blow

Last Saturday, I got phone call which I didn’t answer because the roaming charges in Istanbul for my UK phone tariff were high. I sent a reply to explain. The next morning I received a text message asking me to call. I replied the text with another one saying I would call once I was back in England. Then I got another text message. When I read it I thought sod the roaming charges and I called her:

Shubby Doo: Hello. What happened?
Her: Hello. Shubby Doo calm down. Please.
Shubby Doo: Don’t worry about me. What happened? Are you ok?
Her: I’m ok. I’m in bit of pain.
Shubby Doo: What was it this time? Just tell me what happened?

He had beaten her.

She said when the first blow connected; she didn’t even bother to scream she just started running. She locked the bedroom door and then locked herself in the bathroom. When he broke down both doors, she instinctively raised her arms to protect herself…it hadn’t helped. He had just continued to beat her...she said he didn’t stop when she hit the ground...he had just kept pummelling her body with punches and kicks.

She laughed bitterly when she admitted that amidst her screams, she heard him saying repeatedly “I’m going to kill you”.

At one point I thought she said he had used something to hit her over the head. I stopped her...had I heard correctly? what had he used? She said no, he had ‘just’ punched her on the head again and again…

‘just’ ke?…there is nothing ‘just’ about his behaviour.

With every blow he has ever laid on her before last saturday, as well as those blows that he rained down on her on that day, he is ignoring the bible verse that says:

‘…husband love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her’ Ephesians 5:25

Good Shepherd, let your peace descend upon him. Please show him that the way to love is through, care, affection, commitment, understanding, trust, respect, and sincerity.

I do not understand why he runs off to his village so often...please who does business in the village these days?

Despite my plea for her to stay with her sister in Lagos, reluctantly she goes with him. Before she liked going to his village to see his mother...iya was the kind hearted soul who sheltered her from her monster. His mother is dead now...she said that when she arrived there after iya died he had held on to her tightly...he had wailed he in her arms like ‘a baby’. She was not allowed at the graveside but she heard he hadn't stop crying when they were burying iya.

She does not like going to his village now because it is full of lying and thieving beggars who will say anything to him for some money…that is how they earn their way. She can see through their deceit but she has learnt that it is better to say nothing...one word against them and she incurs his wrath.

I have no understanding why an educated and well travelled man likes to surround himself in such treachery...I guess it is simply because in that remote world he is idolised falsely...she says he likes it when they call him ‘oga’...‘sir…‘governor’…‘chief’...‘daddy’...‘baba wa’...

I think he also likes taking her there when he is itching to use her as target practice...in his village she is away from her loved ones …in his village she isolated.

She is still there now. The doctor has visited her at home several times...in the room with no door. She is now on some medication. She gets more immediate relief when he gives her an injection for the pain. She says hasn't been able to sleep since that night...she is scared to close her eyes.

She says sometimes she wishes it would end...it will someday but sadly I don't think one of them will survive it...she says if by some lucky chance he leaves this world before her as a Christian she is not sure she would observe iddah as his widow...then she says that a mourning period consisting of four lunar cycles and 10 days is a small price to pay compared with what she has endured already. At other times she says she can't help but smile at the thought of her dead parents patiently waiting to receive her but then she remembers the children...always...she thinks first of the children.

Good Shepherd, watch over her. Please take up her struggle and be her shield.

One time, he tore her clothes off as he beat her at home...the village onlookers just stood there and watched the show...that time he left her bleeding and bruised in their front reception room in her underwear...this was about six to nine months after she had had major surgery...he was not the reason she had been in hospital but she was still supposed to be taking it easy.

I do not understand why:
1) It is still considered ok for a man to beat his wife in Nigeria?
2) Such men are always so adept at hiding their true colours up until the time a woman has walked up the aisle and lovingly said “I do”?

Before they got married…he was her gentleman.
After they got married…he stopped her modelling work.
After she gave birth to the children…he stopped her career as a teacher.

Like I've said his abuse is not a new thing...but it is becoming worse...sadly not only for her.

On one occasion, his little boy stood up to him. That should have stopped a grown man...but not this man. Instead, he went to his child’s room and started to throw the boy’s things out…the child was not going to sleep under his roof. She had started begging him to stop…it was not the boy’s fault…she told him he could do whatever he wanted to her. He didn’t continue his attack because he had already satisfied his thirst for violence...but now he had also evoked such fear that she was willing to submit to anything....his ego had been well fed by this notion...so much so that he did not speak to his son for 2 months...can you imagine that they had to specially seek ‘an audience’ with him so that the boy could say sorry for taking mummy’s side.

On another occassion he beat his other son for helping mummy pack as she tried to leave... she had found out (yet again o!) that he was sleeping with someone else...enough was enough...when he wasn't at home, she started moving her stuff out a little bit at a time...he found out. First he beat her...then he asked his boy where had she been going?...where was her stuff?... his eldest son refused to talk. When he was done with both of them he locked each one in a different room to think about what they had done...to think about how they had betrayed him. It was not to happen again.

I could give other examples but there is no point...it always ends the same way...with violence...not because he was raised that way o!...his mother told her that his father would have been ashamed had he lived to see this.

I think he does this because he wants to be master of all he surveys...he believes his ‘might is right’.

She is both friend and family...I cherish her beyond words...simply put...she is too dear to me to loose...but I don't understand what to do anymore as I've realised that:

Their union cannot still be a blessing because it is based on fear.

I fear one day, in his rage, she will die.

I know, for now, she will not leave him,
I know she endures it for her children.

Good Shepherd, guide and guard her under that shadow of your wing. Please keep her safe.