Write the Wrong

In the bed I would share with the man I would eventually marry, I awoke haphazardly with a misplaced slap to my face. Arms flailing wildly, I was pinned against the wall in dreamful disarray. The foam mattress where we slept, barely fit for a refugee, acted as conspirator in the abuse, and I was unable to move.1

In this situation, the typical fight-or-flight response never came to mind. In the one-room flat we shared with a multitude of cockroaches filled with puss from our previous night’s meal, there was no where to hide, and no way to stop a dreaming man who insisted upon a reality beyond comprehension.2

Thwack! 3

Jabir struck me straight on, awakening me fully, and tilting my head a full forty-five degrees. Immediately, I lunged for him. My arms encompassed his frail body, and with my cheek touching his, encouraged him towards the floor. 4

“Ummi” He called for his mother like a small child, whimpering, as he drift back to sleep. I wondered if he would remember this later as I looked up and saw the indentation on the wall, an imprint of his melon-shaped head cracking the plaster on a previous night of this torturous affair.5

“Tell me what he did to you!” Jabir demanded.6

“He….” I said, my voice trailing off before finding a foot hole again. “He raped me.” I declared.7

“Liar!” he sneered and spit at me, spraying venom on my left foot. 8

It was true. I wasn’t exactly raped, but as I relived every sexual experience I ever had night after night, mortified at last, it felt nothing short of it. I was the girl who could never say ‘no’ with any fitful determination. Everything had merit in my book and could be written off as ‘worldly experience’. The thing that I was beginning to realize is that I could never say it, could never verbalize it. I had never told anyone, never been challenged by anyone. I thought I had covered up the shame adequately, but it lingered. As I spoke, I felt so dirty, cheap, disgusting. This can’t be me, I thought.9

“Why did you do it?!?” he wailed with his razor-sharp tongue. 10

I had never understood things like genocide and murder and how men could commit such acts with unfettered resolve, but as I stood there then with the fear of God in me, history made perfect sense. The haggard decomposition of all the men I was taught to revere and hence hate —Hitler, Stalin, Mao— were coming alive before me, and I felt myself as horrendous as they had been.11

“Speak up. I can’t hear you. Just tell me why!” he yelled, raising his voice a full octave. I winced and turned away guarding my face with my elbow. The blow didn’t come that time, but regardless it felt the same.12

“Well….. I was at the Hyatt and….” I attempted to say, between sobs. 13

“What?” he stood erect, with a swagger in his stance. 14

“….and it just happened!” I stated, as if that should have been enough.15

“You mean to tell me you fucked some guy ‘cause you were at a fancy hotel?”16

SNAP!17

Hyatt... ‘hayat’, in Arabic, it means ‘life’. In those days, I was ready to abandon mine altogether. The mortars had dropped and the scene around me looked more like the bombed out remains of Beirut or Baghdad. I hid in the midst of a once exocentric and lively facade, breathing in toxic dust particles that would come back to haunt me over time.18

There was nothing to live for, but nothing to die for as well. So, eventually I started to rebuild by doing what Jabir told me was right. I learned how he desired a wife to care for him and modeled myself around it. He was a hard worker and I was to work equally hard learning to prepare meals with names I could barely pronounce, like karahi chicken and chana dhal. I cleaned the house each day as if visitors were coming from far away. I stopped talking to old friends, stopped eating certain food, stopped dressing a certain way, stopped looking a certain way, stopped….. thinking.19

“Just keep repeating these words over and over again,” Jabir would say. A'uzu billahi minash Shaitani... A'uzu billahi minash Shaitani…20

Time passed, I gave birth to a baby girl, and life began to circulate around me again, all the while trying my best to segregate myself from my former self. Allahu akbar.21

I think I remember the moment when I cracked, when my cynicism got the best of me. I was driving to the sound of the Azan, the no longer mystic-sounding call to prayer repeating continuously on my car’s disk drive. It had been a year or two since I had listened to the radio and without thinking, I turned it on. 22

The tune was a simple love song. I don’t care to remember which one, but at that moment everything felt okay. My mind began to wander. As quickly as I had turned it on, I switched it off. That wasn’t me anymore, I thought. Whatever the singer was whining about didn’t apply to me. There was a reason Islam might warn against music, innocent sounds that sow seeds before awareness begins. It made sense then, but became foggier as time passed and as wayward thoughts crept up like weeds in the night. I turned the music back on. I was sitting on a cultural landmine and something within me was about to blow.23

“You know, it’s not easy being a foreigner in your own country.” I would tell Amjad, later. “It’s conflicting.” I added, contemptfully.24

“Tell me everything.” he replied, with a billowing smile.25

We were eating lunch at a popular Indian restaurant in the suburbs. A flat-screen TV blared in the background and a Bollywood star was singing about desi girls, while a throng of white girls danced behind him.26

“Where’d you get that scar?” I asked. His hand instinctively rose to meet the misplaced flesh above his left eyebrow, as his face upturned.27

“Ah, this! In defense of Lal Masjid,” he declared. “The government was too wrong, killing those women and children.”28

The Red Mosque… he had told me all about it. He was a big guy, but they beat him pretty bad and left him unconscious in the street. I smiled at him and my eyes glazed over in admiration.29

“Sometimes I too feel like I’m fighting Islam, or for Islam, I’m not sure which…” I added tentatively, becoming inaudible towards the end. 30

He leaned back and did a panoramic once over of me. He looked at me quizzically as if he thought maybe he knew, but was not altogether sure what I might be trying to say. My hands remained clenched together next to my huddled knees, shaking slightly.31

“There’s been something you’ve been trying to tell me for a while now. What is it, Bhabhi?” he asked.32

