A Good Wife

by Samra Zafar

  Ahmed couldn’t bear the idea of sitting together in a lawyer’s office to hammer out a separation agreement. He suggested I get a lawyer to work something out, and he would review and sign it. He would pay me back for the legal fees. I found a young woman who had recently passed the bar and got her started on the paperwork. Then I put the house on the market.

  Ten days after the house was listed, it sold, the closing date a mere four weeks away.

  It was a surreal time—I couldn’t quite believe what I had put in motion. And while I was relieved that Ahmed was being relatively calm and cooperative, I could hardly be sanguine in the face of so much uncertainty and new territory.

  For several days, I packed boxes, visited the lawyer and started a summer course that I had signed up for before I understood what lay ahead of me. But my focus was on finding a place for Aisha, Sonia and me to live. I flew around Mississauga looking for condos to rent, finally finding a nice two-bedroom not far from the university. I texted Ahmed that I had the lease and needed to meet up with him so he could sign it.

  A day went by and he didn’t text back.

  I sent him another message and waited.

  Another twenty-four hours elapsed. The landlord contacted me again. Without a co-signatory he would need the entire first year’s rent up front.

  That was, of course, impossible. Even if I sold all my wedding jewellery, all my furniture, every possession I had, I wouldn’t be able to come up with that kind of cash. What’s more, we had a thousand-dollar lawyer’s bill that needed to be paid.

  I texted Ahmed again. I was beginning to feel desperate. If I didn’t get back to the condo owner very shortly, I would lose the unit. And with only a few weeks until our house closed, it would be nearly impossible to find a suitable place to live before the girls and I had to move out. We would have no place to go. Amma had offered to let the girls and me move back in to their house, but it didn’t feel like a real option as Ahmed was living there.

  I sent him yet another pleading text. Please, Ahmed! You’re the one who suggested that we didn’t have to go to court. I just need the lease signed.

  This time, after a few seconds, my phone beeped.

  As I read Ahmed’s message, my mouth went dry. I dropped down into a chair, staring unbelieving at the words on my phone.

  LMAO! Talk with my lawyer!

  * * *

  My mother and I spent the evening in a panic. At one point, I had to leap from my chair to throw up in the bathroom. Finally, since neither of us knew what to do, I called the Assaulted Women’s Helpline once again. As always they were kind, but they said they couldn’t give me any legal advice. Instead they suggested that I apply for legal aid immediately.

  For the next three days, I was in and out of the Brampton courthouse, filling out pages of the legal aid application, explaining my story, pleading for help. I called my real estate agent as well, but as I suspected, there was no way to halt the sale of our house without incurring severe financial penalties. Next, I phoned a number of homeless shelters, my heart ricocheting in my chest as I did so. I’d heard many stories about the dangers of staying in these places, crowded as they were with desperate people.

  My fears hardly mattered. I was put on a waitlist, but no one had space for me and the girls.

  After a harrowing seventy-two hours, legal aid certificate in hand, I headed to the UTM Office of the Registrar. Now that I was separated, I hoped I’d be eligible for the Ontario Student Aid Program. But I knew that even if I received a grant, I wouldn’t get the money right away—and I still had nowhere to live. As I drove to the campus, my whole body felt as if it had been caught in an electrical field, the current singeing my nerves but keeping me in frenetic motion nonetheless. I had to remind myself to breathe.

  The financial aid officer was kind and supportive. She confirmed that I could now get financial assistance. But she could see that this good news did not erase the worry from my face. I explained about my impending homelessness.

  “Why don’t you go over to the Student Housing office and talk to them? It’s a long shot—their leases usually run September to August, so they probably won’t have any empty units. But you could try.”

  I thanked her and walked across campus.

  I entered the housing office holding my breath. It was all I could do to explain myself and what I needed. The receptionist smiled at me kindly, but she didn’t look hopeful. She buzzed the housing supervisor for me. Like the financial aid officer, the housing supervisor’s tone was warm and reassuring. When she heard my story, she looked thoughtful.

  “You know, I might actually have something. Let me go check.” With that, she disappeared back into her office. She reappeared a few minutes later with a smile on her face. She took my hand in hers. “Someone just broke their lease,” she said. “Let’s go over and look at the unit right away.”

  * * *

  Two days later, I was sitting in the middle of my new apartment’s living-room floor, staring at the set of keys in my hand. The place was tiny, much like the last apartment Ahmed and I had shared. And to describe it as shabby would be entirely too kind. The walls were painted a glossy yellowish-white—the colour of soured skim milk. The corners of the room were stringy with cobwebs; the windows, set high in the walls, were grimy and small. Thin, stiff dark-green commercial carpet stretched out in front of me. The kitchen, no bigger than my clothes closet back at the house, was outfitted with dated and dented miniature appliances. There were baseboard heaters but no air conditioning. It was only June, but already, intense heat pulsed through the stale air.

