A Good Wife

by Samra Zafar

  I wanted to tear the cotton out so he could breathe. I wanted to get him out of the room. He must be so cold, I thought. And then my mind went blank.

  I don’t know how long I had been standing there when I felt a hand on my arm. “Time to go,” someone said. But how could I leave? Papa would be so scared to be left all alone in that room.

  I stood my ground but was quickly engulfed by a riot of voices. One of them was mine. I was shouting “No!” Then the touch of hands on my arms, my shoulders, my back. I don’t remember moving my feet. It was as if my family was somehow propelling me out the door.

  * * *

  The next day my father’s casket was brought to a relative’s house in Islamabad. From there, the men escorted it to the burial grounds while the women stayed behind, continuing to mourn at home. My sisters and I were weeping and distraught as we stood on the road, watching as the hearse disappeared from view. My mother had remained inside. As we walked back into the house, our arms wrapped around each other, we tried to calm ourselves. We were beginning to realize that our fully exposed grief was only causing my mother more pain.

  It was late afternoon, the men back from the burial, the women wandering around holding out plates of pulao and korma, trying to get people to eat a little. Warda’s new husband had arrived from Karachi in time for the burial. He was sitting with my sister, holding her as she cried on his shoulder. I couldn’t stop myself from looking over at them again and again. My brother-in-law was murmuring softly to my sister, blanketing her with words of comfort. My sorrow was now edged with envy. How I needed that kind of attention and affection right now.

  A short time later, my Uncle Aziz came into the bedroom I had retreated to, with his cellphone in his hand. “It’s for you, Samra,” he said.

  I put the phone to my ear and heard Ahmed.

  “He’s gone,” I said, starting to cry. “Ahmed, my papa’s gone.”

  “I know, jaan, I know.” I let the soft kindness of his voice wrap around me. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m coming. I’m in London right now. I’ll be in Karachi when you arrive tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I sniffed. I was falling into Ahmed’s long-distance embrace.

  “Don’t worry, Samra, love. I’ll be there soon.”

  I had never wanted to see him as much as I did right then.

  * * *

  Ahmed put his hand gently on my head and pulled me into an awkward side hug. We were back in Karachi, alone in my aunt’s living room, but we knew that any intimacy would be seen as inappropriate in such public space. Instead of lingering in each other’s arms, we moved to the couch.

  Ahmed listened to me patiently as I talked and cried. I was comforted to have him near. Since the news of my father’s illness, I had felt a visceral need to be with him—the way I had when we were first married. I craved his tenderness and his love, the affection and support he had showered me with in our early days together. But we couldn’t be truly alone right now. My mother and his sister Fatima were at the house as well. I got up to find Fatima and say hello. Ahmed came with me to give my mother his condolences.

  Mama and Fatima were in one of the bedrooms. After chatting briefly, Fatima suggested that I go back to her house for a while. “You can have a nap there,” she offered. “We will take care of Aisha while you rest.”

  I looked over at my mother. As much as I wanted to be with Ahmed, I didn’t want to leave my family.

  “Don’t worry,” said Fatima. “We’ll bring you back this evening.”

  At her house I gratefully climbed the stairs and disappeared into Ahmed’s bedroom. The room was quiet and the bed soft. I curled up under the covers. Then I heard the door open. It was Ahmed. He crawled into bed with me, and I rolled over into his arms.

  This was what I had needed for weeks—the comfort of a long hug, of being held in my husband’s arms. I needed to talk to him, now that we had privacy, about the weeks of my father’s illness. And about how I felt now that he was gone. I needed to be listened to.

  But Ahmed pulled out of the hug after just a few seconds. His lips found mine, his hands began to move across my body. During our five years together, we had spent months and months with absolutely no physical contact. But when Ahmed came to me, I never turned him away. I had been told what a wife’s duty was, and I had always complied.

  But at this moment, I simply couldn’t. I pulled back from him. “Ahmed,” I said, “I don’t think I can do this right now.”

