“I have no feelings about you, and I don’t want a man to be intimate with. But I do want a home for my child. I want to be safe. Can you understand that?”
He nodded. “I want the same thing too, just to live as friends. Perhaps things might change later on, but for now I want to do exactly as you say.”
“I am glad.” I smiled. So did he. He looked younger when he smiled. He looked like a different man.
An unmarried couple would never live together in Iran back then, so since we were both looking for help and stability in the day-to-day, we agreed to marry soon. When I told my parents that the wedding would be in two weeks, neither of them were entirely happy, but I wondered whether secretly they were both relieved as well.
Asghar introduced me to his daughter, Cherie. She had been badly injured in the accident, fracturing her skull. She was one year old, and the doctors had spoken of possible damage to her brain. I thought she was beautiful, just like an angel. I knew that I could help her. I knew that I could take care of her.
There was so much to talk about, and Asghar wanted to know about Daniel and what life had been like for me since Mohammad died. He asked how much Mohammad’s pension was and how much other money I had. I told him that all the pension money went into an account for Daniel that my dad was in charge of. Asghar said he thought that was odd.
My dad was angry when I told him about the conversation. “You cannot trust that man,” he said.
I defended Asghar, but I wondered all the same.
“Why do you need to know about my money?” I asked him the next time he brought it up.
He held his hands wide and apologized immediately. “Annahita, I am so sorry. If I ever do anything wrong, it’s because I’m still so sad from losing my wife. All you ever need to do is tell me, and I will change whatever I need to change about myself.”
That was enough for me. I felt such sympathy for Asghar. I knew exactly what he had been through, and I understood just how hard it could be to think clearly when grief has its tightest grip on you. “It’s okay,” I said. “We will be okay.”
The wedding was simple. There was none of the ceremony that had mattered so much when I married Mohammad; no desperate search for the perfect dress, no quiet conversation with my dad outside the house as we waited for my new parents to arrive to collect me. There was just a car full of my and Daniel’s possessions taken over to Asghar’s house on that morning.
The mullah married us and left soon after. My parents and the rest of my family stayed for a meal. I don’t remember what we ate, but I know that soon my parents were talking about being tired and wanting to go home.
My family gone, I sat next to my new husband and looked about me at his relatives. They felt like strangers to me, but I hoped that in time that might change. Daniel would grow to know them all, and I hoped they would love him back.
I automatically flinched when Asghar placed his hand on mine. His grip was tight, and he held mine in place. “And now we’re going to bed!” he announced to the room, pulling me to my feet. There were smiles and a murmur of approval. I wanted to pull back my hand and tell him that this was not what we had agreed to, but standing there in a room of strangers I lost my voice.
When he closed the door behind us I spoke up. “I asked you to promise that you would not touch me. Why are you doing this?”
When it came, the first blow to my face caused more shock than pain.
The second slap was the one that hurt.
And it was the third that knocked me to the floor.
“Why? You promised, Asghar!”
The silence hovered between us. Asghar was breathing heavily. I could taste blood in my mouth. My cheek felt as though it had been stung by a hundred needles.
“You’re my wife. I can do anything that I want.”
Then he forced himself upon me.
I learned quickly not to speak to my parents about Asghar’s violence. Whenever I told my mother the truth about where my bruises had come from or why I winced when she embraced me, her anger was such that she could not help herself from reprimanding Asghar. And whenever I heard her chastise him with her words, I knew that as soon as he and I were alone, Asghar would attack me with his fists.
I was not naive. I knew that many wives in Iran were beaten by their husbands. And in the first weeks of our marriage there was a part of me that believed Asghar continued to be deeply affected by his wife’s death. After all, I’d tell myself, five months after Mohammad died I was barely able to breathe for crying so hard.
Yet Asghar could breathe all right. He could shout the vilest curses too. He could slap me so hard my ear would wail all through the night. And he could punch so fast and so strong that I thought I might never catch my breath again.
If there was one consolation, it was the fact that he did not hurt Daniel. For one month, Asghar’s rages were directed solely at me. My son, it appeared, was invisible to him.
In the end, it was something so trivial that caused Asghar to change. It was late one afternoon, and the house was quiet, the way Asghar liked it. I was sewing the buttons on a dress that I had made for Cherie, and Daniel was sitting down on the carpet, playing with some toy cars and animals. Asghar was reading, though what it was I did not know. I had already learned that it was best not to ask.
I was the first one to notice the damp patch that was slowly creeping across the carpet from beneath Daniel. The carpet was a gift from my parents, and I knew it would not take long to clean up.
“Oh, Daniel!” I cooed softly, sweeping him up in my arms. Daniel strained to be allowed back down to play among his kingdom of cars and monsters but quickly gave in to a fit of giggles as I nuzzled his neck.
“What?” Asghar had already put his book down and was staring at the carpet.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I will clean it up once I’ve changed Daniel.”
