Rising from the ashes

All those years I kept hoping he’d realise his mistake and apologise, and then I could forgive everything and we’d go back to normal,” narrates 55-year-old Sabaa Haider with a faraway look in her eyes. As she recounts for the first time in ages, one can well imagine that she is momentarily reliving the crises and emotional turmoil from 25 years ago.

“Oh, the first few months were fine. Everything was great. But when I hadn’t had a child for 9 months, my in-laws began to act out. My mother-in-law began to pressurise my husband, saying she wanted to play with his kids ‘before she died’. That’s when the taunting started, slowly, but then so much more regularly. Who’d have thought it’d take me all these years to break free from him?”

As she utters the phrase ‘break free’, she has a sense of triumph. That Sabaa Haider is a boss woman, no one can doubt. Then she chuckles and says, “It was long overdue.”

I had to agree, after being married to an abusive partner for around 20 years, emancipation most certainly was overdue! However in a country like Pakistan, where social life is carefully curated and family considered the holy grail of one’s existence, breaking out of a marriage, no matter how abusive, is no mean feat. In 1999, Samia Sarwar’s family arranged for her murder for this idea. They felt her desire to divorce her abusive husband would ‘dishonour’ the family.

In fact, in our society, girls are brought up to raise families and, for the most part, their entire grooming is for the sole purpose of ‘looking after’ her husband and kids. But what if marriage isn’t happy? Or the man chosen to be her ‘better half’ isn’t all that much better?

For 56-year old writer and poet Munawar Sultana Butt, things went downhill very early in her marriage. “I was a captain in the army, and had a decent career when I got married. But one of the first things I was told to do was quit my job. My in-laws said I was ‘allowed’ to continue with my writing career, but that I had to quit my job. I wanted to get along with them, so I complied.”

30-year old Ruba, a working woman from Karachi, shares a similar experience. “I fell in love with a colleague,” she sighs. “By the time I started seeing the red flags, my family was already involved. It was anger. Relentless anger. Once, after our Nikkah in 2017, we had some argument and he threw a tray at my head. I was horrified.”

Before I could even ask the obvious question of why she didn’t leave him there and then, Mahum, a 25-year old human rights activist, shakes her head as she asks, “It’s always the same. I bet he broke down and cried after?”

Ruba nods in agreement and Mahum looks visibly furious, “That’s the cycle. They yell at you and apologise, then they slap you and apologise, then they beat you to an inch of your life and apologise. Then one fine day they kill you and say they’re sorry.”

One may very well wonder why women put up with this?

“For the most part, women are told to put up with it. It’s no secret. You hear all those movies telling you that the only way a woman leaves her husband’s house is on her deathbed. And since they don’t really have anywhere to go, it’s disturbing really, given how many women actually do end up dead at their husbands’ hands.” says Mahum.

And she’s not wrong. In 2018, 180 women were reported to be murdered in their households – in 2019, the figure rose to 217. According to a report published in a local newspaper, over 5000 women were brought to only five state-run shelters in 2020.

“I’m not surprised, really,” Mahum shakes her head sadly. “And I bet that the real number is much higher. These are just reported cases, we all know countless women who don’t report the abuse, or whose families don’t press charges if they’re beaten to an inch of their lives, or even murdered.” She suddenly breaks the gloom that’s descended upon these women by chirping “but things are changing now. It’s not as difficult as it used to be once. Women are beginning to break free.”

Break free. There it was again. Mahum and Sabaa aren’t the only two people who describe their divorces or ‘khulas’ as breaking free. Ruba uses similar words. “I kept letting things slide. By the time I started seeing the red flags. My family was involved, but when he cheated on me, and bullied my two-year old niece, I knew he wasn’t the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”

There is no denying that over the past several decades, as media and social media have grown, so have women’s awareness of their rights. Where it took Munawar Sultana and Sabaa decades to decide to leave their husbands, Ruba made her decision within a year and half of knowing him. The reason? Financial independence.

Sabaa decided to stay with her husband despite his abuse because she was afraid to leave her kids. “I had kids, five in fact, and I didn’t want to live off someone else’s scraps. So I stuck with him, even though the abuse just got worse. He would come home drunk; have parties late into the night with his friends. I even had to get a job to help him support his family. Verbal abuse gave way to physical abuse pretty quickly. But I was stuck.”

Munawar had a tough time too. She says that when she filed for khula her husband did everything within his power to make the process hard. “He wouldn’t show up to court hearings, and even now I’m fighting for my daughter’s right. He was supposed to provide for her, if not me!”

However, while the stigma attached to asking for a khula is still present, an increased awareness among women about their rights and their refusal to put up with abuse is changing things. Ruba, for instance, claims things were much easier for her.

