Honor Aside

Chapter 8

When I left, it was in the middle of the pandemic. I ran. I had a work-from-home job related to education and I rented a room in an apartment about an hour away, in a city where I had some friends. The stress during this time was unbearable. My stomach ached constantly, and I would often feel sad while hugging my mom or talking to my brother, wondering if it was the last time I'd do so. However, there was a voice inside saying that I needed to see what was beyond the walls of that house. At the time, I wasn't allowed to go for a walk by myself around my neighbourhood. My dad would allude to the possibility of kidnap and rape by our neighbours, whom he was so desperate to impress. My sister and I weren't supposed to be at home without our brother or one of our parents because we could be raped by the downstairs tenant, who was married with a newborn baby. My mom would allow me out alone sometimes, but even then she would call or text after I'd been gone 20 minutes.

I felt the most guilty about leaving behind my mom and my sister. My sister's husband (heretofore referred to as Ratface) arrived in Canada a few months before I left. When he came, my dad went crazy trying to impress him. He rented a basement unit for my sister and Ratface to live in, but it was only a couple of blocks away from us. He bought furniture that was too large and flashy for a modest apartment. We had to go help arrange everything. I felt dead inside, with a bit of rising bile and panic. Over the years, you learn to suppress the part of you that wants to scream but the tension never lets go of your body. The inevitability of it hit home, that it was not just a distant possibility that an outsider would come and break up our dysfunctionally tight unit. My mom fretted and basically tried to start fights, saying that my dad should have helped them buy a proper house instead of renting. She bothered my sister about how she needed to act. The night before Ratface arrived, my sister and I were at the basement with our dad. So much remained to be done and he was frustrated. When he left for the hardware store, my sister started crying. I tried to hold her and she just barely let me, for a second. She said I didn't know what it was like. She said she felt like our parents had forced her to get married, and then forced her to stay behind in Pakistan for a few weeks more, alone with him. His family was a nest of vipers and largely ignored her when they weren't directly antagonizing her. She felt betrayed by our parents and was always praying but nothing good ever came. No one helped. She didn't talk about sex. She didn't have to. She'd mentioned it once before, in clinical terms, in a dead voice. Just fucking kill me already. Our dad returned, she wiped her face, and I glared at him the rest of the night. When we got back home, I went to her room and said that I'd find a way to help her, that I hated that she might have to live with Ratface but I'd do everything I could. I told her not to have kids with him, never if possible. I called the city helpline and told them that he was arriving and wouldn't be quarantining properly. He was going to come to our house to be received by our family, and then he was going to live with my sister. They said they couldn't do anything, since quarantining with one's spouse was fine. I told them the backstory. They couldn't do anything but offer sympathy.

The next day, Ratface arrived. I didn't know this until after my sister passed away, but according to my mom, my sister cried that morning and begged for a way to not have to live with him. I would have killed him for you, offered his head like Salome. He arrived and everyone wanted to take pictures of them together. They kept trying to get me and others in the pictures too. Why, to send to relatives in Pakistan? So those idiots could say Alhamdulillah? She left. We shared a significant look. She looked resigned and worried, and was gone. I didn't want to leave her. I didn't want to abandon her, but I also couldn't help her. I couldn't have forced her to not fill out the sponsorship paperwork to bring him over. I couldn't have forced her to initiate a divorce. She didn't share her problems with me. She talked to our mom, who was a natural choice, if not an effective one. Mothers teaching daughters to quietly suffer and pray. Sacrificial lambs, like the animals slaughtered for Big Eid. I go numb when I think of these things. A small voice screams very far away in the dark quiet.