My words had no affect. Asghar jumped up immediately, walked over to my sewing, and grabbed a needle. Then he turned to me. He crossed the room in three paces and, with one violent twist, pulled Daniel from my arms. Shouldering me out of the way, he walked toward the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” I said, trying so hard to fill my voice with calm. Daniel was crying, looking back at me, arms outstretched over Asghar’s shoulder.
“He needs to learn what happens to little boys who pee in the wrong place,” Asghar shouted as he pushed me back, slammed shut the door, and flicked the lock.
All pretense of calm vanished as I slammed my fists into the door. “Asghar! Open the door! Please, Asghar, give me back my son!”
“No!” he shouted back.
Daniel’s cries turned into screams. I had never heard him make such a noise.
“Daniel!” I yelled, my hands clawing at the door handle, my shoulder hitting the door. “Daniel!”
I heard the lock turn and watched the handle move. Asghar was standing in the doorway. I pushed past him and ran to Daniel. He was lying curled up tight on the bed, screaming so hard there was no sound coming from his tiny body.
He felt weak in my arms as I scooped him up. I turned to leave. Asghar was still in the doorway. “Why are you trying to stop me?” he said. “Can’t you understand that children need discipline? Your father never disciplined you, and you need it now. You’re a bad woman.”
“He’s my son, not yours,” I shouted back.
“Whore!” he shouted as his hand shot out and connected with the side of my head, just by my eye. “You sleep with every man you see. You deserve all of this.”
That afternoon marked the beginning of a new level of violence at home. Suddenly it was not only me that Asghar’s fists sought out when he got angry, but now Daniel as well. If we were lucky we might go two or three days without one of us being hit, but the shouts and the blows and the pain were never far away.
I could not understand it. A lot of families punished their children in Iran, but Asghar was more violent than any I had heard of before. The only time
I ever gained any glimpse of insight into why he behaved in such a way was when he told me that his father had died when he was young and his uncle had taken responsibility for his discipline. But his words were not delivered as a confession or a plea for compassion. Instead, Asghar took pride in his brutal childhood. “This is how I became a man,” he would say whenever I held Daniel as he sobbed in my arms, a fresh handprint quickly revealing itself on his bare skin. “It’s the way the boy will become one too.”
Sometimes I would shout back at him, screaming that Daniel was only two years old. I would get my own handprint for a comment like that.
As the early weeks of our marriage passed, I knew I had a choice to make. Islamic law only allowed a woman to divorce her husband within the first three months of the marriage. After that, only the husband could call for a divorce.
We had married on June 4, and as the end of August approached I agonized over what to do. Of course I wanted to be free from Asghar right from the very first night of our marriage, and ever since Daniel had become a target I had been desperate to keep my boy safe. But divorce was not a guarantee of freedom. In an instant I would return to my previous condition: vulnerable to the lusts of greedy old men and the dishonest young ones. I would have no choice but to return to my state as a visual prisoner in my parents’ home—if they would have me. To be not quite twenty years old and twice married already would be a source of great shame. None of my siblings were married at the time, and I knew that the scandal my divorce would cause would ruin any chances they would have of marrying into an upright, respectful family.
It was an agonizing choice, but eventually I made up my mind. I phoned for a taxi early one morning and swept Daniel up in my arms when I heard it pull up outside. I had grown so skilled at shutting the door silently behind me that I was able to leave the house undetected.
Were it not for the sound of the taxi driver’s radio I would have gotten away with it. But the music was loud, and by the time I had told the driver my destination and climbed into the back seat, Asghar was standing by the driver’s window, leaning in.
“Where are you taking my wife, friend?”
“The courthouse.”
“I’ll come with you,” Asghar said, as happily as if we were all going to the zoo.
As we drove away, I swallowed hard and spoke from the back seat. “I am going to divorce you.”
Asghar sat in silence for some minutes. Then, as we approached the courthouse, he turned around and unleashed the vilest torrent of abuse I had ever heard. He said things about me and about my family that made the taxi driver squirm in his seat and turn the radio up.
“It is I who should be divorcing you,” he spat. “You are the one who has brought pain into this marriage. It is me who has been hurt by you, not the other way around.”
He turned back to watch the road. Even though I had tried to become deaf to his cruel words in the previous months, they still shocked me. But I chose to put them out of my mind and think about what I was about to do. Soon I would be able to leave Asghar and his violence behind me. Soon I would be able to start life again, no matter how uncertain or difficult it might be.
I stepped from the taxi and made my way to the court. Asghar fell in beside me. He was smiling. He never smiled.
“If you go inside I will follow you. I will tell them that you’ve been with other men. I will find two witnesses, and they will confirm it.”
I stopped walking. I looked at him carefully. Never once had he shown any fear of hurting either me or Daniel. Never once had he shown any sign of genuine regret for causing us pain. I knew that he was not afraid of lying to the court. And I knew that if he did that, there would only be one possible outcome for me.