“For me, breaking free was the easiest part of the ordeal. When I decided I wanted out, I did. My family was super supportive and my father said: jo is qaabil nahi hai, usay iss qaabil bana kyun rahi ho? (When someone isn’t worth the effort, why are you treating him as though he is?)

Besides, I already had a job so I wasn’t concerned about the finances so much. It wasn’t tough.”

In 2018, 180 women were reported to be murdered in their households – in 2019, the figure rose to 217. According to a report published in a local newspaper, over 5000 women were brought to only five state-run shelters in 2020. But things are changing now. It’s not as difficultas it used to be once. Women are beginning to break free.

“You know,” says Mahum, looking at the group with a curious look in her eyes, “I’ve just realised. All stories of abuse sound the same, don’t they? The time changes, people in the stories change, but the experiences, the narratives, they don’t change. Because at the root of it all is simply that they don’t see women as worth much, especially if it’s their wives.”

All the others nod enthusiastically, and Munawar adds, “My daughter was very young, when she got ill one day. He drove me over to my mother’s and never really came back. I tried to work it out with him, but my sister-in-law had already implied she was adamant to keep me out, so she did.”

“For me the breaking point came when my mother got diagnosed with fourth stage cancer, and my husband wasn’t there to support me,” recalls Sabaa. “All he did was let me know that the utility bill were piling. After that I just decided I was done.”

But all these women had one more thing in common: they had all decided to not let their troubled marriages get in the way of their growth. They decided that the way out of their problems wouldn’t be another marriage, but self-reliance.

“I was traumatised by what had happened already and on top of that everyone expected me to leave my daughter if I got married. There was no way I was doing that,” Munawar fumes as she emphasises how much she adores her only child.

“Exactly!” adds Sabaa, “since my khula was only four years ago, I was also completely off the idea of marriage. Instead I wanted to focus on me, provide for my children and just be at peace. There’s so much more to life than another marriage. I work hard and struggle even now, but I’m at peace. And that’s all that matters.”

Ruba agrees, “I don’t have any intentions of marrying… at least for the next three to four years. It isn’t really important for me. I want to have a career with a few good friends, mental peace, and – a cat!”

It was fascinating to note that despite the troubles and hardships these women had faced they were all as proud and confident as ever. And I found myself unable to ask the one question that hangs over every woman in the country:

Loug kiya kahain gay? (What will people say?) Or rather in this context: What did people say?

Sabaa laughs, “I was around 50 when I got my divorce and still my khalas were so mad that they stopped talking to me! They said I should just let his name hang next to mine and get separated. And of course for a while people gossiped, but then found new topics”

While Munawar and Ruba agree, I suspect that perhaps, because of their education and as a result of belonging to the relatively better-off segments of the society, these women may have experienced lesser backlash.

What about women from poor families and more conservative mind-sets, would they agree? Would breaking free be easy for them too?

Mahjabeen*, a woman who got married when she was 25 and who has been separated from her husband for several years is surprisingly more assertive than the others as she denounces these ‘loug’, “What does it matter?? When I was out of money to feed my child and was painting my neighbours’ houses for measly 2000 rupees, no one said anything. Now, I couldn’t care less what people think and say of me! When you have the moolah, they all shut up!”

Belonging to a family of 10, Mahjabeen* grew up with 8 sisters, and when she separated from her husband for the first time, she worked as a painter, electrical, decorator and countless other odd jobs to feed her son. “Then I learnt how to ride a motorbike, now I train girls in my locality to do that. I tell them to be independent and not

rely on men. There’s nothing they can’t do. But of course,

people will always gossip, I’ve been slandered and my ‘character’ has been called into question several times.”

The others agree. In fact, perhaps, all women in Pakistan know what Mahjabeen is talking about, for when all else fails, one can always raise questions on a woman’s character to make her sound dubious. But that hasn’t stopped any of these brave women for taking a stand for their own happiness.

“I now work at an NGO that works to impart financial literacy to people from low-income houses. In fact, that’s where I met Mahjabeen,” shares Sabaa.

Mahjabeen smiles and adds, “Recently I bought a car, I teach driving too!”

Munawar and Ruba too feel that despite their struggles, they’ve fared well on their own.

“I have a lovely daughter who has studied at some of the best schools. She’s a brilliant writer and has never disappointed me,” says Munawar.

As my time with these women comes to an end, I ask them what they would suggest to other girls. They all agree that financial independence is of paramount importance. Sabaa sums it up beautifully when she says,

“Every woman needs to stand on her feet first. Being alone is not lonely, it is a freedom. It teaches one self-love and self-care. No girl should allow herself to be abused or exploited. That is not to say she shouldn’t try to compromise, but she shouldn’t become a doormat. If we allow ourselves to be exploited like that, we will die before we even live.”

The writer tweets as @the_zainini and can also

be reached at zainabmir43@gmail.com