If, while baba was beating me, I cried, he’d hit me again for crying.
“If you cry, you’ll get hit. Men don’t cry”, he’d tell me.
Whenever he beat me, my main concern was to not cry.

I know that a lot of women unknowingly enter into marriages with similar types of men, and that I was lucky and all that.
But I never imagined that something like that could ever happen to me.

The first time he hit me was the day I found out I was pregnant.
He picked a fight with me when his friend and his wife were having dinner with us,
And I fried the mombar (a kind of sausage dish),
Before the chicken breasts.
He pulled me by my hair,
And dragged me to the stove,
And threatened to set me on fire to get rid of me.

I was the only girl in an office full of men.
Sometimes, I’d have to work for twelve hours straight.
I’d get so exhausted when I got my period that I’d sometimes faint.
It’s not reasonable for me to get exhausted every month,
So I devised a story about how there’s something wrong with my kidneys.

At school, boys and girls were separated.
The boys would watch the girls going home,
And choose one to send a letter to.
Then they’d be together.

Because she wanted her own place.
She wanted to live.
That’s what a marriage contract was to her: freedom.

Everyone knew that these pictures were fake and fabricated and that she didn’t do anything.

But their reaction was that they wanted to kill her.

I’m the boss.
Honestly, I used to get these negative thoughts;
Thoughts that are full of violence and rage.
It was as if I was waiting to explode and let everything out.
masculinity, social pressure

It doesn’t matter at all.
I don’t mind if he marries another woman,
And visits me once a week,
Or even once a month!

I’m starting to think I shouldn’t have to carry the burden all alone after my father’s death.
My father made me promise,
Not to ask for any help from any of my grandparents or uncles.
masculinity, social pressure, parents