Sirens of Memory

by Puja Guha

He released his grip on the rifle and glowered at her. “Mariam, you will always be mine.” With his left hand, he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall. “You make it seem as if you didn’t enjoy every second of the time we’ve been together—I know how much you like it rough. I would never actually hurt you—that gun wasn’t even loaded.” He leaned forward and kissed her, shoving his tongue down her throat.

  Mariam fought the urge to gag, especially with the continued pressure of his hand on her throat. Instead, she responded to his kiss, linking her arms behind his neck and intertwining her fingers.

  Janhvi, Dinah, please do something. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep this up.

  Almost on cue, Mariam heard a loud crash and shut her eyes as shards of ceramic fell to the floor from the vase that Janhvi had shattered over Tareq’s head. He stumbled, landing on the ground hard.

  “Run!” shouted Mariam. She had no idea how long he would stay down, but she wasn’t going to miss her chance. Janhvi and Dinah were already almost at the door, and she jumped over Tareq. The door was so close, her escape was just within her grasp.

  Suddenly she felt something grip her ankle and before she could process what was happening, she was falling forward. Her wrists hit the floor first, bracing against the impact, the pain doubly strong because of her recent injury, as she was dragged backward toward Tareq. She kicked out with her other leg once, hitting only air, and then again before her left foot managed to connect. Tareq cried out at the impact, and she struggled to regain control of her other foot. He pulled her back farther and before she could land another kick he was almost to his feet. She flailed as he yanked her back into the wall, then straddled her hips and pinned her to the ground as she fell.

  Tareq smacked her across the side of her head, and she saw stars. Dinah jumped on his back, but he was easily able to throw her off. She hit the ground and went silent.

  Mariam’s chest heaved, she could see his expression, one that she had seen so many times before. He was about to rape her, and there was nothing she could do. Whatever hope she had had for her baby, whatever life she had wanted for herself—all of it was gone now for a life of beating and submission. And once the baby was born, she would never be free of him.

  This is my life now.

  MARIAM LOST COUNT of the number of blows that followed. He dealt repeated punches to every part of her body; she couldn’t be sure what was real or what wasn’t anymore. Her cheeks and eyes were on fire, and as he reached for the waistband of her kamese, she felt more like he was touching someone else, as if she no longer inhabited her body. She had no more fight left, he could do as he pleased.

  The air moved, followed by a bang that resounded through the air. The pressure on her hips eased, and Tareq’s weight fell to her left. Mariam’s vision took a few seconds to clear—Tareq was lying on his side next to her, his head bleeding profusely, with Janhvi in front of her brandishing what had to be a cast iron saucepan. She blacked out a moment later, surrendering to the darkness.

  Salmiya, Kuwait – August, 1990

  Janhvi sank to the ground, struggling to believe what had just happened. She dropped the pan, and it clattered against the ceramic tile as she attempted to catch her breath. Pulling her feet into her chest, she wrapped her arms around her knees with tears pouring down her cheeks.

  This didn’t happen, this didn’t happen, she said to herself over and over again.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, but eventually, she unwrapped her arms and managed to get to her feet. Dinah and Mariam were both still unconscious, and as far as she could tell, so was Tareq. She fumbled her way toward him and felt around his neck haphazardly in search of a pulse.

  Do I want him to be alive or dead? She didn’t know what the right answer was—she couldn’t imagine being responsible for his death, but if he wasn’t dead, how were they going to get away? The thought of him attacking again made her tremble, and her memory flashed to her uncle. She had rarely thought of him since she arrived in Kuwait over a year earlier, but her recollections had never been more vivid, or more tangible. He had tried to touch her when she was young, before she had known anything more than the fact that it didn’t feel right, that she didn’t want him to do it anymore. A picture ran through her head: wielding the cast iron pan at his head just as she had with Tareq. Her fingers moved around on his neck, still unable to find a pulse. This man was slime, just like her uncle, and she had to bite her lip to shake off the image.

