A Lifetime of Enduring

(Part 2/4) "One day the words he screamed over the phone were too difficult for me to bear. For the first time, I expressed my resentment. I retaliated. I told him how I felt. I told him: ‘I have stayed here all this years quietly waiting for you and looking after your family and this is what I receive in return? I am done. I am leaving.’ I packed whatever belongings I had, picked up my daughter and left for Charikot. It took me 10 years to leave his house and his family. That is a lifetime of enduring. It was not my weakness that made me stay but my compassion for my husband, his family and my family that I chose to sacrifice my own life. After I left, I could have gone back to my mother but I did not want to trouble them. My marriage had cost them a lot. And I did not want to add to their troubles by living with them. My brother had called, 'Why don’t you come live with us? Things are not easy but you are family'. But I declined. You see, I did not want to hurt their prestige in the society for housing a daughter who has left her husband’s home. People would speak behind our backs. And I would be labeled a woman who could not keep a family. I would be the bad one. But if I have to confess, the day I left my husband's house, I felt free. I felt no fear. I rented a room in Charikot and started living with my daughter. Even though I was happy living alone, things were not easy. Years of abuse had rendered my body weak. I was not able to find work easily. Every evening my body became a brick. I would not express my pain to anyone, not even my daughter. I did not want her to worry for me. With the help of my brother, she was going to school so I did not want to distract her with the wounds of my heart. I would tell myself that the pain is my own and I should not confess it to anyone. Around that time, a villager came to visit. He had news. He said, 'Your man has returned. Are you not going back to him and taking your daughter with you?' That day when my daughter returned home from school. I told her that her father had returned. She just said, 'I don’t have a father.' After that day, I did not speak about her father with her."