  And yet the place was a true gift. The university housing office had told me I could move in as soon as I wanted. They would be happy to wait for the rent until OSAP, my financial aid, came through and my teaching assistant job started. The five days in which I’d thought the girls and I were going to be homeless had been the scariest of my whole life. I looked around my cramped little apartment and burst into tears of sheer relief.

  I had found a place to start again.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 15

  ON MY OWN

  I was in my bedroom, stuffing clothes into green garbage bags. I’d hired a couple of university students to help me move my furniture into the apartment. There wouldn’t be a lot—I had sold my sofa in order to help pay the lawyer’s bill that Ahmed was obviously no longer willing to cover.

  But I couldn’t afford to pay the students for more than a couple of hours of work. In the end, it would take me five days and ten trips in my old van to hump the rest of our stuff into the apartment.

  It was while I was still packing up my clothes that I began to think again about what the counsellor had told me when I called after the near-choking incident. I needed to report the assault, she insisted, in order to protect myself.

  I had actually already called the police once. Just after Ahmed sent me the LMAO text (LMAO means “laughing my ass off”) he had showed up at the house to pick up the girls. When he pulled into the driveway, I went out to meet him, holding the separation papers the lawyer had drawn up. He might not have signed the lease, but I was hoping he might still sign these. I was going to have dinner with some neighbourhood women later. The sight of me in a dress, with my makeup done, holding the papers, set Ahmed off. He laughed at my request that he take the agreement.

  “Where are you going, dressed like a whore?” he demanded.

  I tried to reply as calmly as I could, but he wasn’t going to ease up. “Do you think you’re some kind of hotshot, that you’ll survive on your own? Within weeks you’ll come crawling back.”

  He threw the travel mug he was holding on the ground and started to kick the garage door. Then he hustled the girls into the car and squealed out of the driveway. I was rattled. Even though we were living apart, we would have to continue to interact because of the girls. But now that I had left him, what reason might he have for self-control? What if he didn’t leave next time? What if he managed to get
into the house, to get me alone? And what if he took the kids and didn’t return them?

  I got into my minivan and drove to the police station. Once there, I explained to the officer at the reception desk what had just happened. The officer asked if I wanted to press charges.

  I shook my head. Why had I come? What did I want? I had no idea. I just knew that I was frightened. It was only a matter of time before Ahmed lost his temper again.

  “Would you like us to go talk with him, give him a warning?” the officer suggested. I nodded.

  After the visit from the police, Ahmed had been more restrained when we talked to or saw each other.

  But ever since then, I couldn’t stop thinking about the lengths he seemed willing to go to, to break me emotionally—even if the result was that his own children didn’t have a place to live. Of course, I was worried his actions might turn physical again, but it was more than that.

  I had suffered at Ahmed’s hands for nearly a decade, and yet despite the hurt and humiliation I had protected his image with my extended family and his. I had acted the good wife with all his friends. I had done what I was told. But why should I continue to pretend? Why did he deserve this kind of compassion from me? I had been told by the helpline and my counsellors that reporting abuse was important. Now I wanted to do the right thing.

  I finished tying up the garbage bag I’d been filling and went to tell my mother that I would be going out to run an errand.

  * * *

  When I got to the police station, I recognized the officer I’d spoken with the first time. “I want to file a report,” I said, “to make a full statement about what I’ve been through.”

  The officer explained that if I did make a statement, the police would have the authority to press charges—and I would not be able to stop the process.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You’ve been separated for several months, and you don’t have bruises now, so there’s no way for you to prove what happened.”

  “I understand,” I said. “It’s up to you if you want to press charges. I just want the story on record. I just want to have my version of events out there.”

  The officer nodded and told me to follow him.

  The interview room was stark—just a table and a few chairs. One wall was covered with a mirror. I knew it was a two-way mirror and that other officers were likely to be behind it, watching and recording what I had to say. The officer sat at the table across from me. He had a notebook in front of him.

  “When you’re ready,” he said.

  I started in, recounting every time Ahmed had hit me or kicked me. Every time he’d shoved me down or slapped me. Every time he’d broken my things or threatened me. Every incident of abuse I could think of. At times, I felt oddly detached, as if I were talking about someone else’s life. At others, I experienced a rush of relief, as if holding Ahmed accountable was allowing me to let go of the lingering feeling that I had somehow deserved it all. That it was my fault.

  All the while, the officer in front of me nodded and gave me smiles of encouragement. A few times, much to my surprise, anger creased his face as I described Ahmed’s actions.

  Wow, I thought, even a man thinks that what happened was wrong.

  At the end of three hours, I was exhausted. The officer looked at me kindly. “The problem here is that all of this is historical. Does anyone else know? Did you tell anyone?”

  I mentioned that I had talked with both my family doctor and the counsellors at the university health centre. He asked if I would sign a consent form, allowing them to look at those records. I was happy to do that.

  As the officer walked me out of the interview room, he took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You did the right thing,” he said. “That was very brave of you.”

  * * *

  When I got home and told my mother, she was both shocked and deeply unsettled. She repeated the familiar refrain—what will people think? She worried about Ahmed’s future. She insisted that even if I was getting a divorce, my duty was to protect the family honour. The pride I had felt about telling the truth quickly withered in a gust of fear and guilt.