  He moved closer to me again and returned his hands to my hips and breasts.

  “You can’t blame me,” he said. “You’ve been away for three months.”

  The quiet comfort I had felt since talking on the phone with him just a couple of days before was utterly gone in that instant. In its place—a shattering sadness and a frisson of fear.

  Ahmed began to remove my clothes, and I didn’t stop him. Tears coursed down my face. Suddenly he stopped. “Are these scratches on your breasts?” he asked, the familiar sound of jealousy and anger in his voice.

  “I’m seven months pregnant,” I reminded him. “They’re stretch marks.”

  I didn’t say another word. All my energy was focused on trying to numb myself as I lay still beneath him.

  The following minutes were the worst of my entire life. Worse than any of the shouting or pushing or hitting. As Ahmed satisfied himself, waves of despair washed over me. And each time I closed my eyes, all I could see was my father’s grey face, the cotton sticking out of his nostrils.

  When Ahmed was done, he moved off me and settled onto the other pillow. “So,” he said. “How are you? Do you want to talk about your father?”

  I couldn’t believe he could now ask this. Everything between us had just changed. It was as if we were standing on opposite sides of a huge canyon. There was no way my voice could broach that distance, no way to share my thoughts and feelings about my father’s death with him.

  “I need to take a shower,” I said, getting up from the bed.

  “Yes, best you do that. It looks bad for me to be up here too long while baji is downstairs,” he said, getting dressed quickly and leaving the room.

  Standing in the shower, I turned the water on full blast, hoping the sound would cover up my wrenching sobs. Why had I thought that my neediness would bring Ahmed back? Why had I expected things to be different? I had lost my father—and I had fooled myself into thinking I had someone else to lean on.

  * * *

  I spent one more night at my aunt and uncle’s house before joining Ahmed at Fatima’s. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t resist the pressure from Ahmed and his sister. We spent a few quiet days there, Ahmed bringing me back and forth to visit with my family, before he became restless. He began to arrange days out with his friends—shopping trips, meals and other entertainments. Chit-chat and laughter were simply not in my command, but Ahmed couldn’t understand why I was unable to have fun.

  “Why have you always got such a long face when we’re out?” he complained.

  The social activities Ahmed arranged for us meant that I had less and less time to spend with my family, less and less time to grieve the way I needed to. One day, when he announced “our” plans for the afternoon, I finally let my frustration out. “I thought you came to Karachi to support me,” I snapped, “not to have a vacation!”

  “You’re being selfish, Samra,” he said. “You’re only thinking about yourself.”

  “I just lost my father,” I said. “I’m thinking about my family.”

  My words seemed to have some effect. The next day, Ahmed offered to take my mother, my sisters and their husbands out for dinner to cheer us up. Mama opted to stay home—she wanted to observe iddat, the Muslim tradition that prohibits a widow from leaving the house for four months after her husband’s death. We brought home some food for her instead.

  The evening was a much-needed break from the sadness that was consuming our lives. But being with my sisters only underlined th
e contrast between how I felt when I spent time with my family and how I felt with Ahmed’s. When he started talking about the two of us returning to Canada, my certainty about remaining with my family returned full force.

  “I want to stay with my mother,” I explained the next day. “She is going to have to move from Ruwais. She’ll need the help.”

  Now that my father was gone and my mother was not working, she would not be allowed to remain in the United Arab Emirates. That meant she would have to pack up the house and move back to Karachi.

  “You’re coming back!” Ahmed said. His voice was hard. “This isn’t your home. That isn’t your family anymore. Your home is in Canada. Your family is back there now.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “And where would you give birth?” Ahmed demanded.

  I had thought of this. “We won’t have to leave Ruwais right away. I can have the baby there. The baby will be a Canadian citizen no matter where it is born—because you and I are.”

  “You’re pregnant. And you’ll have a tiny baby soon. What help can you be? You will just be a burden to your mom.”

