Haseena and Jannat (on earth)

Haseena lives up to her name. Long black hair, kohl rimmed eyes, clear dusky complexion; even her grim demeanor cannot hide the fact that she is very attractive. Perhaps that is why her father’s chacha pleaded so desperately for her to marry his son. In a society where a woman’s beauty is as important to her marriage prospects as the size of his bank balance is to a man’s, she would be considered quite a catch. This makes the story of her married life all the more tragic.

Haseena and her sister Jannat’s case is one of the many to be featured in an upcoming docudrama illustrating women and children’s issues relevant to our society. It is tragedy, not celebration or kinship, that has brought us to this one room quarter in congested Soldier Bazaar. In the time it takes for me to turn my head from left to right, I have already seen the complete, squalid reality of it. One room, one charpoy, nine people. And two who should rightfully be here are missing.

The story that emerges after interviews with the two sisters, their parents and the people who helped them, is simple. When Haseena was 15, her father’s uncle sent emissaries to ask for her hand for his son Ismail. Haseena says she didn’t want to get married, but she wasn’t given the option to refuse. She especially didn’t want to marry into that branch of her extended clan.

Her parents now admit they knew about their future son in law’s treatment of his first wife before promising Haseena to him. His first wife had taken their child and moved back in with her mother, alleging cruel, inhuman treatment on his part. Unsympathetic villagers scoffed at her claims of severe domestic abuse. In Haseena’s mother’s words, “Of course when you hear of a woman returning to her parents you know it was probably her fault. The man can’t be bad now, can he?”

Comfortable in their assumption that the beatings Ismail’s first wife had received at his hands were the result of her own shortcomings rather than any compulsion on his part, the date was set and the rituals completed. Quizzed repeatedly about his willingness to usher his daughter into life with an acknowledged wife beater, Haseena’s father offered the following justification. “How could I say no to my chacha? Besides, he swore on the Koran he wouldn’t beat her.”

Haseena says the beatings started soon after her immersion into married life. The rest of the family had moved to the city from their village near Thatta, and despite being surrounded by people she had no one to turn to for help. The couple lived in a joint family system. The chacha, his wife and his five daughters and five sons all lived in one compound but the close proximity of family catalyzed rather than deterred her husband’s determination to terrorize her. Jannat, who was later (astonishingly) married into the same family, corroborates her account.

“The other brother would say beat her more. The women would watch silently. Our mother in law never spoke. Even I stopped trying to help her because I knew any perceived interference would earn me a thrashing as well.”

Over the course of the seven years she spent in Ismail’s home, Haseena was beaten with fists, sticks and anything that happened to be handy. She was kicked and punched, burned with cigarettes, dragged by her hair; bruised and battered even when pregnant with the two children she would bear Ismail. She tried to tell her parents about how miserable she was whenever she had a chance to speak to them although the opportunities were few and far between. She had some contact with them during the first two years of her marriage but she says they wouldn’t listen. In Pakistan, especially the rural areas, it is thought to be a woman’s job to make the home regardless of the challenges she faces. She must mould herself to her husband’s needs. Haseena, her mother initially thought, was simply learning how to bend rather than break.

After the first two years, Haseena’s already infrequent contact with her family abruptly stopped. It wouldn’t resume again until a year later, when her sister Jannat was married to Ismail’s brother Rasool Bux. In those three years of enforced solitude, often locked in a room without food and water when she wasn’t serving him or his family, Haseena had ample time to reflect, to wonder when the next beating would come, when the torture would end, and crucially, why no one seemed interested in or able to help her.

“He never gave me a moment’s peace…I had told my parents I didn’t want to marry him because he was too old and he used to beat me up over that. Once I escaped to my mamu’s house and he came after me. He swore then over the Koran that he wouldn’t beat me again. When we got home he thrashed me.”

Even when her arm was broken and she was taken to a local healer to have it set, there seemed no other option but to return with her husband. While the people of her village were well aware of what happened in the four walls of her home and eventually pushed her parents to get her out of there, they lacked the will or the courage to confront the brothers.

“I often thought about killing myself,” says Haseena with tears running down her cheeks,” but how? And what would my children do? They were terrified of him. They never thought of him as their father. How could they when he never showed them any love?”

