Exactly three months after our marriage, my husband woke me up at dawn and said he needed a break to seek clarity. A break from what? He told me he felt like he’d made a mistake with the marriage and needed some space to figure things out. I was confused. We hadn’t had a fight. I thought I was doing my best as a wife, serving him, pleasing him in bed—and then this?

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I asked what I could do to help bring him clarity instead of separation, and he said all he wanted was space and time to figure himself out. I went back to sleep thinking I would wake up and hear that he had made a mistake and didn’t need the break after all. I woke up in the morning, greeted him with a wide smile and even tried to hug him as if we hadn’t talked about space and clarity at dawn.

He pushed me away with both hands and asked me to stay away from him. All day he was moody. He didn’t eat what I cooked. He stayed on his laptop, went out for a few hours, came back and continued working on his laptop. I was left alone to figure out what was going wrong.

I ended up telling myself it was the devil trying to attack my marriage, so I decided to fight it on my knees instead of discussing it.

I was kneeling next to the bed praying before sleep when I mentioned his name and asked God to touch his heart. He quickly got out of bed, pulled me up from my knees, pushed me out of the bedroom and locked the door.

“Don’t you know when you’re not wanted? What should God do about it?”

I kept knocking, begging him to open the door so we could talk. He opened the door and the first thing that came was a slap across my face, followed by a push that landed me on the floor. He tried to kick me but stopped midway. “If you don’t stop disturbing my sleep, I’ll throw you out of the house.”

While I was on the floor crying, I prayed and called on God to be my witness.

“Is this what You meant for us when You joined us in holy matrimony? Please show Your face. The devil is at it again.”

Within a week, I was beaten three times. The last one was so terrifying that I thought I wouldn’t survive the night. I begged him to stop and promised to give him space. “I’ll leave tomorrow morning. Please don’t end my life. I beg you. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

The next morning, when I looked in the mirror and saw the bruises and marks of abuse on my face, I told him, “I don’t want to leave this way. Everyone will ask what happened and I would have to mention your name. Can I have a few days to heal before I go?”

He held me and inspected the injuries. He told me to use cold water on my swollen face and when I was done, he applied ointment to my bruised body.

No apology. Just cold and straightforward. That night, while he was asleep and I was in the hall, his laptop kept making sounds. I checked and saw that his WhatsApp was open. I was even scared to read the messages. If he had walked in and seen me doing it, that would have been the end of me.

I went to the bedroom to make sure he was properly asleep before returning to check the messages. He was telling his elder sister that he regretted the marriage and wanted out. He said he felt like he had just woken up from a dream only to realize he was living with a woman he didn’t know and didn’t know where she had come from. His sister asked, “Or she used juju on you and the power of the juju has faded?”

They went on to talk about a lady my husband should have married—Jacinta. I knew about her. They had dated for four years but the lady travelled out of the country and their relationship ended. My husband blamed the problems in our marriage on Jacinta, asking why she had left him in the lurch. I read until my eyes could no longer contain the tears.

He told his sister he would either travel and never come back or rent another place and leave me to rot in our house. I didn’t ask any questions. I still believed prayer would resolve our problems until one afternoon when he nearly burned my face with a hot iron.

I could see my reflection in the iron plate as it kept moving closer to my face. It felt like a horror movie. He didn’t do it but once the iron was out of my face, I called my dad crying. He asked what the problem was. I told him, “I want to come home but I have plenty of things to carry. Can you come for me?”

“Come home with plenty of things and do what? Where’s your husband? Why are you leaving home when he’s there?” I said, “Dad, are you coming for me or not? Another day and you’ll come and carry my dead body.”

He came with my mom. My husband had left the house. They wanted to speak to him first but he wouldn’t answer his phone, so I picked the few things that could fit into the car and they drove me home.

In the car, I rested my head against the window, watching the scenery outside while the wind blew through my hair. My mom kept asking what the problem was and I said, “A few hours ago, a hot iron was inches away from my face. My husband says if I don’t leave him alone, I’ll lose my face.”

I only told them half of the story but they still found it hard to believe. My dad asked why I hadn’t said anything all this time. I responded, “Isn’t that what you told me at my wedding? That I shouldn’t quickly run home to report issues concerning my marriage?”

Three months later, my husband called. He said he had gained clarity and realized he had been a demon to me. He wanted me back in the marriage. He said he had spoken to a therapist and gone through counselling. He had allowed his childhood trauma to get the better of him and wanted me to forgive him and return.

Immediately, I got flashbacks of my reflection in the hot iron. The slap across my face. The bruises. The fear. The loss of confidence.

I responded, “Never!”

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He came with his parents, who were equally shocked by what I had gone through. I mentioned his elder sister and the messages I had read. They pleaded for forgiveness and asked me to return to the marriage. My dad told them, “I’ll be shocked if my daughter goes back but the decision is in her hands.”

We are currently in court going through a divorce. Even at this stage, when it’s obvious everything is over, he’s still pleading with me. I wish him well but this girl here has learned too much to go back to Egypt as a slave.

—Gillian  

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