  He was dead. They were rid of him.

  But he was dead because of her.

  I killed him.

  The very concept was incomprehensible. Her chest swelled, and without thinking, she reached for the saucepan and slammed it against the side of his head again. Her arms gave way under the pan’s weight, the adrenaline of the fight had given her the strength to swing it, but now it felt heavier than her entire suitcase.

  Janhvi dropped the pan and let the tears fall for a moment before getting up once again. Dinah and Mariam—she had to help them.

  She made it to Mariam first and touched her shoulder, “Mariam?”

  Mariam groaned as she opened her eyes, which were filled with fear. “He’s gone,” Janhvi said quietly.

  Mariam looked like she was about to speak but remained silent as she struggled to stand. Once she was upright, she broke away and went straight for Tareq’s body. She kicked him in the torso, sobbing and shouting at the same time. Janhvi couldn’t make out everything that she was saying, but she caught the stream of curse words masked partially by tears. Janhvi shuddered, then pulled Mariam away from the body, still sobbing. Mariam collapsed on the ground but eventually allowed Janhvi to help her to her feet.

  With one arm still around her shoulder, they moved toward Dinah, who was lying on the other side of the room. “Madam, wake up,” Janhvi said in an urgent tone. “Wake up.” She smacked Dinah’s cheeks.

  Dinah’s eyes flickered open and closed before they shot open wide, and she jumped. “What happened? Are you okay?” She looked frantically at Mariam before she noticed Tareq’s body. “Is he—?” her gaze moved between Janhvi and Mariam.

  “Yes,” Mariam answered, her tone cutting through the air like ice.

  Dinah remained silent, and together Janhvi and Mariam supported her as she stood, and they made it out into the backyard. After a moment to catch her breath, Janhvi reached inside to shut the back door to the house. The noise she heard felt as if someone were stabbing her in the back: a moan coming from the corner of the living room.

  He’s still alive. She checked behind her in the yard to see if either Dinah or Mariam had heard anything, but they seemed oblivious. They were almost to the gate, each lugging a suitcase forward, and seemed completely occupied with the effort.

  Janhvi took a couple of steps to get a glimpse of him. He was still on his side, and he didn’t appear capable of moving. There was blood forming a small pool next to his head. In a split second, Janhvi made a decision: this was their chance to get away. With that much blood on the floor from a head wound, even if he wasn’t dead yet he would be dead soon enough.

  Leave and he dies. She faltered, and the memory of her uncle washed over her again. Her jaw set and after one last glance toward Mariam and Dinah, she stepped into the yard and slammed the door shut.

  He deserves to be dead; she had never been more certain of anything in her life.

  We said he was dead, and no one needs to know any different.

  He is dead. She wouldn’t do anything to help him.

  Austin, USA – March, 2016

  Mariam gaped at Teresa, at a loss of how to answer her therapist’s question. She had expected her first session since returning from D.C. to feel more like a triumph, but instead, she shifted in her seat in obvious discomfort. I’m not scared, she wanted to protest, but the phrase felt too pathetic to say aloud.

  Teresa continued, “I don’t say this to put you on the spot, or to push in one direction or the other, bu
t I do think it’s important that you know the answer. For the last couple of months, we’ve been working on getting you past the trauma of your relationship with Tareq, on letting that fear go. So, I want you to really think about why you’re still scared of him, because I believe you are, and I think you know the answer.”

  Mariam’s gaze darted around the room, wishing that by remaining silent the question would dissipate as if it had never been asked. Deep in her gut, she did indeed know the answer, although she had never admitted it out loud.

  I should have killed him myself, and I wish I had. Even though the notion had been right there all along, this was the first time she had realized it. Yet there it was in front of her, in black and white. She opened her mouth and hesitated, what kind of a person did it make her that she wanted to say those words? That she believed that?

  “I don’t know, I guess it’s like I already told you. He made me the victim, and I didn’t fight back. I never want to be that person again, I never want to feel that weak again.”