  Those feelings only grew the following morning when I heard that Ahmed had been arrested and charged with four counts of common assault. Since it was Saturday, he would remain in jail until his bail hearing on Monday morning. Victims Services of Peel had called to inform me of the development and to let me know that once he was released, a restraining order would be put in place, prohibiting Ahmed from coming within five hundred metres of me. Also, a Children’s Aid Society worker would be coming to the house to talk with the children. It was all terrifying and utterly surreal.

  * * *

  By Monday, Sonia and Aisha were asking to see their father. Despite my reluctance to talk with anyone from Ahmed’s family, I called Amma. She was hostile but relatively quiet, no doubt scared by the police involvement in our lives. We agreed to meet in a grocery store parking lot, so she could take the kids for the afternoon.

  When my mother, the girls and I got out of the car a few hours later, it was clear this would be no calm transfer of the children.

  Amma came towards us screaming: “My poor son. They handcuffed him and took him away!” Then she turned to Aisha and Sonia. “Look what your mother has done. She has put your father in jail!”

  The tirade went on until both girls were crying uncontrollably, refusing to go with her. Amma and I agreed to drive to a nearby park to see if the girls would calm down. For almost an hour, we sat on the bench while she vented her outrage. Finally, she coaxed the kids into her car and took them off to see Ahmed.

  The drive back home with my mother was silent and tense. Once in the house, I could do nothing but sit watching the clock, terrified that Amma would not return the girls. She’d always said that Ahmed would get custody of them if we separated. I’d been educated by my counsellors to understand that this was not true, and came to regard the threat as a scare tactic to keep me in the marriage. But it was dawning on me that Ahmed and his mother could force me to fight to keep the children.

  I did get a call from Amma a few hours later, telling me to come and pick up the girls. But almost as soon as I hung up the phone, it rang again. This time, it was the police. Ahmed had reported me, claiming that my plan to come to the house to pick up the girls was putting him in danger of violating the restraining order.

  “But how am I supposed to pick up my kids from his house then? And how do I get them there for visits?” I asked.

  “Just be careful,” the officer said before hanging up.

  He had talked to me kindly, but his pointedly unhelpful answer seemed proof that my effort to move forward was not so much a bumpy road as a dark and almost impenetrable thicket. How was I going to manage it?

  * * *

  Since telling Ahmed that the marriage was over at the end of April, I’d been buffeted relentlessly by doubt. But the day I had to hand the house keys over to the real estate agent, remorse crashed into me like a tsunami. I’d waited for my own home for twelve years but had ended up in it for only seven months. I spent the morning walking through the empty house from room to room to room, while the same thoughts looped through my mind: I shouldn’t have made him angry. I shouldn’t have reported him. I shouldn’t have separated the girls from their loving father. I shouldn’t have given up.

  By the time I’d done the circuit several times, I was convulsed with tears and churning emotion.

  “Please call Ahmed,” I begged my mother. “Please apologize for me. Tell him I want him back. I’ll quit school. I’ll be quiet. I don’t want to leave,” I continued, rambling and incoherent, until my mother actually slapped me across the face.

  “Samra, what are you talking about?” she said, frustration tightening her voice. “This is just a house. I’ve seen what he’s done to you. Pull yourself out of this.”

  I stopped beseeching her but refused to move, sitting in the middle of the living-room floor, stari
ng at my lap as I let the tears wash down my face. Eventually my mother gave up talking with me and called one of the neighbours I had become friends with. The woman arrived at the door a few minutes later, and the two of them, my mother and my friend, each took one of my arms and dragged me, still sobbing, from the house.

  * * *

  It was a summer of soaring temperatures and staggering humidity, the kind of weather that makes walking down the sidewalk feel like moving headfirst through a bowl of stew.

  And while the heat made travelling outdoors unappealing at best, the atmosphere inside my new apartment was worse. Even in the early morning hours, the air was hot and viscous, a fungal scent hanging like a mouldy veil. It reminded me of my parents’ apartment in Pakistan but without the sanctuary of the air-conditioned bedroom.

  In the first few days, I continued to plead with my mother to intercede with Ahmed—to help me somehow return to my former life.

  My mother was clearly discomfited by both my emotional chaos and the stifling apartment. After two days in the new place she announced that she needed to return home.

  “Do whatever you want, Samra,” she said, “but do it on your own. I’m not going to help you with this madness!”

  Before she left, I got her to do one last favour for me—to accompany me to the Students’ Union office so I could ask about bursaries.

  I’d been a student at UTM on and off for three years, but I’d never crossed the threshold of the Student Centre, which housed the union. The centre was a gathering place—that I knew—and as such it was the kind of place that Ahmed considered rife with temptation and cultural corruption. Now that I was free to go there, I found myself intimidated and ill at ease. I’d interacted with a few students when the social glue was academic work, but I had no idea how to be around the general population in other situations. I wanted the security of being accompanied by someone I knew, who would be there if things went sideways.