Bhabhi, pronounced ‘Bobby’, meaning a related sister, was used to denote a sign of respect. It was also my middle name. As soon as I heard the word, my mind would snap to attention. I instinctively looked behind me towards the front door, which I was sure was left gaping wide open and thought about what would happen if Jabir came barging in at that very moment. It would look very bad for me, a wife alone with another man, in secret, even if he was family.33

“Does this have something to do with Amna, bhabhi?” Amjad repeated in earnest.34

“You know, my husband…. he’s a good man. I owe him my life, really. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be….. well, honestly I don’t know where’d I’d be, but not in a good place, I’m sure.” I said, a little too animated, exasperated at the end. 35

“Where is he right now, anyway?” Amjad asked.36

“You don’t know?” I answered, mockingly. “He went to Pakistan, this morning!” 37

“Well, what’s the hurry?” he responded, with a startled laugh.38

“He’s gone to marry off his sister.” I said, in a monotone voice, my mouth tight-lipped.39

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? They’ve been looking someone for Amna for quite some time.” he said, innocently enough.40

I rolled my eyes and turned my head away, gaining composure. “You know, I just don’t understand this! It’s like you guys turn into different people as soon as you cross the border. All this talk about integrity, ha! You force the women to live with the burden of your virtues while you commit all sorts of contemptuous acts.”41

He paused. “Well, you’re right, I mean we are a backwards bunch, but I’m only one man. Why are you saying all this?”42

“She doesn’t want to marry this Canadian guy. She thinks he’s fat and arrogant.” I blurted out, a little too matter-of-factly. “She’s in love with her cousin, or I should say, your brother.”43

“Kamran?” he said, in disbelief. “But, he’s only a child.”44

“He’s twenty-four, and so is she.” I said. “They’ve been ‘in love’ for nine years now. Now they found out and…” 45

“Jane, you’re a good Muslim girl, but you know how it is over there. It’s best to stay out of this family stuff.” he said, shaking his head. “And, you know my father… he goes around and… the family doesn’t even respect us, saying we’re all like him!” 46

I stood up to leave, bumping the chair behind me. It made a terrible sound as it scraped against the linoleum and I sat back down. I had to make him understand somehow. He was an elder to my husband and they both emigrated together. Jabir would listen to him, I was sure. 47

“I’m not a good Muslim!” I nearly screamed, before hushing my voice a bit. “Don’t you see? Whatever they’re afraid of is standing right here, and I can’t live this lie anymore! I’m the one who is sacrificing the integrity of this family. I’m a fraud.”48

“Jane, you don’t have to tell me this. If you did something in your past, everyone’s already looked past all that. They love you.” he said. 49

But, I did have to say it, I had to tell someone. I laid it out pretty clearly, not sparing details, about times I’d passed out and didn’t remember what I had taken or who I’d been with. I’d traveled to places no one knew about and let faceless strangers consume the best of me.50

“I’m leaving my husband. I’m only a token for him. He would never accept me if I was not white.” I added, rather abruptly. I left Amjad sitting there, dazed. I was sure he would never look at my face again.51

Jabir stayed abroad for six months in all. When he found out about Amna’s secret wishes to marry her cousin, he rushed to defend the honor of the family and booked the first flight home. Being the older brother and bearing the same responsibility as a father when it came to his sister’s marriage, I was sure he was going to convince everyone to get her hitched the moment he landed. Amna was such a sweet and selfless girl and she would submit to their will, if pressured. When you looked into her eyes, you could get a glimpse of unrecognized elegance, a sense of pride and dignity that I had never seen before. And, she was still genuinely so happy! 52

She was one of those precious girls taught to endure and accept her fate, whatever it may be, so long as family and faith was still at the center. How could I question her love, even if it was her first and only crush? I was willing to lay it all on the line for her, the same I would do for my own daughter. It was so strange how the ideals of feminism I was ready to fight for in my earlier days had taken this strange twist so that I was now ready to insist on a young girl’s right to marry her first cousin. Besides, it wasn’t the thought of Amna marrying inside the family that had upset them, there were plenty of married cousins in the family. It boiled down to Amjad’s dad and allegations of drinking, among other things.53

Well, in the end, Amna didn’t marry the Canadian, but she didn’t marry her cousin, neither. I never knew how the situation really played out and Jabir never told me. I wanted to ask, but thought I had potentially done enough harm. I retreated back under the rhetoric, the voice that told me loyal wives don’t ask probing questions. Last time I spoke to Amna she was excited about a new prospect, a fresh proposal.54

I did a lot of soul-searching those months when my husband was gone. He wasn’t a bad man, his intentions were good, and I couldn’t leave him, of course. I remembered what it felt like being a bright-eyed teenager setting out into the world for the first time. I really believed that the universal love that inhabited me could heal all social ills, and collectively, we could change the world. When Jabir returned, I let him know in subtle ways, that the path to my heart wasn’t through brute force, but through compassion and empathy. I wasn’t going to fear him anymore and eventually our marriage settled into a pattern of normal grievances, and rare moments of astounding beauty.55

After some time, Amjad asked to meet me again and I enquired about what had happened. All he would say was, “You know, being a good Muslim, being a good human being, actually, it sometimes means going against what others may believe to be right.” We nodded our heads and smiled.56

So, Amjad and I, we would meet again, and again, always greeting with a hug. We found that our values and ideals were one and the same and he assured me that I should never hold back. Eventually, we got organized and set up a group helping new immigrants to adjust to their arrival in the city. We invited mullahs and professors from around the world to speak to students and civic groups, activists and laborers. We would go to events, all kinds of protests and demonstrations and raise our fists high to the injustices of the world. And, we talked to people, and we told them our unique stories. In brief, we found peace, and we helped them find theirs. Assalam alaikum.57