Breaking the Silence

Her screams pierced the still night air.

The time was 10:24pm and most households in my neighbourhood had turned in for the night. I had put the kids to sleep earlier on and was just about drifting off to sleep myself when I heard the noise. I sat up straight.

The screams were coming from my neighbour’s house. Cries of ‘help me, help me!’ rang into the night. It was followed by a loud thud and then silence. Suddenly, I heard loud banging on the gate and a glance at the window showed that it was my neighbours knocking on the gate from which the screams came. The gate was shut. One of the men scaled over the wall and entered the house. By then, I had hastily thrown on my hijab and joined the crowd outside.

She was found lying naked in her living room, passed out. Her husband was seated on a sofa calmly smoking a cigarette. Her body was covered in welts and it appeared he had hit her with a curtain rod. A neighbour hastily threw a wrapper over her body and carried her out where we were waiting anxiously. We drove to the hospital at lightning speed.

I knew the couple fleetingly. They had moved in three years ago after a flamboyant Instagram wedding. We all know that type of wedding- the lavish, extravagant parties complete with the picture-perfect handsome groom and his dazzling bride flooding our Facebook and Instagram timelines. They had settled in amicably and she sometimes came to my house whenever she had medical problems. I had heard rumours that he sometimes hit her but I did not feel it was any of my business as she denied all allegations. She had once come to me with complaints of a headache following a bruise on her forehead. She claimed she had hit her head on a wall and had grown defensive, like most victims of abuse usually do, when I tried to enquire if the bruise could have been due to something else. That was five months ago, the last time she came to my house.

In the Emergency room, we tried our best to resuscitate her and her relatives were notified. Her older sister came immediately. Later in the night, she started to regain consciousness and was mumbling incoherently. Guilt had not allowed me to sleep. I kept berating myself- why had I not pushed further? Why did I not insist she seek help? Most doctors, either from experience or training are able to pick out victims of domestic violence. They make up stories about their symptoms which any serious doctor can easily see through. I felt like I had failed this young bride but what choice did I have when she had vehemently denied all the rumours? I could not very well barge into her house and demand what was causing her frequent bruises. It was not like I could walk up to her husband and ask why his beautiful wife, previously cheerful, now appeared sad and nervous all the time. And even if I could- what would I do with the information? We have no safe houses for victims of domestic violence. The police will say it is a family affair and even the family of the bride might decide in most cases, to drop all charges against the perpetrator.

Zainab eventually regained full consciousness in the morning. By then, her husband had arrived with a couple of our neighbours to plead with her relatives. I watched aghast as the husband shed crocodile tears, blaming the devil for his atrocities. She provoked him, he said. He was a jealous man and she used to anger him by talking about her male classmates. She was in her last year at university and he sometimes saw her in the company of men in school. It was not his fault, he cried.

In the afternoon, I went to check on Zainab. She was asleep but opened her eyes when I came in. Her lovely face was swollen red and her eyes were blood shot. She appeared to have been crying. I took a seat and observed her quietly. She narrated her story while staring blankly at the ceiling. Her husband used to work in a bank but had been suspended last year on allegation of fraud. He had always been over possessive but it had suddenly increased when he was fired. He criticised her friends and always wanted to know where she was and who she was with. He became increasingly violent and claimed she was cheating on him. The last argument they had was because he asked her to beg her father for a loan. Again. Her father had given him a loan of up N5 million prior, to set up a business but he had blown it all away and bought a new car instead. When she refused, he had stripped her naked and proceeded to beat her despite her cries of help.

I did the only thing I could do in my position- I counselled her. I taught her about the cycle of abuse and how she had to break it. I told her that her husband was already outside the A&E acting Hausa drama. That he was making it look like she was to blame. That she alone had the power to decide her fate: to return to her marriage and live with the consequences or to leave him.

Zainab was discharged three days later after it was confirmed that she had no internal injuries. She returned to her parent’s house to recuperate where I heard her husband spent every day begging her. A few months ago, a moving truck came to move her things from their house. Later, I learnt that she had moved with her husband to another neighbourhood to start life afresh. She had made her choice.

Sadly, she would remain just another statistic in our pitiful battle against domestic violence.