Betrayed Read online

  ‘But you won’t have to be concerned like you were before,’ he said. ‘I’ll wear a condom. There won’t be any risk.’

  He began ringing our apartment in Münster every day I was in that city. He’d call, too, at our cousin’s legal office.

  ‘Latifa, I’m going to marry you, you know,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, no. I’m too young to even think about marriage, I have my lessons to finish and I’m going to go home to Australia to be with my father soon, because he hasn’t been able to get away yet to join us.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ said Mikael.

  ‘I can do anything I like,’ I retorted.

  I’d had a chance to go back over that evening. I was now convinced that even though we had lain naked together, he had raped me. I had cried out for him to stop and he had smothered my voice and gone ahead. I wondered whether I should report him to the authorities, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I was in a hopeless position. I had willingly undressed for a start—and did I really believe that the community would turn against one of their sons, who had grown up as a ‘good Kurdish boy’ among them? No, I was in a losing position from the start.

  As the weeks went by, Mikael kept up the pressure. We hadn’t even touched each other since that night but once it had happened, it seemed romance had vanished, for both him and me. I was already his, as far as he was concerned.

  ‘I’m going to send my mother around to your house to ask for your hand.’

  I thought that was a ridiculous thing to say, but I learned later that this was indeed the Kurdish way. Any man wanting to propose to a woman always did it through his mother. It would be the mother who would literally call around at a young woman’s house and speak to her family. Rejection by either the family or the would-be bride was a great humiliation for the mother who knocked.

  ‘Don’t do that, Mikael,’ I begged him. ‘I don’t want to marry you.’

  But my mother liked him. He was handsome, he came from a good family—but she didn’t know about his dark side; his drug dealing, weapons trading and finally the biggest sin of all, stealing my virginity. Yes, I had no doubt that it had been stolen from me in a brief moment in time and now I was a ‘marked’ woman for the rest of my life. If I found a husband for myself, a Western man, the loss of my virginity would probably not matter—but Mikael was going to send his mother to my home and my own mother would almost certainly agree to my betrothal. Knowing the deep affection my mother held for her Kurdish background, she would insist on my accepting Mikael’s hand. If I refused, she would want to know why and I knew I would be too ashamed to tell her.

  Did I lack courage at that time? It was more a sense of feeling utterly trapped. Still a teenager, I was living in a modern Western world yet I’d become ensnared in an ancient culture. Apart from the banter with the British soldiers in the pizza cafe, I realised that everyone around me was a Kurd. All my friends were Kurds. If we travelled south from Munster to Siegen it was to visit our Kurdish relatives. My mother was working for high people in Kurdistan, of that I had no doubt, although she never spelled it out to me. People who rang spoke Kurdish.

  And so the day came when my mother approached me and said that Mikael wanted to marry me and she was very happy about it—and what did I think about it? I knew the pressure would continue if I said no. So, against all my instincts, I said yes.

  ‘I have never been as proud of you as I am today,’ Baian said. ‘As your mother I could have wished for nothing more than for you to raise a family with Mikael.’

  Arrangements were made for our marriage. In the traditional way, it would be in two parts. First would come an Islamic marriage when we would stand before an Imam, a Muslim cleric, and be brought together as man and wife in the eyes of God. Traditionally, we would not sleep together that night. That would come after the second part of our marriage when we would be officially registered, there would be a grand reception and dancing and then we would retire to our bed for the ‘defl owering’ of the bride. Of course, only Mikael and I knew my shameful secret. I was terrified of what lay ahead. I now knew that close relatives of my family would want evidence that my new husband had taken me. They would want to see blood on the cloth. We would have to fake it.

  But as the day of the Islamic marriage approached I kept going back to that fateful chicken and sweet corn evening—I’ll always remember it as that. How skilfully Mikael had taken advantage of me. There was no doubt in my mind that he had not been a virgin. He knew exactly what he was doing. But the male would not be blamed. In Kurdish society I was to learn, it was the woman who would be seen to have done wrong by leading him on. Sex before marriage was haram (totally forbidden) and it was always the woman who was the sinner.

  Why hadn’t my parents explained such things to me and my brother as we grew up in Sydney? My mother, certainly, was very much a part of the burgeoning Kurdish community in Australia to the point of being fanatical about her roots and helping everyone whether they were new arrivals or if there was a need of financial help for some family in far away Kurdistan.

  As we stood before the Imam at our family’s apartment, with my mother and relatives smiling on, I felt the bitterness coursing through me. I could not face my friends as the day had approached. I was moody, distracted. My mother could see there was something wrong but when she asked I put on a brave smile and told her everything was fine. Even if I had told her what had happened, I knew she would have been shamed and horrified, just as I was, before insisting that I go ahead with the marriage because there would have been no other choice.

