If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

We were happy for a few months until problems started coming. One evening, my husband complained of pain in the waist. At dawn, he was sweating. By morning, my husband couldn’t walk. I rushed him to the hospital and called his father. By the time his father got to the hospital, my husband couldn’t talk. Everything happened so fast it didn’t give us space to breathe. His father asked what happened and I told him. He asked me, “Are you sure that’s all that happened? You haven’t given him anything to eat or drink?”

The weight of that question took me unaware but I answered anyway. The next thing I heard from my husband’s family was that I’d accepted that I gave him a concoction to drink and it got him paralyzed. “Me? When did I say that? At what time?”

My husband couldn’t talk to save me from the snares of his family. Just after a week, his father arranged with the hospital and took my husband home without my knowledge. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch so I started a fight with the family. They fought back. They called me a witch. They said they warned their son against me but he didn’t listen. His other siblings were on me every day, calling me a destroyer.

Unbeknownst to me, I was carrying a pregnancy. I didn’t know the time I missed my period. I wasn’t even checking until I started feeling sick and weak. I even thought it was my turn to get paralyzed until I tested for pregnancy and it was positive. I called my husband’s mom and told her about the pregnancy. I begged her to let me see my husband so I could give him the news. He couldn’t talk but he could hear. I was appealing to her motherly instinct but this woman opened her mouth and told me, “Wherever you got that pregnancy from, send it there. My son is paralyzed. How did he get you pregnant in his state?”

It became the talk in the family that I’d slept with another man knowing my husband was sick. They used that as a reason to divorce me without the consent of my husband. It turned into a family war. Family war generated into legal battles. They simply won’t let me see my husband. They asked my parents to return their drink or there would be consequences. The embarrassment was getting too much so one day I decided to stop fighting and see what would happen.

Every morning before I left my bed, I sent my husband a message. I told him about the pregnancy. I told him what his family was doing to me. I took some recordings. I sent them to him too. His phone was off. There was a password which I knew no one could access. I did that for close to a year. When I was in labour, I asked the nurse to record it. I sent him that video. I said, “Our baby is here. Too sad you couldn’t be around to see the miracle God has given us.”

He wasn’t reading but that didn’t stop me from sending the messages.

My mom called his mom to give her the news. “You have a grandson. Whenever you’re ready, you can come and see him.” My mother-in-law responded, “We are not ready to see any child born out of prostitution. He’s not ours. Look for his father.”

They sent my husband to a certain village for healing. I didn’t know about it. The family built a huge wall between us and them. It was a distant family member who told me where my husband was and how he was doing. She asked me to pray for him. I told her I do that every day.

One morning, I was sending my husband a message when I realized my messages had ticked blue. My heart missed a beat. “He has read my messages and didn’t respond? What’s happening?” I was in the middle of texting him when I saw “typing…”

I waited. It looked like forever. “What’s he typing that’s taking him this long?” I waited a little more. The typing stopped. “Where are you?” That was the only thing that came. I cried. I texted as fast as I could; “Do you know we have a son?” We are home. We are fine. How about you?”

He didn’t text back. The phone went off again. I was confused. “Or he wasn’t the one I was chatting with? Why’s the phone off again?”

One evening there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and it was my husband. If he didn’t speak first, I wouldn’t have known it was him. The last time I saw him he didn’t have a beard. This man here was having hair all over his face. He was lean, very emaciated, like he was returning from a refugee camp. I pulled him in and closed the door quickly.

He said, “They wanted to kill me. When they couldn’t, they decided to make me miserable. When I started talking and asked about you, they said you’d married again and were carrying the man’s son. They said a lot of horrible things. I believed them until I got hold of my phone and started reading the messages. I didn’t know the date and time. It was always dark where I was.”

I don’t know if he was speaking metaphorically or literally. He ran away with the help of the herbalist who was taking care of him. It sounds like a story that happened in a dream. My heart was heavy. I asked what we should do and he said, “Nobody knows where I am. Let’s keep it that way.”

The next day we went to the hospital. He stayed there for a week. Even my family didn’t know he was with me. When he was discharged, we moved to a new place without telling my family. Surprisingly, his people never called to tell me anything. When he was strong enough, he called his brother and asked him to tell his father that he was alive but they would never know his whereabouts until their dying days. After that, he changed his number.

Life was tough but we took it a day at a time. My family hated me for sticking around a marriage like that but I had no option. It was him or no other.

He was talking to a friend who was helping him to travel abroad. He put all his investment in while I supported him with everything I had until one day he left the country and promised to come back for us. He hadn’t come for us yet but he sends us money. He tells us everything. We are always on a video call. He tells us he will come for us soon. I believe him.

I Didn’t Tell Anybody Because I Enjoyed It

Not too long ago, his elder brother called me, begging me in the name of God to show him where his brother was. When I cut the call, I wondered why I hadn’t blocked him. I did it right there. They have the power to make a man fall. They should use that same power to find him. I told his brother, before I cut the call, “Why do you look for your brother in a brothel? Do you think he will have anything to do with the prostitutes in there?”

—Akos

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