  I hesitated. There was some truth in that, but it didn’t change how I felt. Before I could rally any more arguments, Ahmed turned towards the bedroom door. He knew he had scored the point.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said as he disappeared from the room.

  * * *

  The next time we spoke of my return to Canada we were with my mother, at my aunt and uncle’s house. Ahmed knew I hadn’t changed my mind. He had dispatched Fatima to talk to me after our initial conversation, and despite her insistence that my in-laws were now my real family and that I had been raised without sufficient guidance about my wifely duty, I stood my ground.

  We assembled in my mother’s bedroom in order to have a little privacy. My mother and I were sitting on the bed as Ahmed stood stiffly nearby.

  “Knock some sense into your daughter,” Ahmed said to my mother. Any gentleness he had been adopting around my grieving family was gone. My mother looked over at me, clearly startled by his tone.

  “What’s going on, Samra?” she asked.

  I glanced at Ahmed. His face was stony. I summoned my courage. “I don’t want to go back,” I said quietly. “I want to stay with you. To help you pack up . . .”

  “Your daughter is being so difficult,” Ahmed exploded. “Her priorities should be with her husband and his family.”

  I turned to my mother. I could see how troubled she was to be caught in this conflict. My mind went back to the Mississauga condo bedroom, when Ahmed had upbraided her about my behaviour. My offer to help her was a weak excuse to stay, and I was exposing her to Ahmed’s temper once again. But if we could just get through this, I rationalized, I would make up for it once he was gone.

  “I just need to be close to you now, Mom,” I confessed to her. “Please don’t send me away.”

  My mother sighed. She looked drained. “But you’re pregnant, Samra,” she said. “You can’t be of much help to me in this state. Maybe you should listen to Ahmed.”

  “Listen to what your mother is saying, what everyone is trying to tell you. You are thinking only of yourself. You are being so stubborn, so immature, so selfish!”

  It was hopeless. I looked down at my hands folded in my lap. I could feel tears filling my eyes. I willed them not to spill down my cheeks.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?” Ahmed demanded.

  There was nothing left to say. I was silent, refusing to look up.

  I felt Ahmed’s hand under my chin. He was jerking my head up, his face hovering over mine. “Say something!” he shouted. “Why don’t you say something?” I didn’t open my mouth. I closed my eyes so that I wasn’t looking at him.

  I felt his hand leave my chin, and then my head snapped back. Ahmed had just jabbed two fingers in the middle of my forehead.

  “Ahmed, that hurt!” I called out, tears spilling down my cheeks.

  “Then why didn’t you answer me, bitch?” As his words struck me, so did his hand. Two blows across the side of my head. “Look at the daughter you raised,” he spat at my mother. “I’m so fed up with this woman.”

  And then he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

  Shaking, I got up from the bed and sank at my mother’s feet. “Please, please, Mommy,” I cried. “Don’t send me back. I’ll tutor, I’ll clean houses, I’ll clean toilets. I won’t be a financial burden. I’ll work five jobs, I’ll support you. Please don’t make me go.”

  My mother was crying now, too. “Your father is gone, Samra. I have two more daughters to care for. I just can’t take responsibility for you.” She sounded as desperate as I felt, but I just couldn’t stop myself from begging.

  “You saw the way he treats me. Please . . .”

  “Go back to Canada,” my mother said. “Use your rights there to leave him.”

  Our sorrowful exchanged lasted another hour. My mother, still deep in her own loss and mourning, simply could not consider complicating her life any further. If I remained with her, pressure and harassment from Ahmed and his family would surely follow. There might even be legal action. And at a time when my mother and sisters needed the support of our extended family, my separation from Ahmed, even if it were presented as an attempt to help my mother, would likely create talk—and disapproval. My mother encouraged me to find a way to protect myself in Canada. When we ran out of words we sat next to each other on the bed, our bodies leaning into each other and our fingers entwined.

