Run for your life
‘Ayesha’ (not her real name) – get out of there. Get out, and don’t come back. Ever. Get out right now.
Her father died when she was six, and her mother married his very conservative cousin, who hit her hard in the face the first time they met, and went on from there. She was beaten up throughout her childhood. At fifteen she was forcibly engaged to a cousin. She ran away but was tricked into going home for another beating. She told a doctor; he told the social services, who questioned her mother, who denied it all, and Ayesha got the worst beating of her life.
Her stepfather spied on her and one day saw her without the hijab. That evening, she was thrown into the bath and beaten. “My mother told me that if I didn’t start listening to her then my stepfather was going to rape me.” Ayesha confided in a female teacher, but her story was not believed. As preparations for the marriage moved forward, the bride-to-be was locked in a house whose outside walls were now topped with studded nails and barbed wire. Her stepfather spelt it out bluntly. If she tried to run away again, he would find her and kill her.
She phoned Jasvinder Sanghera; she got out of the house and ran; she phoned the police, who almost took her back home, but Sanghera managed to convince them not to. She was safe; she moved to another city, she was about to start a degree course. But then she phoned a relative.
Promises were made. She could come back. All would be forgiven. Four months ago, Ayesha went home. And so resumed her role as victim in an escalating cycle of threats and violence. The family is still insisting that she marry her cousin. She still refuses. A happy ending is not in sight.
Get out, Ayesha. Run, and don’t look back.
The troubling thing is that this is only one case out of how many? And Islam is an honourable religion. So are they all, all honourable religions (loosely quoting Shakespeare). Notice, too, the role that the hijab plays in this story. Just a harmless piece of cloth, and women choose to wear it, after all. And we are to respect this religious culture, and be kind to their tender feelings! HerrnGott!
What ever happened to the nation I grew up in?
This link explains why it is o.k to beat women? http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Wife+beating+islam&search_type=
GT Yes, the Guardian (Comment Is Free) has tons of op-ed stuff from the likes of Soumaya Ghanoushi and Seumass Milne (a lefty I used to have a pretty high regard for), which seems to stem from Subaltern Studies school that any criticism of this sort of behaviour is intrinsically an imperialist attack on poorer non-christian nations. I stopped going there several months ago, as I found much of the mud-slinging and shouting was only representative of a tiny minority of the populace – SWP/Respect firebrands and a number of rather nasty tories and neocons who one was instantly lumped together with if one dared mention universal rights. Waste of time, those pages, I concluded.
“When they arrived, the officers listened to Ayesha’s story then told her that this was clearly “a family tiff” and they were going to take her back home.”
The British Bobbies on the beat are still unmistakably not listening to the cries of these vulnerable, exposed, susceptible ‘would be’ child
Brides to be. Perhaps there is an unadulterated raison d’être as to why they are not listening. As by the sounds of it to me, they are doubtless not trained in knowing what to do with deference of these “serious” “sober” “sombre” potential child honour killing cases. Because if the constabulary had heretofore trained them – they unquestionably would not have been fobbed off – announcing to it that it was merely “a family tiff” Was (imho) just not on at all
Senior Metropolitan Police commanders who have expertise in dealing with forced marriages and honour violence ought not to be the only police officers to be expertly by their units trained in this field. The Bobbies on the beat ought also to be not in these matters kept ignorant by the police force. They are after-all the ones dealing with these cases firsthand. It was only at the behest of the mother (who was also abusing Ayesha) that notice was by the Bobbies taken of Ayesha. Analogous cases should by the police authorities not be dealt with based on flukes/incidentals. They should judge them on their potential ‘murder’ merit.
“Get out, Ayesha. Run, and don’t look back.”
I second that as well.
To where, Marie-Therese, your house?
Any shelter. Even the streets would be safer.