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This is going to be a long thread, but I’ve thought about it and think it’s important to share. Personally it’s really helped put into perspective so many things about a woman’s experience in this country that I had only experienced through abstract interactions.
(As I was only an observer, I’ll be careful not to reveal any details about those involved since that obviously isn’t my call to make.)
Two days ago, I was on my way to work when I heard a woman screaming. By the side of the road, a man had a woman by the neck and was punching her in the face - again and again. I rushed towards them and pushed him away, but the man continued to try and grab her by the arm.
For context, this was a main road, outside a school. There were kids, parents, security guards, faculty etc. Which is also to say this man had no qualms doing this for all to see.
All the while, she was sobbing and kept shouting that he always did this. Kept saying she had begged him not to hit her, or swear at her, but he just wouldn’t stop. Even now, though he had stopped punching, he would keep blocking her every time she tried to get away from him.
He only gave up after he was pushed away a second time, at which point he began grumbling about some admissions test. Apparently, they had brought their kid to the school for an entrance test, and the wife expressed that she didn’t think the school was right for the child.
[Often, people want the ‘other side’ first, despite what they may, themselves, have seen (as if all faculties of perception and judgment are to be suspended, pending some final court-sanctioned outcome). For all those yearning for a counter-narrative, these were his own words.]
He explained all this as if it somehow justified repurposing his wife as a literal punching bag. His eyes were still bloodshot, veins throbbing on his forehead. But, already, this was a very different man from the ‘big man’ grabbing a woman by the throat as he beat her.
To be honest, I really did think he would at least try beating me up, too. Then again, men like this are often this ‘tough’ in a decidedly selective range of situations.**.
**If, until this point, this thread has seemed like an attempt to plug personal gallantry or masculinity, I’m happy to clarify that I’ve only had something like 1.5 physical fights in my life lol.
The only reason I intervened at all was probably that, throughout my childhood, I’ve seen my mother intervene in similar situations at least a dozen times.
(She attributes it to having seen her own mother do it. My grandmother was a fierce woman who once beat up a local badmaash with a jhaaro.)
Of course, not all situations play out like this. There may even have been some perception of class at play here, which is hardly inconsequential. And in any case, everyone deals with these things in different ways.
My point, here, is just that it would seem that these things sometimes trickle down. And in my case, if it’s trickled down at all, it’s from women - of both, silk and steel (which, I think, provides important context for some of what follows).
Anyhow, the man had now begun to act like some aching lover out of a bad Bollywood film. Reached to wipe the her tears awa, said something along the lines of “kyun naraaz hoti ho?” (As if it was unclear that the immediately preceding assault was probably the proximate cause.)
She was still inconsolable, but resolute. Said she had had enough and wouldn’t go back with him. Which was all it took for him to abandon the act.
In another flash of rage, he attempted to grab her, at which point I had to intervene a third time and, with the woman’s consent, call the police.
If this were a car crash, throngs of gawking onlookers would have coalesced upon the spot in an instant. If this were two men fighting, others would have probably intervened. Honestly, they would be more likely to intervene if the man and wife had been expressing affection.
But in situations like this, despite how utterly one-sided, different rules apply.
As a matter of fact, the only onlooker who decided to play any part was some other man who tried to convince the woman to forgive him and go back with him, even as she insisted she wouldn’t.
As a matter of fact, the only onlooker who decided to play any part was some other man who tried to convince the woman to forgive him and go back with him, even as she insisted she wouldn’t.
(“Bhabi request hai aap say, muaaf kar dein inhein. Ho jata hai mian biwi mei. Acha yahaan tau ye na karein na.” etc.)
He then turned to me, to affirm, “Inn ke ghar ki baat hai”.
He then turned to me, to affirm, “Inn ke ghar ki baat hai”.
Unless the couple lived on the main road right outside the school, I’m not sure how that’s relevant. In any case, the choice of venue seemed to be pretty voluntary, as far as the man whose izzat was now at stake went.
Which, of course, is to say nothing of the fact that while the concern seemed to be that this shouldn’t have happened in public, the discussion that this shouldn’t have happened, at all, did not even make a cameo as an afterthought.
As it turned out, these pompous outpourings seemed to be shared by most - including the police. By the time the police arrived (the thaana was 500m away but they took at least 15 mins and two calls to arrive), my mother had arrived to drop her wherever she wanted to go.
We had already explained to the woman that nothing would happen without her consent, either way, but also that if nothing else, seeing the police would get the man to realise the seriousness of the situation.
That seemed important. The hope, of course, was that even if she didn’t want to register an FIR, the police would at least let the man know that the only reason things weren’t a lot more serious for him was that the woman had decided that it be so.
