Honor Aside

Chapter 10

The next morning, the mourners and condolences arrived. Everyone wanted to know when the funeral would be held. In Islam, people are supposed to be buried as soon as possible, but the coroner's office had to perform an autopsy even though the cause of death was extremely obvious, albeit very rare. It felt weird to comfort people about how strange they thought it was that my sister was dead. The visits kept coming because people were so shocked by the death of a young woman whom they'd seen before the pandemic looking healthy. Ratface came to our house every day and sat outside with the men. I didn't understand why he was allowed to be there, considering how unhappy he'd made my sister. But he had to stay or else people would talk. I stayed in my room a lot and watched a Scandinavian crime drama when it got too much to bear.

Two days after she died, I found evidence that my sister had been abused by Ratface so much worse than what anyone had begrudgingly told me. My dad made a comment about Ratface having complained to him that my sister wouldn't have sex with him, when she was sick and suffering from her slow-healing leg wound. He asked me to confirm that it was wrong of Ratface to have done that. My parents often revealed information to me this way, as if I should remain impartial and support them rather than taking anything personally. I took it very personally. I didn't sleep all night and went through my sister's room in the early morning. I locked myself in and methodically searched her papers for evidence that something wrong had happened. Secretly, I wanted to find a note or letter that she would've written to me, revealing the secrets she'd taken with her. I found one piece of paper. It was a list of complaints, and it seemed as if she'd written it to remember her main arguments to bring up in a discussion with my parents about why she should be allowed to get a divorce. It said that he had hit her, two or three times. I had no idea when the note had been written, so he could have been physically abusive more than two or three times. He had made death threats. "I will break you and your pride," he'd said. In Pakistan, his family had complained about her shortly after the wedding to our dad's brother. That asshole believed Ratface's family. I couldn't stop crying, because the pain she'd endured was beyond anything I thought she could have gone through. I knew she and Ratface had both complained to my parents that they didn't want to be married. I didn't think he'd ever put his soft, brittle hands on her.

I went to my parents, forcing my face to remain neutral. They hated emotional outbursts, thinking that we were trying to appeal to their emotions and manipulate them. I couldn't stop my voice from trembling, however. "Why is he allowed to come to my house when this is what he did to my sister," I demanded. My parents were momentarily shocked when they saw what I'd found. Then, my dad recollected himself and said that my sister had brought up those same concerns months before, and he had talked to her and Ratface about it in his role as family elder/marriage counselor. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They had known that she was stuck with an emotionally stunted woman-beater who made death threats and it hadn't been enough for her to be "allowed" to divorce. When they make themselves the only social support you have and raise you not to talk about your pain to anyone, that happens. My dad said he was going to submit evidence about this to the police, as well as Ratface's use of his friend to obtain antibiotics without an in-person appointment where my sister's wound was assessed. He said Ratface had to keep coming by the house or else he might realize we were onto him and run away. 

Looking back, my dad did always protect abusers. He did always have a tendency to victim-blame and oppress. In the shadow of these monstrous truths, we continued with our mourning rituals. I once got so mad in the days before the funeral that I accused my dad of having destroyed my sister's life. I said he had scrutinized her every move since she was born, ridiculed her, forced her into a career she disliked, forced her to marry a monster who was similar to how my dad himself had been when younger, had criticized my sister for her "faults" when she revealed that the guy was abusive beyond belief, and, most unforgivably, he had berated her for being ill and had made the last few months of her life especially unpleasant. He cried, and I cried. I felt bad because he looked so pathetic and apologized. He crowed the day after that I'd apologized and had therefore admitted that I was wrong. But I hadn't lied at all.