Who I met today

Who I met today

Today I met a woman poet born and raised in Hyderabad. Though she was satisfied writing poetry, in the back of her mind she was aware of harsh injustices that exist towards females in India. With that she decided to create her own NGO which focused on domestic violence, and continue to write poetry.

Today I met a Muslim woman who was forced into marriage at the young age of sixteen. Her future fiancé was not an educated man, however those who arranged her marriage knew she was intelligent and still studying so assumed that she could take care of the family. After marriage the woman continued with her education and later became a teacher. As time passed, though the woman was individually supporting her husband and the child in her womb, the husband became resentful towards his wife’s intelligence and felt she was too smart for her own good. In a rage of fury he attacked her and literally cut off her whole nose. Bleeding profusely, this woman was rushed to the emergency room by alarmed neighbors as her husband proceeded on to the police station holding his wife’s nose, announcing his crime. The police did not take any action and the husband ran away, never to return. Now this woman is left, struggling to raise her child. Her face his terribly scarred, and even after plastic surgery she scarcely has a nose. Her face obviously displays a huge open gap and plenty of dark scares. Though her face is an obvious reminder of the results domestic violence, her parents (who she now lives with) are still upset with her for being without a husband and for doing outreach work against domestic violence.

Today I met another young Muslim girl who is now fourteen years of age. When she was thirteen she was kidnapped from her home and held captive for seven months by a man from a nearby village. There, beyond forcing her to fulfill the duties of domestic help, he brutally raped her every single day. As if the physical violation she endured wasn’t enough, she was forced, every evening, to sit outside of the house absolutely naked so everyone in the village could see her. When she inevitably became pregnant the kidnapper discarded her like a piece of trash back in front of her home. He has since done the same with another young girl and was later murdered by the other girl’s family members. This girl now lives at a home where her parents are humiliated by her. She deals with a constant flow verbal abuse of how she has shamed her family’s name by becoming pregnant without being married. She stays at the domestic violence center all day and returns home early evening, only when it is unsafe for her to be out, to avoid constant verbal abuse from her parents.

Another woman I met today is from the Dalit (untouchable) caste. In Hyderabad, because of such a strong Muslim community, her family has also taken up the Purda system (face covering) as many other Dalit families have done. She was never allowed outside of her house, with or without a male, and was not allowed to study. She was married off promptly at the age of sixteen and also experienced some domestic violence at home, the details of which she was too shy to share with me. She has now started working at the center at the age of eighteen and has for the first time in her life seen “Charminar”, a well known monument in Hyderabad. This monument was just by her house her entire life, but she had never set eyes on it because of the lack of freedom she had.

Another Muslim girl I met today has been privileged enough to be allowed to educate herself up to tenth standard, versus most Muslim women in impoverished areas who are expected to support the family, but aren’t allowed to be educated or leave the houses. She herself has chosen to take up social work and has started working at this domestic violence center which does fantastic work with oppressed women. Every single day upon her return home she gets attacked by her parents who do not approve of her doing this work, yet everyday she deals with it and continues on with her noble work. The likelihood of her family disowning her or getting her married to discontinue her work is very high.

Finally two of these women, who are outreach workers at the domestic violence shelter, where I was introduced to all these women, did a phenomenal undercover investigation story. Astonishingly in Hyderabad there is a marriage market. “Brokers” go out and round up parents who are poor enough to take money to sell their daughters. Then when mostly Middle East foreigners come to town they would attend the woman market where they can observe the “merchandise”. Normally these women are covered in barqa, but at the market they were forced to dress up similar to prostitutes (eg an excess of makeup and flowers in their hair). The women (or children in my opinion) are asked to display their walk or show some skin so these men can make an “informed decision”. If the men are interested, the woman is immediately married to him for literally ten to fifteen days. In that short marriage the man sleeps with his new bride and then promptly divorces her and returns home. Since she is already “soiled” she must continue this line of work. Basically legal prostituting, however the women had no right to deny this line of work. These outreach workers went as if they were the women selected, but uniquely chose to keep their barqa on, which concealed the investigation camera they were carrying under their veil. At one point these women had a terrible fright when one of the foreign men had chosen her as his new temporary wife. They were able to get out safely and submit the material to a local TV station to make a story off of it.

These are the people I met today, some shy, some amazingly talkative, some with an excited look in their eyes. No matter what their demeanor these women are strong human beings. Sometimes I listen to conversations and how we feel we are strong people because of our worldly experiences, our education and our work experience. However these women opened my eyes and really made me see how strength comes in so many forms. These women could have easily just given up at any point in time, but instead they took their horrific experiences and used them to benefit, to help others.