Living in hell with no way out

Yasmin Akbar had almost died when her father stopped his son from choking her neck with his hands, and dragged him away.

She was lying on the ground unconscious, her shalwar-kameez completely covered in dirt, and her lungs breathing very slowly.

Her father, Chaudhry Akbar Ali, saved her life by pulling away his son from her, who had gone completely mad with anger.

The sun had already set. Ch Akbar covered the face of Yasmin with his saafa (headgear cloth) so that nobody could recognise her easily, put her between him and his son, who was driving the bike, and set for their home.

The poor mother was already waiting at the main gate of the mud house in her village, though she was not sure of receiving her teenage daughter alive.

Her short-tempered son and her husband had left the house on a motorcycle, burning with fury, when someone had told them that Yasmin had gone with the Suzuki van driver after the school time somewhere else, instead of coming to home.

The girls high school was situated in another village, some 17 kilometres away, and Yasmin, an eighth grader, used to go to school in the Suzuki van, along with other girls from her village.

That fateful day, only two other girl students, both sisters, went to school in the van, along with Yasmin, from the village. The two sisters had to return to the village with their brother on a motorcycle, soon after start of classes due to the death of their grandmother.

After the school closing time, Yasmin Akbar was the only student the school van driver was supposed to drop at her village.

On the way back, the young van driver asked Yasmin to let him change the route a little, as he wanted to fetch his ailing mother some medicines at his home.

During daily travel with that young driver for almost three years, the teenager had developed some kind of liking for him, so she could not object forcefully to his going to his home, though she knew it well it was not a right step on her part. The driver took her to a ‘dera’ [outhouse] instead of his house, as he had told a lie about his ailing mother.

Yasmin did not know it was her good luck or bad luck that one of her neighbours, riding a motorcycle and coming behind them, had noticed her sitting on the front seat, and the driver leaving the main road, instead of coming to her village to drop her. The neighbour informed her brother about what he saw on the way, as soon as he reached the village.

When her brother and father reached the dera in about half an hour, the van driver fled the scene. The last thing Yasmin remembered was his brother beating him madly before she fell unconscious. She didn’t remember how she reached home. When she regained her senses, she was lying on ground in a room of her home and her mother was wailing with grief and perhaps shame also.

In a few days, she was able to walk on her own. But her home and all her family members had totally changed, meanwhile. They all had become strangers to her.

Her father, furious brother and two younger sisters, all would look at her with contempt and hatred. She didn’t have courage to ask them about her going to school again.

Her parents launched a ‘silent campaign’ to marry off her. But the ‘news’ about her going with the van driver had spread like jungle fire in that desert region comprising almost 23 villages in southern Punjab. Therefore, it became really hard for her parents to get a man for their daughter.

However, within a year, when she was merely 16, she was married off to a male divorcé, who was almost double her age, and a resident of a far-off village. And then started a hell-like life for the poor child, Yasmin.

Her husband was a farm labourer, and a hashish and opium addict.

On her wedding night, she was abused verbally, tortured mentally and assaulted physically and sexually by her drug-addict husband, who had perhaps taken double dose of all drugs that night. From that night onwards, it became a routine.

Throughout the day, she would work as a labourer on farmlands of different people, prepare meal for the family members in the evening, and bear with physical and sexual assault by her drug-addict husband at night.

She gave birth to four children in about eight years, spending every moment of her life like living hell.

Many a time she thought of committing suicide, but the thought of her little children stopped her from such an extreme step.

At just 25 or 26, she appeared to be a sunburnt old lady. Some women also advised her to seek police help, but she couldn’t do anything as she knew she had no other place to go along with her four children if her husband throws her out of his house.

Senior lawyer Agha Intizar Ali Imran says if a husband doesn’t provide basic needs of life, food, clothing and shelter to his wife and children, they have the remedy to approach the family court, which has the powers of magistrates under Section 20 of the Family Courts Act, 1964.

—Dr Fatima Khan (The writer is a physician by profession. She has worked as an intern at the Capital Health (New Jersey) and the Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital (New York). Rights and gender issues are the areas of special interest to her. fatima23393@hotmail.com­)