and you don’t accuse him and yell at him. You are so calm.”

  My father’s remonstrations over my marriage to Erfun surfaced in my mind. “Why would you marry him?” he had asked once. I remember saying that I loved him. And that was still true, even after what he did to my baby and me.

  I shook myself out of my memories and thanked her for her advice. We chatted for the rest of her stay, and after I closed the door behind her, her words began to sink in, and I began to wonder.

  Where exactly was Erfun? I tried not to think about what Roohi told me.

  After three more months, I became pregnant again. This time I planned on being very careful. I made sure that his parents and brothers were home when I told him the good news. I said to him, “This time I will not go for an abortion.” He said he was happy, and appeared genuinely interested in the baby.

  Before the week was out, he came home and said I had to go with him. He took my hand and began pulling me toward the main gate.

  “We need to go see the gynecologist.”

  I knew his intentions. I refused to leave the house, but he was stronger than me, and violently pulled me through the hallway. With one hand, I held onto the doorpost. He continued dragging me.

  “No, no, I need this child. If you didn’t want this child, why didn’t you tell me?” I continued yelling and screaming in the house holding onto anything I could find as he pulled me toward the gate.

  Thankfully, my mother-in-law and father-in-law came running to see what all the shouting was about. I said he was taking me to have an abortion.

  My father-in-law stood up to him. “We are happy to have a grandson,” he said to Erfun. “Leave her alone.”

  With that, he released me and left. I ran to my room to compose myself. I wanted to cry, but I knew that it was essential for the health of the child for me to remain calm and not get too upset. I felt safe for now in his parents’ house. They wanted this child as much as I did, so I had at least their assurance that Erfun would not force me to have another abortion. I didn’t think I could survive another episode of killing my own child. I expected that with a child on the way, I would have the care and attention of my husband and his family. My husband did not see things that way. I did not see a gynecologist for the first seven months of my pregnancy. Erfun did everything he could to keep me isolated. If he couldn’t make me abort my child, then he would do everything in his power to let me know he was an unhappy man. He didn’t come home for stretches of days, and when he did come back, it was so late that I was asleep.

  One day Gezala called me to the phone. The woman on the phone didn’t tell me her name, and I didn’t recognize her voice. She told me the strangest tale: She said Erfun was living with a woman over on Tariq Road. I told her I had asked Erfun about his girlfrien
ds, and he said he wasn’t seeing anyone else since we married. She let out a mocking laugh.

  “Here, go and check it for yourself.” She then gave me an address.

  After she hung up, I stood there for a long moment considering her words. I decided that I would trust what Erfun had told me. Despite my efforts to forget that call, I didn’t eat for a whole day. No one said a word to me about my lack of appetite.

  A few days passed, and the woman called again. She knew I hadn’t followed up on her story. I still did not know her identity. She must have decided that I didn’t believe her, so she began calling my mother and telling her the same tale.

  My mother and my sister came to see me one day. My mother looked so frantic I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

  “Who is this woman? What does she want? Why is she calling me?” She had such fury in her voice over this woman’s accusations. After I calmed her down, “Mother, don’t worry about it. I don’t know who she is, but it’s all a lie. I know it’s a lie.”

  Before they left, my sister told me that Mansoor had sent me a birthday card from New York, as usual. I told her to throw it away.

  When Erfun did come home, I asked him about that woman. He said, “Don’t worry about her, she is just jealous because I married you.” For the first time, he told me the truth. He had become sexually active when he was thirteen, and he’d had sexual relations with lots of women in the past. But after marriage he stopped seeing everyone.

  Our conversation made me heartsick. I had trusted him. But with this revelation, so many pieces of the puzzle that was Erfun began to fit together. Our discussions at Murree during our honeymoon made more sense now. He truly had wanted to live permanently at the mountain resort where we had spent the lovely days of our honeymoon. He had wanted to start a new life. He had even offered to help me open my own clinic, and he would open a business. He had wanted to escape a life that orbited around his girlfriends and sexual proclivities. At the time, I felt it would be selfish of me to insist on moving away, just the two of us, and building a life together. I had no idea he was running from a sordid past. My only thinking at the time was that he was the oldest son; he had a responsibility to his family and their business.

  After he told me of his early sexual exploits, I knew I had made a grave error of judgment. I should have listened to my father, and I should have told him of how Erfun, in the beginning, had tried to intimidate me into marrying him by threatening to kidnap my younger sister. I also needed to tell Father of the great mistake I had made by putting Erfun’s family first, and not insisting on what was right for us as a couple. But I knew he didn’t want me to speak to him about my marriage problems. I began to think that everything that woman on the phone told me was true. But now I was pregnant. I decided that what was best for my child was that I remained calm, and have a smooth pregnancy.

  Then I would deal with my marriage.

  I kept myself busy. I took a position as a doctor at Rani Hospital, and Erfun left me alone so I could perform my job. Although Erfun had offered a few times to take me to the gynecologist, it wasn’t until the seventh month of my pregnancy that I went by myself for my first neonatal checkup. The baby’s development was right on track. I felt good, even though my diet was not as healthy as I would have liked it. Erfun’s parents didn’t do any special shopping or give me any particular attention. And I couldn’t see my mother very often. It was a tough time, but I was so glad that Erfun had left me alone to have my child.

