Sehra Waheed was a savvy, sincere and an ambitious girl when she met the scion of a major Pakistani business family. One could say it was love at first sight, desire at first glance. Each of the prospective spouse’s families were excited about the union, and all the traditional features of a ‘semi-arranged’ marriage were cut out of whole cloth – like fine Pashmina cashmere – and set in the direction the couples’ ancestors had taken for centuries.
Sehra’s belief that this was true love took what would otherwise have been a loveless, institutional exercise into the realm of genuine romance. Little did the bride know she had married someone who would come to be a monster. Apprehensive of him and harking to her family’s warnings that he was a ‘spoiled rich kid’ and a substance-abusing playboy, Sehra girded her spirits and decided to let her heart take the rudder as it was her life, after all, and only she would be living it with a single person. His two sisters and brother, ex-pats living in New York, seemed to welcome Sehra into the charmed circle of his rarefied, aristocratic family. But the warning signs came like the first ripples of a consuming, sweeping wave.
From their earliest days together, Imad displayed a smouldering rage and insecurity so profound that it could only manifest itself in what appeared to be fear and nausea at his own existence.
Not long after proposing in 2001, Imad lashed out in fits of jealousy, violent inquiries into her male friendship, and tantrums of incomprehensible origin, notable only for their impulsiveness and ferocity.
Sehra’s story begins with an incident few people could even imagine, let alone live through. After buying a bottle cognac, and being pushed away by his wife for his boorishness and alcoholic stench, Imad attacked his new bride with a cooking knife that he picked up from a vegetable-cutting board. It wasn’t a mere brandishing with the knife; rather, it was a savage, full-on attack; Imad drawing the blade down along her forearm in a way that was intended to open a vein or, if not be lethal, cause great bodily harm. He then slashed her left forearm twice, sending huge amounts of blood across the floor and walls. After seeing that he cut pieces of flesh off her arm, he laughed and insisted that she be intimate with him, throwing her down onto the ground and attempting to suffocate her.
At the hospital, he insisted that medical officials not be told what actually happened, and it was then that she entered the initial complicity of all battered wives, especially those who are victims of aggressive husbands. She kept silent.
The oath of non-disclosure was taken, the cloak drawn across all confidences. Sehra was mystified as to how this all could have started, as Imad had been introduced to her through appropriate matchmaking channels that went back centuries in the culture she came from. Though she was from a matrilineal line of Mughals scattered across Pakistan and Imad came from a somewhat more lofty Karachi family, both sets of parents and all respective in-laws had blessed the union.
The story briskly and colourfully explores the backgrounds of both Sehra and Imad. Sehra’s father was a military aviator with the Pakistani Air Force, and then a commercial pilot for many years; her mother came from a distinguished Mughal lineage. How could a match that seemed to have both been semi-arranged and contain a vital and genuine love interest go so awry, and erupted into what was essentially a domestic physical battleground? Where had the parties mis-read each other and in what possible manner could it be salvaged, or was it hopeless from the inception, the result of mutual and deep-seated delusions?
The chapters reveal both the celebratory atmosphere of a Pakistani traditional wedding and the dark undercurrent that lurked and smouldered even in these incipient festivities.
Summer 2001: Sehra meets and is captivated by Imad’s sisters, who are not fazed by her Punjabi background and appear anxious to welcome her into their extended, wealthy family. Likewise, Imad’s brother and his wife appeared solicitous and accommodating, as did his parents, who accompanied them.
Her fiancée’s parents perform the customary Pakistani acceptance of her hand in marriage. As the shadow of terror hung over Manhattan, the engagement party was held on September 1, 2001, in a gorgeous setting of a South Asian venue.
Adorned in designer dress and jewelry, Sehra saw the event as a portal, an advent that would take her forward into a new life with this Behari family, the abodes and accoutrements of her beloved.
Only ten days later, the world changed and a pall was cast over the city and the world. People of Muslim origin and faith were regarded suspiciously – what had occurred on a mass scale sent sombre tentacles down to the level of Sehra and Imad’s incipient new family.
All was not what it seemed: Appearances could not be trusted. Sehra’s Mehndi party augured even more hope for her and her fiancé. The Karachi house of Captain Waheed Salam was festooned with lights and ornaments, symbolising the marriage house, the future, and traditional festivity. Hopefulness and optimism were there in the application of Mehndi ceremony, a sort of dye or henna applied by ladies-in-waiting (pre-bridesmaids) to the hands of the bride-to-be.
The culmination of this ceremony – wedding called the Rukhsati – forms the emotional scene in which Sehra symbolically departed the home of her birth and entered the citadel of the Mushani family, the domain of the groom and their common future. The depth of Imad’s deception and the manner in which he lulls Sehra become obvious as he goes out of his way to calm her in her nervousness at being with his family.
