Why Women in Pakistan Don’t Report Domestic Violence
Report me to the police. Get me arrested. Make me go to jail for a month or months.
I’ll be back, I’ll make sure you leave this town with me, and will give you a serving you deserve. I’ll make you regret you did any of that to me. I’ll make sure you never see your children again. I’ll make sure you don’t live a second more to rat me out to someone else.
You’ll pay for what you did. You will pay for what you are thinking of doing. You cannot run away from me. This police and government officials won’t be able to make you inaccessible to me. I’ll prove my innocence or fulfill my sentence AND COME BACK.
If I’m in jail, where will you get money to buy food and keep yourself and the kids alive? If they lock me up, how will you bear the piercing gaze of your neighbors? If I’m not there who will protect your “Izzat” from getting stained? How will you survive in the society? How will you prevent your kids from being mocked and called names by their peers, when their father is in prison?
What will you tell your kids about me, without being perceived as weak and broken to them? Think about them, how will you raise them in the society all by yourself, knowing that they are in open for the vultures to prey upon? How will they wind up growing in such ruthless environment?
How long are your parents going to keep you? They will eventually send you back to me. I had their consent when I married you and they don’t want to keep you and your kids at their home as extra burden. You will be useless to them, and I would have taken out my sentence and learned my lesson, all jailed up.
What about your relatives? What will they think of you, “aik mard ka khayal na rakh saki” (couldn’t handle one man.). Think about all the rumors that will fill the vicinity wherever you go. The sympathetic gazes and the uncalled advise you will get, and will be looked down upon if not acted upon.
Oh, and I will come back. To torture you even more than you already have to bear. Because, well, that is who I am, your husband, your “Majazi Khuda”, you cannot escape from my wrath, it is inevitable.
And then they say why women in Pakistan don’t report domestic violence?
Do you seriously believe they can? With all that they are taught they will have to go through. Do you seriously believe a woman will ever report?
