“I
think it’s best if you don’t tell anyone. It’s best for you and your family.”
This
is a sentence that we hear every time we are exposed as women to harassment,
insults, verbal abuse, physical or sexual assault. We are brought up on these
regressive ideas and we become obsessed with them – not out of conviction in
them but for fear of society’s censure and prejudice.
I
will allow myself to tell the story of "Lubna" (a pseudonym), one of
my close friends who wanted to share the story of her seven-year relationship
that was marred by violence. For years she was forced to endure, unable to put
an end to the ordeal, because of a threat constantly echoed by her partner:
“Remember the photo of us in bed? Think about that.”
“
He who claims to
be a progressive and boasts of his social values, but in reality is a vile
hypocrite who hides behind the facade of the "liberated man,” the
"feminist man" and the "courageous defender of women's rights."
Lubna had not
yet turned 18 when a chance encounter brought them together.
"I
did not know that this moment would be followed by seven years in which love
would mix with violence and all kinds of blackmail," she told me. “The
first time he stubbed out a cigarette on my face I was in agony, then I got
used to it, and my skinny body became his ashtray. When he stubbed it out on my
left cheek, my tears trickled on to the wound, and he apologized.”
Later, Lubna
went with him to the pharmacy, where he told the pharmacists that she fell and
burned her face by mistake. Lubna smiled at them and took the ointment they
prescribed. He grabbed her hand, and they went home together.
Lubna forced
herself to believe his apology. She told herself: "I love him. He just had
too much to drink. How could I not love him? He’s the same man I decided to
lose my virginity to!"
“As an 18-year old, I
could only think of that,” she told me.
To our bodies
that are deprived of motherhood by our societies
Why aren’t Arab
men spinsters as well?
Why do women
bring children into this world?
The days went by
and the methods of violence evolved, from putting cigarettes out on her body,
to slaps, and then into something more akin to a wrestling match. The only
difference was that it was just one fighter who hits, hits, hits, then gets
tired and stops. But like all episodes in this series of violence it would
always end with an apology and the infamous sentence of all men who abuse
women: "I couldn’t control myself."
"I
could not work up the courage to get away from him," said Lubna. "I
was stuck for three years in the cycle of fear. I loved my murderer, turned him
into my prison warden and for every slap I found him a new excuse.”
“Yes,
I was afraid of the threats,” she added. “If I left him he would go and tell my
family about our sexual relationship and I couldn’t bear that happening. We are
a conservative family, and premarital sex is unacceptable, a sin. And of course
the most important thing is what will people say about our daughter.”
Lubna decided to
live with the idea that he loved her, but that he could not control himself.
She became an alcoholic, which she found was her only escape from the pain.
But there was
one episode that rivaled the others in Lubna’s mind during those seven years.
"We
met at home with some friends, we chatted, we laughed, and just after midnight
they left,” she said. “He walked them down to the building entrance and when he
came back he discovered that the elevator had gone up to our floor.”
“To
this day, all I can remember are the countless blows that he inflicted on me
with the excuse that I was trying to provoke him,” she added. “I remember him
saying, ‘Did you call up the elevator to make me mad?’”
In that
three-bedroom house, Lubna decided to hide in a dark place between the closet
and the wall so he would not see her. She passed out there from fatigue and the
beatings, and he fell into deep, drunken slumber. Lubna woke up in the morning,
her body covered with bruises. She could not look into the mirror for more than
a minute. Then, for the first time in seven years, she was the one who
apologized to him: "I kissed him on the forehead and that was the farewell
kiss," she said.
She added:
“Seven years of fear, anxiety and pain. I decided then to end it. I decided to
tell my family that the sadness that they had been asking me about for years
was the result of my violent relationship. I told them that I was not a virgin
and that my sexual relationship with him had prevented me from leaving him
because I had been afraid to make them feel ashamed.”
"I
did not know that they would hug me so lovingly, I did not know that they would
stand by me,” she said. “Maybe if I had known I would have spared myself years
of pain and torment.”
Do the people
that we live amongst know that if they give up their worn-out traditions,
despicable mores and prejudices, that the number of victims of crime, rape,
murder and "honor killings" will decrease? Does the society in which
we live know that we women have the right to be free in our bodies and way of
life? Does the society in which we live know that without the existence of
these customs and traditions, we could have stood up and said:
I'm being
physically abused!
I'm being raped!
I'm being
harassed!
To say it
without fear or anxiety.
Have mercy on
us. Stop it with your platitudes and moralizing because your antiquated ideas
make us suffer. Because my honor does not consist of a drop of blood on a
bedsheet.
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