  The Islamic ceremony, when verses from the Koran were read, was over after an hour and everyone was smiling except for me. There was still the legal side of the wedding to come and I knew I just couldn’t face it or the future that lay beyond. I saw myself five years on, burdened by children, my education over, my career not even started and I would still be only 25 years old. My mother had made a career for herself, that was true, after being forced into marriage at the age of 15 but I was living in Europe for heaven’s sake. From her teens she had had to carry the responsibility of her children and a husband. She had been able to break away from time to time to go overseas on her own and I wondered just how much she had wished she could stay away and follow whatever path opened for her. But no, she always had had to return home. It was her lot, whether she liked it or not. Her destiny had been shaped in a country far away but she was still tangled in its cultural web.

  By a cruel twist of fate—was it a coincidence or were other unknown forces at work?—one of my female cousins who I met at a relative’s wedding, told me of news that had come from Kurdistan that very week. It was a terrible story, for the young woman involved, Etab, was not only related to me—I had met her some seven years earlier when my parents had taken me to Kurdistan on a visit. Close to my own age, we had fun as she tried on some of my Western clothing. Her father and my father were blood cousins and although I was too young to understand the implications at the time, I learned after that visit that she had been married off as soon as she had reached puberty.

  As beautiful as my friend had been, with fair skin and jet black eyes, a mother of four, she had now been accused of adultery. It seemed that she was a victim of her beauty, for men would follow her and snatch every chance to talk to her. Soon, people began to call her a slut, a whore, to her face. The reality was that her husband had been having an adulterous affair and her unhappiness showed whenever she was out. She was happy to talk to men, for she knew her husband felt nothing for her any more. But her reputation as an ‘easy woman’ spread and her shamed relatives—my very own relatives—refused to listen to her protests of innocence. One night the men, my father’s cousin among them, drove her into the desert, poured gasoline over her and set her alight. As she screamed in agony her husband brought out his gun and ended it with a bullet to her head.

  Her grandmother and her mother had been killed for the same reasons. Reputation. Family pride.
Honour. Her crime was that she had stopped to talk to a group of men as she went to a well to fetch water. Idle gossip, rumour—and your life could be destroyed.

  Thank God I’m here, I thought. How wrong it had been, not only to kill one so young and lovely, but to take a life when the Koran makes it clear that it is wrong to kill something we have not created. No-one can show themselves to be greater than God, the Muslim Holy Book teaches. I have learned things myself from the Koran—although I was not a reader or a follower of its teachings during my time in Australia—the most poignant being that while men who kill those who are younger or more helpless than themselves think they are powerful, such acts are simply showing their weakness.

  As arrangements continued for the legal wedding, Mikael and I spent a second time together. I had thought very carefully about it beforehand, believing I should give our relationship another chance in the hope that this time it would be passionate. But I felt nothing. He showed no affection for me and when it was over he was up and out of the room. So this was how it was going to be for years to come, I told myself. No way. Mikael and I had no future as husband and wife.

  But who could I turn to for help in escaping from this impending domestic imprisonment?

  Finally I made a decision. I was going to let my feelings flow—up to a point. The loss of my virginity would remain my secret, but I would tell my mother what I felt.

  ‘I can’t go on with this,’ I said when we were in the kitchen. ‘I don’t love this person. I want to go back to Australia and finish my education, find a career and eventually find someone that I truly love—not someone who sends his mother around to ask you if he can marry me. It’s nonsense. That’s not love.’

  My mother was shocked. Her face fell. She turned her back and put down the cup she had been holding. Silent.

  Now I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I remember you talking to Dad, talking about your treatment by him in Kurdistan and particularly the treatment you received from his mother. You were trapped in his family, looking after them, feeding them, until you were forced to leave.’

  Then she spun on me, her face white with anger. But no words came.

  ‘Mum,’ I continued, ‘I don’t want what happened to you to happen to me. If I married Mikael I could end up like you ended up over there in Iraq. I’d be sucked into his family, you know that, and I’d be a slave to their wishes. How do you know, how do I know, that his mother won’t make all kinds of demands on me, just like Dad’s mother made demands on you?’

  She continued staring at me. I could see she was fighting to control an angry outburst. It was the first time I’d talked to her in this way about her life in Iraq. I was preparing myself for a verbal lashing, but instead she said:

  ‘Love comes later. It will come.’

  ‘But with Dad… do you really, really love him?’

  She stared at me, as if I was a stranger.

  ‘Do not, ever again, talk to me about your father and me. It is none of your business.’

  I went to my room and lay on the bed, my mind racing. My mother had dismissed me. I couldn’t tell her, I just couldn’t. If nothing more, I needed to just talk it over with someone. I felt like my secret was bursting to be released. But who could I talk to? Was there anyone? As just about everyone I knew was connected to the Kurdish community, I realised I had to keep my ordeal to myself. And then I remembered Ojo, my half-German friend.

  We met in a café and I told him exactly what had happened. Sadness spread over his face. Sadness for me, or sadness for himself perhaps, because I had sensed in earlier days that he had feelings for me. He reached across the table and touched my hand.

  ‘Latifa,’ he said, ‘life is much too short for unhappiness. Why would you want to throw away this wonderful gift of life to spend it with someone you will always be unhappy with?’