There were three police officers. All three were men. The first thing they said was, of course, “Ye inn ke aapas ki baat hai, hum kya bol saktay hein? Ikhlaaqi taur pe bataa dein ge, ghalat baat hai”.
I suggested that they explain the qanoon in addition to the fact that these were just bad manners. That did not seem to be the priority.
For the five-ish mins before the police arrived, the man very reluctantly went inside to get the child (he was adamant that only the mother could do this). Back outside, the man passed the child to the mother to pick him up. “Ye dekho, ro raha hai.”, he chided.
The child, in fact, wasn’t crying. He was probably four or five years old, and was quite excited by the presence of a police van, which he kept pointing at it with a stubby little finger, exclaiming “Oh, police!”
The husband’s passing the child to the mother was the one time she didn’t put up some kind of resistance. Even as her arms trembled, she tried to lift the kid up. When that failed, she pulled him towards herself and stood at a distance.
As it happened, she was quite overwhelmed by the arrival of policemen. The most she could muster in response to their questions were sporadic nods of the head. Despite her initial consent, the first thing she had done when they arrived was to wipe her tears away.
The police asked the man where he was from and what he did. He said he was involved in ‘real estate’, but the officers seemed to gauge he wasn’t too far up the 'ladder'.
What followed was a bizarre motivational pep-talk about how he should focus on his goals, and not be distracted by things like this.
“Meray bhai, aap ke bhi koi sapnay hongay. Un pe tawaajo dein, behtar hai. Ye kya tamaasha bana diya hai aap ne, yahaan pe?” The issue, it seemed, was still the spectacle (and an apparent disinterest in The Hustle).
All the while, the woman tended to her child with one hand and cupped different areas of her face with the other. Eventually, the police took pictures of the man’s CNIC as a ‘warning’ for the future, and left (having successfully inspired him to chase his goals).
The woman did not indicate she wanted to pursue it further.
As surreal as the interaction was, what made it even more uncomfortable was that the police seemed to be making a deliberate effort to handle the situation ‘properly’. They were conscious of the fact that I was a lawyer, and that my mother worked with victims of domestic abuse.
And so, this, in many ways, was their A-game.
Up until this point, the woman had been defiant in her insistence that she would not return with her husband. Now, with the police gone, and a small hand clasped in hers, something had clearly changed, though she said nothing. In the end, she went back with the man.
The trope about “pseudoliberals” & “fake feminists” is that their idea of triumph is nothing short of divorce. The insinuation, of course, is that people who can’t maintain their own relationships take vicarious pleasure in destroying those of others, thus advancing some agenda.
I’d be lying if I said I cared much for this man’s personal happiness. But that was largely irrelevant to why I felt so dejected; my personal reaction was coloured purely by dread. Having seen the man in public, I could only begin to imagine what a fiend he would be in private.
But the lady, it seemed, had made her choice. If one can call it that.
And so, later in the day, when I received a call from her brother (I had slid her my card, just in case), I was quite relieved to hear that her family was taking this very seriously.
This, seemingly, had not always been the case: her brother said the husband had been doing this for many years now. The families had tried to patch things up many times over the past five years or so. But now, this was it, for them.
He said they would be filing an FIR, and that they may need help with the next steps. There could obviously be no perfect outcome here but, to me, this seemed the better outcome.
I hung up grateful that the woman had a family that supported her, and that - after many years - she had the strength to take what seemed to be the right decision.
Of course, I thought of the kid who had been transfixed by the police van, but the fact that he, too, hadn’t seen his father beat his mother seemed a matter of luck, more than anything else.
It turned out the lady did end up going to the police station to file an FIR. They told her to get her medical reports, and she even went to the hospital. But here, her motivation began to wane, again.
She started to feel sick, and after being told that she needed someone from the thaana to accompany her, she decided it was too much work. Meanwhile, her family had now begun to suggest that she try to patch things up, again. For her family & for her children, she gave in.Again.
I do not intend to imply that she took the wrong decision. That would, of course, be fantastically presumptive and patronising.
The reason I wanted to tell this story was that, over the course of just half an hour, I saw this country’s people and its institutions let that woman down again and again.
And as tragic as all of this was, the saddest part was probably that in so many ways, this was a best-case scenario.
This was a woman who had a good job and an independent source of income. This was in Islamabad, where the police are supposed to be more sensitive to such situations. Hers was a family who, at least momentarily, stood behind her.
And if nothing else, hers was a story that did not die with her. But this was just one woman's life over the course of half an hour.