  “But why do you feel weak when you look back? When you think about what happened?”

  She knows… Mariam was tempted to try another dodge, to only partially answer the question, but after a few more moments of debating, she acquiesced. What harm could it do? She had already told her therapist more than she had ever shared with Raj or Aliya, or even Dinah, put together. She had let her in on the whole story, every detail on the number of times that Tareq had beaten her, and how Dinah had finally convinced her to leave him. She had even divulged how she had almost let him have her, how she’d given up that last day when she thought that she would never be free of him. Mariam trembled, she could still feel his left hand groping her as his other arm pinned her at the throat. Letting the tears fall she looked at her therapist, and the words burst from her chest.

  “I never walked away from him on my own, I never stood up to him. With Tareq I was always the victim. You’ve been telling me to affirm myself, to give myself credit for walking away, but I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it!”

  Teresa handed her the tissue box and waited for Mariam’s tears to ebb before she asked, “You said earlier that you finally told Raj the truth about Tareq. Do you think he sees you as a victim?”

  “He didn’t say that, but I was. He said he sees me as someone who’s strong, who has nothing to feel guilty about, but that’s not true.”

  “Why do you think you’re being so hard on yourself? Even if other people helped you, you still decided to leave Tareq after you woke up at the hospital.”

  “But I never would have left him if I hadn’t found out that I was pregnant.”

  “You told me before that you reached out to your sister for help, but she refused. Even then, you were trying to find a way out.”

  “But after that I just gave up—I believed her when she said I had to go back to Tareq,” Mariam bit her lip.

  “Are you angry with her? With your sister?” Teresa asked softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know that it’s okay to be angry with her, right? It’s okay to be angry with all of them. She should have stood by you, she should have protected you, but instead, she sent you back into the lion’s den. Of course, you’re angry, and you have every right to be.”

  Mariam felt the tension in her chest start to ease. “I am angry.” Saying the words out loud felt so anticlimactic, yet so significant at the same time. “I am angry,” she repeated. “I’m angry at her, and at my father, and my family. I’m angry at my mom for dying before she could stop my dad from marrying me off without a second thought. I’m so angry, but really, I’m angry at myself more than anyone else. I’m not the one who stopped Tareq—I left him because of Aliya, because I had to protect her. I knew I’d never be free of him after she was born.”

  Mariam stopped, shocked as she realized what she had said. “I mean, I knew I’d never let him get his hands on her, that I had to keep her away from him,” she backpedaled.

  Teresa looked at her with kind, empathetic eyes, “Mariam, it is okay to acknowledge that part of why you left Tareq was also because of you. You wanted to be free of him, you couldn’t let yourself be tied to him for life, and you had to protect your daughter. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You do know that, right?”

  Mariam’s gaze lingered on the ground, staring at the zig-zag pattern on the blue and gray carpet. “Maybe, maybe you’re right.”

  “It doesn’t make you less of a mom that you wanted to get away from Tareq for yourself as well as Aliya. Isn’t that the personal initiative you said that you didn’t take? You wanted to give credit for getting away from him to Dinah, to Aliya, even to Janhvi since she was the one who stopped him from hurting you, but you just said it yourself. You knew that you would never get away from him if you didn’t do it at that time, so you had to do it. You did that, no one else.”

  Teresa took a sip of water before she went on. “I also want to make something clear—going through that kind of abuse doesn’t make you weak, and neither does being here in therapy. We’ve touched on this before, but I think it’s worth revisiting. Anyone can become a victim of abuse, it doesn’t matter how strong you are, or what background you come from. No one is immune to it. In fact, by recognizing that, and coming in for treatment, you made a decision from a point of strength, not weakness. If you’d fallen down the stairs and broken your ankle, you would see a doctor and a physical therapist without missing a beat, and none of that would make you feel weak. Coming to therapy is almost the same thing, you’re taking your life back. You recognize that you need help and you’re taking the initiative to get the care that you need. You made that decision, even if Raj helped you get there, just like you made the decision to leave Tareq that day at the hospital.”