  ‘But I don’t want to let my mother, my whole family, down. The eyes of all my relatives are on me. I can’t go this far and back down, surely.’

  Now his hand was gripping mine more strongly. ‘Your conscience will tell you what to do. And so will your heart.’

  He was just a year or two older than me, but he spoke with the wisdom of someone much older. ‘Do you want to hear it from me, Latifa? Don’t stay with this man. He has abused you. Look at yourself. You are a picture of unhappiness. Where is the laughing, fun girl I’ve always known? I’m not sitting with her now.’

  When I returned home my mother had a surprise for me. And it wasn’t nice. ‘You will remain indoors with me now until you and Mikael set up your home together as man and wife.’

  I watched with growing frustration as my brother went off in the evenings to join his friends, go to parties, to dances, while my mother forced me to remain at home. I paced the lounge room liked a caged tiger.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Baian demanded. ‘Are you on drugs? You’re not behaving like my daughter any more.’

  ‘And you’re not behaving like my mother,’ I raged. Every time I spoke to her, it seemed my frustrations poured out. When I wasn’t walking around the room, round and round and round, I was in my bedroom, trying to sleep away my misery. I didn’t go to work at our cousin’s office. I couldn’t face anyone because I knew they would all be looking at me as the bride-to-be and I didn’t want to reveal my unhappiness to them.

  I couldn’t bear the ‘cage’ that my home had become any more. I packed a bag when my mother and brother were out and fled to Ojo’s home. I felt no shame when I went to bed with him. I wanted someone’s arms around me. To feel passion—and I did. He cared and I cared. He knew of other Muslim girls in Germany who were trapped like I was about to be, heading towards a marriage I wanted no part of. They were even forced by their parents into praying five times a day in their homes to maintain a good reputation in the Kurdish community—and not particularly for religious reasons. If they weren’t at home for any of those prayer sessions, they had to make up for them with ‘double prayers’ when they got home. I had once asked a cousin whether she was really praying to God or praying just to please her family.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘When you have no choice, you just do it.’

  When I returned home after staying with Ojo for a few days my mother was silent. I was expecting a furious outpouring, but it never came. But I knew she was containing herself and perhaps it would come later. Little did I realise just how that brewing explosion was to drastically destroy all my hopes of escape from a prison that was closing in around me.

  FOUR

  My father was coming at me with a knife. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, flamed by vodka.

  ‘Give me your hand!’ he demanded. ‘I’m going to cut your fingers off ! I’ll make you scream, my girl. Oh, how I’ll make you scream!’

  I woke from the nightmare, sweat on my brow. What did it mean? That was not my loving father. I knew I had to call him. My mother and brother had already left for the day and although it was late in the evening in Australia I put the call through.

  ‘Are you all right, Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes and no. You know about your mother and me, don’t you?’

  ‘No, what?’

  I could feel his reluctance to go on. ‘We’ve agreed to separate. Or rather she wants to leave me and I don’t seem to have any choice. I won’t be coming over to join you.’

  I was stunned. There had been no warning of this.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I cried. ‘What happened?’ He did not respond. I broke the silence. ‘How I wish I could come back to Australia and be with you, pick up where we had left off. I miss you and Sydney so much.’

  ‘Be guided by your mother,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet up soon, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be able to come back here for a holiday or I might be able to get over there.’ He seemed strangely distant; something in his voice but I couldn’t pick it.

  As if I wasn’t depressed enough. Now this. Perhaps I should have realised they were going to split up. After all, it had been more than a year si
nce we had left Sydney and there had been no hint that my father was ready to join us. I had assumed that he was still waiting to find a good price for our house.

  How dramatically things change. Shortly after that conversation my father was on his way to Germany. But his sudden flight had nothing to do with Baian his wife, or we his children. His younger brother, who lived in Siegen, had been killed in an accident on the autobahn. My father insisted on the body being returned to Kurdistan and, in keeping with culture, he had to be buried within a week. He did not call Baian. Within two days he was on a flight to Iraq with the casket.

  My mother’s silence was unbearable. Her mood had nothing to do with the separation. She was still furious with me. As each day passed I was waiting for that explosion I knew was coming. I didn’t even mention what my father had told me, fearing that she would accuse me of talking about her to my father behind her back.

  One day I told her I was going to go out and do some shopping.

  ‘Oh yes, who with?’ she asked. ‘One of your black friends?’

  So that was it. Not only had she wondered where I had been during those missing days, she had since found out about Ojo—when everyone in her family was preparing to welcome me into the community as Mikael’s wife. Once or twice I heard her talking on the phone and for some reason I had the impression it was to my father, who was still in Iraq. I heard constant references to ‘she… she… she…’

  Mikael was constantly ‘at me’ whenever we travelled to Siegen, talking about the children we would raise and asking which city we would like to settle in. One day the pressure came to a head while we were both attending a wedding.

  ‘We have no future, Mikael,’ I said, when we stepped out into a small garden ‘Not after what you did.’

  ‘Oh, but we do. How do you think your mother is going to react if I were to tell what happened between us—before any wedding arrangements had been made?’