By Aisha Sarwari
What are the odds that I move into a house in the elite F/11 sector of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad and our land lord turns out to be a wife-beater?
1 in 4, according to the United Nations report on gender 2007. Flip it around and the same applies to 25% of all women in this country are said to have faced violence from their male relative, be it a father, brother, uncle, husband or son.
Take this statistic to a new geographical location and nothing changes, the same 1 in 4 of all relatively empowered women of the developed world face domestic violence at some point in their life regardless of race or socio-economic standing. There are two profound differences though, a woman in the west is more mobile and flexible in terms of walking out of a relationship and even moving into a shelter with her kids, and she is more likely to get the abuser to incur some damage, be it financial, social or legal.
This woman in F/11 in a corner house with a beautiful lawn has no such chance. There is no weapon, no upper hand, or moral imperative she holds to his mindless violence. I heard loud noises coming from their house while my family was away, and at first I ignored them, assuming they are arguments with some random person in our side of the driveway. When they grew louder, it was apparent it was a domestic squabble, over some matter, water in the drive way that she should have gotten cleaned up. The mister was making demands, his wife was giving explanations. I reacted by ignoring it. What’s the point?
Soon, I heard the deafening thuds that beg a three act internal dialogue in your head, everything comes back, every character has an opinion and a role in this mind’s eye, while you struggle to decide if you are part or not. Now you’re a part, now you are not. He was hitting her. And that too real hard. I wondered what it was, knuckles, wall, just dragging, a couple of slaps, shoves, punches, or objects. There was also the simple wham that hit right near the eyes where it hurt the most. I kept saying to myself, I just got carpeting, curtains and air conditioning installed. I deserve a mental break, treat yourself, stay out of something you can’t affect.
This man who was now savage was salt and pepper haired. He watered his own garden everyday, Kissed his 3 year old son, was seemingly proper and respectful. His wife and I interacted a couple of times, she came across as sweet and informative, even knowledgeable. One of the first few things she said to me was, that her husband found it rather strange that I was singlehandedly involved with the hired help to construct a fenced wall for the pets and do all the carpeting, and she said, she too believed in doing things herself. Generally positive, definitely practical. In just a day we agreed to share duties of maintaining the gardens and cleaning the driveways.
The same woman was getting battered, so after about 15 minutes of her pleads and the children weeping, I couldn’t take it anymore, and decided to get downstairs, when I did, the impact of it only grew. She was being dragged against my wall. The wall I paid a year in advance to enjoy “peaceful and quiet living” as per the contract. I dwelled on trying to disperse the mulling dog from her by raising this point, I had to do something, I thought when I heard no sound but thuds right after she said, “Aren’t you a doing a great job of being a man, pick on someone weaker than you.” With my heart racing from the familiarity of life’s violence, and the tyranny of all unhealthy relations that my female relatives went though, I walk out expecting to see a scene. He’s dragged her in.
I walk to their main door and knock, but they can’t hear me over the recurring shouts. I knock harder, begging for a distraction. How could this clinically narcissist of a human not care about his new neighbors? I kept yelling out and knocking. When I thought of it, it did seem like something was wrong. Like most abused women she tends to repeat herself for needless clarification, she seemed a bit unsure, yet while she had a polite smile on her lips, her eyes were brave. As if she had to learn to be on the defensive and her hands seemed always prepared, she cupped them in each other.
Finally someone was walking toward the door, I stepped back, ready. She opened it. Her head has blood on the side, her hair was pinched apart. She looked at me as if she got back from a brisk workout. I heard noises and I want to make sure everything is ok, I said, and surprised myself for interfering in another’s household matter, just because I happened to be there. She surprised me by her answer, same old she said, battering. Her honesty made me nod. I said, oh, and walked away. The purpose was served. The momentum was broken.
I read somewhere that the most scary thing about helping is being involved. I would like to think that I worked against my fear and got involved. The probability that a woman’s life is in danger are very high, and my simple knock on the door is not enough. One needs to break these walls and protect these brave women to be truly empowered by being mobile, and by gaining some mutually assured destruction for peace in the household.
(Also by Aisha Sarwari: Being Woman in Pakistan. Also see Silent Against Domestic Violence and Former Wicket-Keeper, Current Wife-Beater. Artwork by Abro from Flickr).
@ this eternal problem very recently ” discovered by UNO ”
is a favorite topic of Feminists as if they have monopoly on
the subject, violence against women is part of general
violence in a violent society anywhere ! It is not suppose to be
the part of Pakistani culture, religion or traditions.
Pakistani politics is already the most violent among
new born countries of this century, the media plays the key
role in increasing violence as it comes from free access of
a fixed point of view propogated constantly on TV at homes
in private, teaching children how to be violent. Just watch
Pak media. !!!
Militancy does create some violence, but generally, a decent,
educated & cultured families do not manifest violence on any
one, as for remaining cool in situations is not in everybody’s
capacity, of course temperament is genetic as they say
(although I am not sure) .
Violence against women occurs in almost all cultures to varying degrees. However, it is institutionalized in many tribal/feudal cultures where misogyny is generally tolerated. Honor killings in many societies, including Pakistan’s, do not even get prosecuted … let alone punished. When honor killings do get prosecuted, some judges accept family honor as justifiable defense for murder of a female member of the family. This is very tough social problem that requires better awareness and major social re-engineering in our country. It will take people of goodwill with voluntary spirit such as Aisha Sarawi to tackle the issue systematically over many years to make a significant dent.
thank you ATP for regularly highlighting these serious issues
The first step is always speaking out about the problem
I am at a loss of words. A coward like that should be punished. I wonder how many “mocking birds” like her there are in Pakistan being killed every day.
I commend you for your courage to go and actually knock on that door in that moment. And for a very well written narrative.
Thanks a lot Aicha Sarwari,
everything lies in the details and you did a great job of making us go through them.
As a 12 years old, I once saw a man actually beating his wife on the roof top of his house with something like 20 passerbys watching the scene visible from the street. In fact some other women of the family also seemed to be involved in the beating, on the man’s side of course.
The poor woman on her knees was begging that bugger, who in turn was holding both her hands his left one and slapping her with the right. It was simply pathetic and ran for as long long as an hour may be. To me it seemed endless.
I am no chicken heart but, 30 more years down the road, those images still come back from time to time. I wish to have gathered support on the street to intervene and to stop the beating.
In fact as far as I remember, the fighting scenes on the streets of Pakistan were not an uncommon thing at that time. So may be those spectators including some young men did not even think it was abnormal.