  The words sank into Mariam’s head slowly, could that really be true? She had indeed been the victim, Tareq had victimized her every day, but Teresa was right. At least part of the decision to leave him was for me. It wasn’t just for Aliya. Tears formed in her eyes once again, but this time she smiled in relief, “You’re right. Part of the decision was for me.” She could hardly believe it, but now it seemed clear as day—she had indeed walked away from Tareq, even if she’d had help, even if her pregnancy had nudged her over the edge. What Raj had articulated suddenly registered in a way it never had before.

  I am strong. Mariam drew a deep breath and for the first time had the courage to voice what she had been unable to earlier.

  “I wish I was the one who had killed him,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “I can understand that, that adds another facet to the guilt that we’ve been talking about, you feel responsible, but at the same time wish you had done more. It is okay for you to feel that way. That man terrorized you, beat you, hurt you. He took your dignity and trampled on it every day that you were together. When you finally left, he came for you and you were ready to do what you had to do to survive, but someone else stopped him. It’s not a huge leap that you would wish that person was you, but that’s not your fault. You were doing what you had to do, to survive, and your friend saw that—she saw what you were going through, and she stood up for you. It’s as simple as that.”

  Is it really? Mariam fiddled with the pendant on her necklace, realizing once more that Teresa was right. It is as simple as that.

  “I really want to emphasize that point—you shouldn’t blame yourself for letting him touch you that day. You weren’t capitulating to him because you wanted to be the victim, you were doing that because it’s what you thought you had to do to survive. Besides, I don’t think Janhvi would have been able to take him out if he hadn’t been distracted. Think of it that way. You weren’t the one that dealt the final blow, but you were instrumental in getting rid of him.”

  When the session was over, Mariam made her way to the parking lot and stopped in front of her car. She closed her eyes and turned to face the afternoon sun, drinking in the warmth. She felt somehow lighter,
as if her soul was free now that she had left the burden of truth in Teresa’s office.

  I wasn’t just the victim, I was instrumental. I made the decision to get away from him, for Aliya, and for myself.

  Her past was behind her, and she was free.

  Washington D.C., USA – March, 2016

  Tareq used his thumb and forefinger to zoom in on his phone’s screen and examine the picture more closely.

  It has to be her.

  There was no question, the woman in the picture was his wife Mariam. Even if Nadia said her name is Ritika. A smile crept across his face, he had believed this day would elude him, that he would never be able to exact his revenge for what she had done to him. But now the wait was over.

  I’ve found her. I will find her.

  His smile faded as he considered the different options, how he could use her name and her picture to locate her—he could squeeze Nadia further, but he had to be sure his sister never found out. He had broached the subject with a younger woman at the bank where he worked, saying he wanted to see if he could get back in touch with any of his old friends from Kuwait, and she had recommended using social media. He had never thought of it before—he wasn’t even on Facebook himself—but now Nadia had accepted his friend request. As if she would dare refuse, he smirked. Unfortunately, neither her account nor a search for people who had listed their hometown as Kuwait had yielded anything.

  Tareq crossed his arms, recalling how he had searched for Mariam when he had first been released—the internet was still in its infancy, and his only option had been to hire an investigator. Do they still exist? He opened a browser window and typed “private investigator near me” into Google and a number of results came up. He scrolled through the list, noting down several phone numbers. He grinned, she was within his grasp.

  Switching back to the picture, he ran his hand over his head, starting at the ridge just above his left ear and traced the scar along his jawline to the base of his cheek. His jaw clenched. He could still remember the blow that he’d sustained there from the woman who had hit him, some friend of Mariam’s. To stop me from being with my wife? The very idea made the veins in his neck start to pop. His wife was his to have whenever he liked, his to control, and she had been away from him for over twenty-five years now.