Haseena’s two sons with Ismail were both witness to and victim of their father’s seemingly endless rage. The atmosphere of oppression and pointless aggression that permeated their home has doubtless left scars on their psyches. Almost as soon as he gained muscular coordination, the eldest was encouraged to beat his mother as well. If he refused to or failed to, he was thrashed. Once, Ismail poured kerosene over both his children and lit a match. Haseena believes if one of his brothers hadn’t intervened, her sons would be dead today. And so would she. Ismail tried to set her alight twice but was again stopped by one of his brothers. In light of their participation in her torment by maintaining the status quo, it is probable that those family members acted out of a sense of self-preservation rather than mercy.

Both sisters maintain the brothers’ treatment of their wives was common knowledge in the village and indeed the whole area, but that people were afraid of them. Not because they were influential, the brothers are itinerant laborers, but because they were perceived to be irrational louts capable of anything. The sisters were also battling the concept that a man has the right to treat his wife any way he wants to.

“Everyone in the village knew what was going but thought they should be quiet because these two were mad. They told my parents many times though, but they didn’t listen.”

The girls’ parents admit during their individual interviews that concerned villagers had apprised them of Haseena’s situation. This makes their next move all the more surprising. Three years into Haseena’s marriage, her sister Jannat moved into the joint family home in the village as Ismail’s brother Rasool Bux’s wife. She has her own sad tale to tell of her four years with him.

“He was all right for the first few months. After the first baby he started hitting me. Even the elder sister, the one who wasn’t married, she’d tell him to beat me. Two others had been married and divorced and were back with their parents. The parents said they’re badmaaash…they don’t listen to us. Both the brothers are just mean. I didn’t do anything to provoke my husband. He just liked to beat me. Sticks, firsts, rope…once he even broke my foot.” Jannat shows us the scar.

The sisters’ sense of helplessness was amplified by their futile proximity. After a couple of efforts to save her sister Haseena, Jannat stopped trying to even interact with Haseena. They had learned by then to keep their distance and not bring attention to themselves.

“I felt so bad watching the way he treated her but there was nothing I could do but watch”, says Jannat.

Both say they never provoked their husbands. They didn’t talk back, or start quarrels but were often beaten for not cooking food when their husbands hadn’t given them any money or stores to cook in the first place.

Jannat says she wasn’t even given any extra food or care when she was expecting. One of her sister in laws would sometimes sneak her a piece of bread, but even that stopped when she was found out.

Jannat also tried to tell her parents of the abuse she was suffering. She says they replied with “Ab tum nay apna ghar banana hai. Chacha kay baitay hain…theek ho jain gay.”

Jannat’s father says, “I thought I was doing someone a favour, and the favour backfired. Mujhay kya patha tha wo ihsaan aa kay meray galay lag jayay ga?”
…

The stories of spousal abuse were also carried by neighbours from the village to the parents in the city and finally intensified enough to move them into inquiring if not acting. The father’s attempts to contact his daughters were easily rebuffed by threats of physical violence. After initial attempts to at least meet them he didn’t probe any further because, he says, he was afraid for his life. If he was so petrified by fear of the brothers from the relative safety of Karachi, it is difficult to conceive of the fear felt by Haseena or Jannat. In Haseena’s case that fear was augmented by her husband’s willingness to torture and threaten to kill their children.

The girl’s mother showed more bravery. After having a conversation with Rasool Bux when he came to the city in which he agreed to let his pregnant wife return to her parents home, she went to the village to bring her back. She didn’t realize what she was in for.

“I was beaten and driven away. They even threatened me with an axe. If my cousin hadn’t rescued me no one would even have found my body by now. They said if we wanted we could go to the police. The village thana was always open. They knew we wouldn’t do that. No one there would touch them.”

Hawa Bibi persisted though. A couple of weeks later, she returned when Ismail and Rasool Bux weren’t home and brought Jannat back with her. Jannat left her marriage with only the clothes on her back, her first child and the baby in her womb. Her second son was born in Karachi. Her father narrates with pride how he bore the expense of her delivery in Jinnah Hospital.