  Eventually, Ahmed came back into the room. “What have you decided?” he demanded brusquely.

  I let go of my mother’s hand and looked to the floor. Every part of me was screaming “No!” But I didn’t say that. Instead I took a deep breath.

  “I’m going back with you,” I said.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 11

  IN BUSINESS

  Another drive to another airport. The last leg in a series of excruciating advances and retreats on this trip home. A flight from Abu Dhabi back to Canada waited for us.

  Ahmed sat rigid in the front seat of the cab while Aisha and I slumped in the back. My little girl leaned against me, sedated by the hum of tires and racing landscapes. I was somewhere far away, trying to numb myself with memories of happier times. The hum quieted, the landscapes slowed. Our cab was pulling into a gas station. I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. The image of a glass cabinet flashed through my mind. Well, not really a cabinet. Just shelves, pieces of glass, hinges, a pile of screws, all laid neatly across the living-room floor. It was what my mother, sisters and I had first seen when we entered my parents’ house in Ruwais after the funeral. A cabinet that my father had started to assemble before we left for the wedding. Now just an unfinished project. A project that would never be finished. A mute testimony to a life interrupted. Like the cabinet, we were left undone.

  I opened my eyes. Ahmed was getting out of the cab. “I’m going to get some cigarettes,” he said. I nodded, lost in thought. Then a few seconds later, a loud crack against the glass next to my head. He was rapping on the window. “What are you staring at?” I could hear his voice booming outside the car.

  Startled and confused, I rolled down the window. “What?” I asked.

  Ahmed’s anger blew through the window. “What man are you looking at?” I stammered out a few words, but nothing could convince him that I had not been scanning the gas station parking lot for men. “You need to keep your eyes under control,” he barked, throwing the empty soda can he was holding onto the ground and stomping off to the convenience store.

  Ahmed had been possessively suspicious of me whenever we were out in public since the early days of our marriage. But now that I had made it clear I was ready to give up on married life, his scrutiny of my public behaviour was intensifying to the point of sheer paranoia. After he joined me on the trip, I had donned my hijab again. I had also started to wear an abaya. The long, robe-like dress was
becoming fashionable in the United Arab Emirates, although it wasn’t mandatory for women as it was in some Arab countries. But the loosely draped fabric was relatively cool and had the advantage of effectively hiding my seven-months-pregnant body. Covered in yards of fabric, I was hardly making my individual presence known in public, but Ahmed was not reassured by these acts of modesty. And he seemed intent on misunderstanding even my most innocent gestures.

  When Ahmed got back into the car, he sat in stony silence. We had hours of travel before us, but I was already in familiar territory.

  * * *

  Ahmed, Aisha and I arrived back in Mississauga on April 11, 2006. As I got out of the car and walked up to the door of the salmon-coloured house, I felt myself sinking in disbelief. How could I be here? It was just over a year since I had first returned to Ruwais thinking that I was escaping this place—and my in-laws—for good. And yet here I was, back at square one.

  Amma and Abba had met us at the airport. Amma gave me a hug, and Abba put his hand on my head in a gesture of fatherly affection. I started to cry. I wanted to believe that now my father was gone, they might be kinder to me. But only a few minutes after Amma and I had settled into the back seat of the car, her sympathy gave way to curiosity. She began to pepper me with questions about my father’s illness and final days. I could see Ahmed glaring back at me in the rear-view mirror—my answers were brief to the point of rudeness—but I simply could not go back to those painful days for Amma’s entertainment.

  Once we were in the house, Amma and Abba made it clear that “welcoming me back” was itself an act of kindness and compassion, one that necessitated no other delicacy.

  Everything Amma said to me in the next few days seemed to be tinged with triumph and condescension. When I asked her to move from in front of the refrigerator so I could get some milk for Aisha, she smirked and said, “Why, of course. I don’t want to upset you. You might run away again!”

  And she made plenty of not-so-subtle allusions to what I had “put the family through.”