#Confessionsonsafarnamay: My protector is my perpetrator.

*This is a real story shared with my someone who would like to remain anonymous.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember that I was very small the first time his finger went up my vagina as he gave me a shower. I was so small that I didn’t know that this isn’t something a father is supposed to do with his daughter.

For me, for many years of my childhood, this was the most normal thing. I thought that this is the kind of a relationship every father shares with his daughter. This belief as a child destroyed and tarnished so much in me as an adult. I feel the knots in my heart are tied so tightly that no amount of love from another, no amount of therapy that can help me unscramble.

We were based in Saudi Arabia, away from the rest of the family, where he had the complete freedom to do as he pleased. Throughout my childhood, my sisters and I were physically abused along with being sexually targeted by our father.  We went to school hiding our bruises, and if someone asked, we made up stories. He was no less than a tyrant to my mother too. He would scream and use foul language. He would beat her at the tiniest of things – such as the food not having the right amount of salt. My mother always felt that had she had a son, things would not have been as bad. But I believe that if I did have a brother, he would be exactly like my monstrous father. Or perhaps, he would run away.

Some years later, we moved to Pakistan into a joint family system. From there, the sexual abuse stopped, but physical violence and emotional attacks continued. I never saw intimacy between my parents. Love was absent. There was just fear and resentment. My father had the audacity to own up to my mother what he did to his daughters but she couldn’t do anything about it. She had no one to believe or support her and unfortunately, her brothers believed my father’s concocted stories, but never her truth.

When I was in 7^th grade, my mother, not being able to deal with torture, suffered from a nervous breakdown. After that day, for many years to come, she remained in the confines of her room, eating and speaking very little. That meant that along with our studies, my sisters and I had to manage the home chores. I tried to spend as much time as possible with my mother, trying to counsel her, console her and to tell her that she needs to give up on her dream that one day, my father will become less monstrous.

For many years, I didn’t speak to my sisters about how my father was sexually abusing me. That’s because we were never able to become close or confide in one another. My father never allowed us to have a normal relationship, the kind sisters usually share. Perhaps it was his divide and rule policy, and had his way of unfairly favouring one to make the others jealous. He would ridicule our physical appearances and create nasty comparisons, making us resent each other for our supposed shortcomings. However, as we grew older and perhaps smart enough to understand what an ill person our father is, we slowly started opening up to each other, only to realize that he molested all his daughters, not just one.

As time passed, we started staying more and more out of the house, using studies as a scapegoat. We took up tuitions and occupied ourselves with housework so we engaged with him as little as possible. If you ask me, I was never really able to deal with the trauma of being sexually abused by the very man who was responsible for my birth, who was supposed to not just be my protector but also my mahram, the one who was supposed to safeguard me with his own life. All these years, I have kept my emotions blocked, because it is too hard to face them. And perhaps because I never reconciled with what happened to me as a child, I am not able to enjoy life the way others can and have grown up with zero self- worth. When I was younger, I didn’t have the money to afford professional help. But when I started working, I did see a psychiatrist a couple of times. She put me on medicines and I soon discontinued them. I’ll confess that I was just fearful of the side-effects.

Today, I am married and am a mother. But I have never been able to enjoy intimacy with my husband, which is not an expression of love, but merely a duty that I have to perform. I have trust issues, I go through bouts of depression. I am grateful that my life after marriage is much better than my childhood, and although my bad memories try to pull me back into darkness, I try hard to stay positive for my daughter. When I can’t feel happy from the inside, I pretend. That is something I am good at, because most of my life, I have put on a show for others. Sometimes, when I see my husband share a beautiful bond with my daughter, I see the broken parts of the puzzle that my own childhood never was.

It breaks my hard to face the reality that I have no maika. I can’t abandon my mother, so I do go to see her, but I hate the sight of my father. A grandparent is supposed be like a cloud of compassion and love, yet, I never leave my daughter with him because I know what he can potentially do.

What kind of a life is it where you must protect your daughter from her own nana? What kind of a world is it where you are sexually violated by your father? What kind of a reality is it that you have living, breathing parents, yet, there is NO WAY you can turn to them for support…

This story has been illustrated by Mariam Ahmad. You can see more of her work here.