When Jannat’s account of Haseena’s life painted a clearer picture of the living hell she was in, the parents resolved to do something. A friend of the family whose daughter had been a friend of Haseena’s in her childhood aided them in their endeavors. He arranged for them to contact field worker Mohammed Ali at Madadgar. The organization provided legal aid and facilitated the delivery of a recovery letter to the village police station demanding Haseena and her children be removed from her husbands’ home. After seven years, a police party accompanied by Haseena’s parents raided Ismail’s home. Her father chose to remain outside in the mobile.

Haseena and her children were found locked in a room. They were tired, filthy and starving. They, along with the father, were taken to the village ‘lock up’. Ismail was released the very next day after allegedly bribing the SHO. Haseena and her mother were kept there for three days. Her father claims he too had had to bribe the SHO, the munshi who registered the case and the local reporter who had the story published in a small newspaper to build up pressure.

During the three days she was there, Haseena was constantly pressured to effect reconciliation with her husband. She refused. Enough was enough, and all she wanted now was a life away from danger for herself and her two children. But on the second day, her eldest son was forcibly taken away from her and given into the custody of her husband, the man who had once poured kerosene on him and tried to set him alight.

“I pleaded with the SHO not to take him, to let him stay with me. I told him he was too young to be separated from his mother but he said it was only fair that he had one and I had one.”

Until the time of the interview, Haseena has not had any news of her son. She is torn between relief at being out of her husband’s home and guilt at having had to leave the child behind. Her mother says she is constantly worrying and crying. In that one cramped one room, with her parents and her four siblings, it must be hard to ignore the sound of her grief. The only one who can truly empathize with her at that point is Jannat. Shortly after giving birth to her second child, her first was also snatched from her by the two brothers and a friend.

“They barged into the house when we were away and beat her up when she tried to stop them. They took her child too,” says Hawa Bibi.

Haseena and Jannat both say at various points in the interview that they blame their father for what had happened to them. They also say they are ready to forgive him. He is, after all, their father. His is also the only shelter they have after leaving their husband’s home. They say they respect his decisions.

Hawa Bibi works as a domestic in three bungalows and earns as much as her husband yet she too allows the privilege of important decision-making to rest primarily with her husband. “That is the way it is done”, she says with confidence, “a woman must support her husband.”

When I ask if Allah Dino (her husband) has ever hit her, she replies in the affirmative but is quick to add that it only happened once. “It was when we were newly married,” she clarifies, “and I talked back to him. It never happened after that. I never gave him reason.”

Do you think a man has the right to beat his wife I ask? “Yes, but not the right to senseless cruelty”. I wonder aloud where she learned that. “That’s just the way it’s always been.” She expands further when asked what advice she gave to her daughters when they were getting married. “I told them to keep their husbands happy and they would keep them happy. I thought Haseena’s destiny was her own to make. How was I to know it would be so bad? No one puts you on a throne when you’re married. We think the woman is bad. Our daughter is good. She won’t have a problem.”
…
The case today:
After the two sisters were back with their parents in Karachi and it became apparent they would not let the matter rest, the chacha’s family made an offer of RS.25, 000 in return for all four children. Allah Dino and his wife refused, saying the children were not for sale. A plea for khula was entered in both cases, and the brothers were told cases had been registered against them for kidnapping. With all the press attention, anxious to keep the biradari name out of the spotlight, local area influentials prevailed on them and with Madadgar representing the two sisters, a deal was recently struck.

Under its terms, their husbands will grant both sisters divorce. The two children have been returned and the fathers have agreed to pay whatever alimony they can afford. Haseena and Jannat will be free to live the rest of their lives in safety with their children. But now they have a whole different set of challenges to face.

How will they survive? Both say they will work. Somehow, they will earn their keep. When asked whether they will consider marrying again Haseena and Jannat both respond with an emphatic no. “If the first one was so bad,” says Jannat, “imagine what the next one will be like.”

Allah Dino says he will ask his other two daughters opinion before he accepts any proposals for them. The village SHO says, “the biradari prefers to resolve its own disputes. Its better other don’t know about it because that would be an insult.”

The writing on the wall is clear. Insult to man’s honor is worse than injury to a woman.