  During my ninth month of pregnancy, the nurse at my job informed me that a young man wanted to see me. He had been injured in a motorbike accident. The man who entered my office was a familiar face, Furquan. When I examined his foot, I found only fake blood and no injury.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said, angrily.

  “I have come to propose marriage to you.”

  This fool was so infuriating. “Do you see I’m about to give birth to my first child, and that I’m already married?”

  He spoke in quiet tones. “I know everything about you. This child will never be born, and you will be divorced soon. You will then marry me. I paid to have powerful black magic performed on you.”

  “Listen carefully,” I said to him. “Even if I were alone my entire life, I would never marry you. Don’t you know that Islam says whoever uses magic will go to hell?” I opened the door to my office and motioned to him. “Leave, and I never want to see you again.”

  I worked right up to my due date and performed my job until the last day.

  Soon after, my time arrived to have the baby. I didn’t want Gezala with me during the delivery. I would rather be alone than to have that selfish woman with me. Because my younger sister was unmarried, she could not go with me. Erfun was away. I called for a rickshaw and took myself to the hospital. My mother was visiting Punjab because the weather there was better for her chronic asthma. And my mother-in-law wasn’t home either.

  So, by myself, I packed a small bag and prepared for my hospital stay. I felt ready for this next stage of my life. To bring a child into the world and to raise it in the same manner as my loving parents raised me would be one of the greatest joys I could imagine. What I did not imagine or ever anticipate was that I would be taking this ride to the hospital alone. Erfun, who said he loved me, wasn’t at my side.

  In time, I believed, he would come to love our child the way his parents loved him. I cherished those memories of the loving and kind man from our time in Murree. But there was no waiting around for him to catch up with the fact that he would very shortly have a new family member. My child was on the way. The rickshaw had arrived and was waiting by the front gate, so I rushed out into the afternoon of the first of January—alone.

  CHAPTER 6

  Trapped in a House of Hate

  I SPENT THE ENTIRE NIGHT IN fruitless labor. The next day, although my contractions were still very strong, my cervix was closed tightly. I was admitted to the hospital on January 1, and now it was the third. I was exhausted and dehydrated. The doctor didn’t think I would be able to deliver the child without a C-section. That morning, my mother-in-law and Gezala and other family members had shown up at the hospital. The doctor asked for permission to perform a C-section, but my mother-in-law would not allow it. Pregnant women were not allowed to make medical decisions for themselves, such as to have a C-section. Their husbands had to consent to the operation.

  The doctor insisted—I needed the operation right away, or the baby or I could die. Dr. Parveen believed the fetus was in danger. Still, my mother-in-law refused to allow it. Only Erfun could decide. The doctor wanted to know where he was so she could ask him.

  He was out of town on business, my mother-in-law told the doctor.

  This conversation must have gone on for an hour or more before the doctor informed me that she could not perform the operation since my mother-in-law wouldn’t allow it and my husband had disappeared.

  I could not believe this state of affairs. How could that woman be so callous as to let me suffer like this? Finally, I called the doctor into my room. I told her, “I don’t want to die, and I don’t want my baby to die. I permit you to do a C-section.”

  She knew I was a medical doctor, so she assented, despite my in-law’s disapproval. I signed the paperwork, and within an hour, an orderly wheeled me down the hall into an operating room. During the ride on the gurney, I began thinking about my child.

  I didn’t know the sex of the child. But since my early childhood, I’d always wanted a sister, and when she was born, I thought God listened to my prayers. After marriage, whenever I dreamed of having a baby, I dreamed of a girl. I grew up with five brothers, and even though my father doted on me, I imagined a daughter would be special. But during that long ride into the operating room, my thinking began to change. A girl’s life can be very hard in my country, at times cruel. Even for an educated adult like myself, there is so little a woman can control. I always thought that with my education and profession, my situ
ation would be different. But I was just as much at the mercy of a man’s whims as any other woman. Erfun had all the power he needed to make my life miserable, and I had no way to stop him. No, I did not want to bring a girl into a world to live among these men who would only dishonor and disrespect her for no other reason than that she’s a strong and confident girl. A boy’s life is much easier. So as they wheeled me along, I prayed silently for a boy. A boy who would always treat the women in his life with gentleness and kindness; a boy who would see into their hearts their greatness and the gifts they bring to this troubled world.

  Soon the anesthesiologist fitted a mask over my face, and already I was drifting off into a twilight zone of painless sleep.

  I prayed from the deepest recesses of my heart, God, please save my child and marriage. Please turn Erfun back to the same loving and caring person I knew before our marriage.

  The doctor stood over me, robed and masked, ready to bring another miracle into the world. I prayed that my child’s life would be full of success and compassion.

  In the recovery room, I awoke to a new life. The nurse handed me a swaddled newborn. He was all in blue. The three days of strong contractions had taken a toll on him, but otherwise, he was a healthy boy of eight pounds, eight ounces. I held the little angel in my arms, and suddenly he opened his big intelligent eyes. I could not stop staring at him. God had heard my prayers. As I held him to me, he latched on with an eagerness that told me he would thrive, grow, and become strong. I felt secure in that moment. It was just my son and me, a sacred moment that rejuvenated every part of me with the hope that my life was meaningful. While I had every expectation that Erfun would take his place as a doting and caring father, I could not foresee the future. I would care for this child as a treasure granted to me by God.