Valima ceremony: The radiant, colourful final day after the wedding itself, in which bride and groom are paraded, elevated, celebrated, virtually worshipped, and embraced within traditional and well-meaning Pakistani wedding rituals.
Imad’s percussive psyche was not confined to actions against his wife’s person. He ransacked and vandalised their home at United Nations Plaza after their knife encounter. Staff at the apartment regarded him with suspicion – an irascible stranger in their midst.
Their post-honeymoon house descended from an idealised pavilion into a dystopian, deracinated confinement. Sehra’s physical wounds, her literally mutilated flesh, became the outward symbol of her silent submission. More attacks ensued, over trivial matters like spoiled milk, Sehra’s refusal to indulge Imad’s growing alcoholism, and his desire to continue his single-life, playboy ways.
Imad soon began getting arrested, not only for abusing Sehra, but for driving under [alcohol] influence and violent public outbursts toward strangers who had merely made eye contact with him or refused him a forbidden request.
The darkness grew: Sehra went about it and it got darker. Imad did, however, need something from his wife – cooperation through the immigration process and the concurrent motions toward US citizenship. She had a weapon; she had leverage. She spent her nights and days wondering how exactly – and exactly when – to make use of it. Imad and Sehra moved into the United Nations Plaza apartment while he continued working his real estate transactions out of Queens office.
Sehra’s concerns deepen when she lets Imad know she is pregnant, and he reacts with suspicious alarm and consternation. She herself was ambivalent about their economic prospects and their ability to have a child at that point, but had no idea of the deracination in Imad’s moods, the utter unspooling of his character that would ensue.
Though Sehra’s parents are, understandably, overjoyed about the pregnancy, her doubts deepen as Imad’s mood swings elevate and as she terminates the pregnancy. Imad by this point had become so dangerous that she was advising building guards to not allow him access to their apartment. His drinking got worse, and his moods – sober and drunk – darkened considerably.
Frustrated and literally at the end of her tether, Sehra files for divorce a second time in spring of 2004. Imad’s monstrous behaviour so far turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. There was more acrimony and savagery to come as Imad’s economic profile – and with it his Pakistani male identity – began to unspool.
Sehra finds Imad attempting to transfer title of properties into his own name only, disenfranchising her of what she had worked with him for during their marriage. When she confronts him, he again beats her with new vehemence.
A third attempt is made by Sehra to file for divorce. Sehra researches the substantial family holdings of Imad’s clan. Imad’s drinking spirals him downward and in all possible destructive directions. Finally, having had enough abuse for numerous lifetimes, Sehra files a petition in Manhattan domestic violence court as to why a restraining order should not issue against Imad.
In lieu of the order being granted, the parties enter into a fragile, cold and bitter peace. The unilateral TRO is withdrawn and an interim pendent elite settlement is reached, causing Sehra to withdraw all pending divorce actions.
Only time would show what a mistake this amounted to. Imad continued to deteriorate during what was planned to be a conciliation period and an attempt to stay all divorce proceedings and salvage the marriage. Imad was arrested for losing his temper in a convenience store and vandalising the premises.
Once again, his wealthy family came to the rescue, paying $4200 to vacate an arrest warrant and losing his driver’s license. After she was again attacked by her husband, Sehra went to domestic violence police officer Angela Garofalo. This law enforcement professional virtually became Sehra’s saviour, and probably did succeed in saving her life and the lives of numerous other battered women.
Negotiations continued between the couple to save the marriage, with Sehra requesting a stop to physical assaults, and Imad insisting on having his immigration process proceed forward. But Imad’s behaviour continued to deteriorate, including an incident in which PIA flight personnel refused to let him board a plane to Karachi when he showed up intoxicated at the boarding area. What does a young Pakistani woman do after divorce and its special stigma in the culture? Her parents had been her principal means of support in the years leading up to and even during some of her marriage. However, after divorce, women in such cultures are viewed as “tainted” and subject to special forms of harassment and obloquy.
Sehra was especially pressed to keep up payments on her apartment, which Imad, living in Queens in one of his family’s properties, was refusing to contribute to. Sehra defended foreclosure and unlawful detaining proceedings on her own, with only minimal help from attorney services. And always, she continued her work with Garofalo, whose guidance helped Sehra through her post-traumatic stress disorder and the psychic wounds of physical abuse and humiliation.
The judge struck a note of triumph and gave Sehra new confidence by allowing many of the liens on her property to be dissolved, encouraging her to settle the rest for only pennies on the dollar. Even though she had to eventually sell her apartment, she emerged with enough financial wherewithal to prove her torturer-spouse wrong when he once threatened her with the epithet that he would “[put] you out on the streets.”
When she held the check from the apartment sale in her hand, she wanted to call him and tell him he’d failed, failed utterly and she’d survived. She could finally stand on her own two feet without him but what she really had now was worth far more than money, HER LIFE.
— Synopsis of Sehra Waheed’s book ‘Silent Submission’