I had never seen a woman being stoned before, but I had read enough newspaper reports and seen enough footage on the television to know that it is a terrible way to die. You are bound at the ankles, as well as your wrists and your elbows, which are pulled tight behind your back. You are then buried up to your waist while people throw rocks at you. If you are lucky a rock will make you lose consciousness early on. Either way, though, death comes slowly.
Since the revolution, stoning had become the punishment for a woman caught in adultery. For a man, it was only a couple of lashes with a whip if he was found guilty.
I thought about the gossip that I had heard about myself ever since Mohammad had died, how people were saying that it was my fault, that God was punishing me. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps death was what I deserved. But I had a choice, and I knew that if I was going to die, I would not let it be at the hand of a mob of angry strangers.
I looked at Asghar, turned my back on the courthouse, and headed back home.
Asghar took strength from my decision to return home that day. He knew he had even more power over me and that I was weak. As a result, his attacks grew more frequent and more fierce.
It wasn’t just the physical violence that increased. If Daniel stirred at night or made too much noise in the evening, Asghar would shout at him to go to sleep, and Daniel would run, his eyes wide in terror, to his bed. He would be so quiet and still it was sometimes hard to tell if he was still breathing.
Asghar played with me like a cat with a wounded bird, tormenting me just for fun. One day I walked into the bedroom to find him ripping from my photo albums any picture I had of Mohammad. “You and that foolish husband,” he sneered as he peeled back each photo before holding it up and carefully tearing it into tiny pieces.
All I could do was watch and cry.
Even though Asghar and Mohammad were both in the army, Mohammad was often away during our year of marriage, but Asghar never went to fight. He was in the military and was permanently in Isfahan training other soldiers. Only once did he go away, and those two weeks when he was up north near Kurdistan were like an oasis of peace for Daniel and me, as well as his daughter Cherie who had finally left the hospital and was now living with us.
Two things happened during that fortnight.
I discovered his first wife’s diary and read what she had written about how unhappy she was in the marriage and how violent he was with her. Instead of giving me comfort or making me feel as though I was not alone, reading her words only made me feel more trapped. Death was clearly the only way out.
The other event was a visit from my aunt. Asghar had stopped my family from coming to see me at home, so when I opened the door and saw her, I wept with relief. She cried too, but her tears were born of shock.
“What happened to you?” She looked me up and down, her hands holding me carefully as if fingering the thinnest, most fragile glass. “Where are these bruises from? And your skin? You look like an old woman.”
“I have not been well,” I said. “My diet has not been so good, and I’ve not been sleeping either.” She knew I was lying, but even though she tried to help me, as soon as Asghar returned, bringing his violence with him, my aunt finally realized how powerless she was.
I suppose it was almost inevitable that I would try to kill myself. I tried soon after Asghar returned. Valium was so easily available in Iran back then, and I already had more than enough on hand. I decided to take some at night, go to bed, and never wake up. What I didn’t count on was how thin I had become and how quickly a handful of pills would get to work. By the time I had swallowed them all in the kitchen and prepared to go to bed, I was feeling dizzy.
The next thing I knew I was in the hospital. Someone gave me some more medicine, and someone else told me I could go home. The rest of the day was a daze, and even though I was back in person, a part of me was lost.
I fell pregnant after our first anniversary, about the same time that Asghar’s sister came to live with us. I hoped that my pregnancy or her presence might distract Asghar a little, but in the end it only made things worse. His sister had a boyfriend in the city and would call him on our phone when Asghar was out.
A month after she moved in with us, the boyfriend phoned one day when Asghar’s sist
er was out with their mother, a sour-faced woman called Ziynab. As soon as the call ended Asghar started at me. “Who was that?”
“Your sister’s boyfriend.”
“That’s impossible. You’re a liar. It must have been your boyfriend, whore! That’s why you’re pregnant!”
I tried to explain, but he would not listen.
He was still raging when his sister and mother came back. “She says you have a boyfriend,” Asghar said to his sister as soon as she walked in.
She looked scared but denied it fully. “It must be hers,” she said, pointing at me.
At that, the air filled with more shouting than I had ever heard in that house. Ziynab was screaming at me, Daniel and Cherie wailed in their beds, and Asghar yelled that he would finally kill me.
He disappeared outside and came back with a length of plastic hose about as long as his arm. He hit me all over my body with it, swinging his arm back as the hose flew high into the air before coming crashing down on me. I tried to shield the blows with my arms, but it made little difference. The hose bit deep into my flesh, burning like a hot iron straight from the fire. My whole body was in agony, and I crawled like an animal toward the kitchen as yet more blows landed on my back.
I managed to lock the door behind me and curl up on the floor. I tried to tell my mind to focus on the feel of the cold tiles against my cheek, but it was no use. Every part of me was on fire. Every inch of my flesh cried out.
There was a pane of glass at the top of the door. It exploded and rained down onto me. I tried to cover my head from the worst of it but soon heard Asghar scrambling through. He had a shovel in his hand and swung it over and over on me.
Stranger No More Page 5
