The Broken Woman
Lying in a recovery room in a hospital in Riyadh is a woman paralyzed from the neck down. When asked what happened, she replies: My husband came to me accompanied by a woman and announced to me that she was his wife.
I could not bear it. I ran to the window and hurled myself three stories to the ground.
Those moments when a husband declares that he has married another woman, they are the most difficult moments in the first wifes life.
It is a pain that cannot be described.
It is a searing flame that does not subside.
It is a sense of loss, of sinking into an abyss, the depths of which rival the years they had spent together sharing the bitter and the sweet.
For the wife whose husband is, in the whole world, her pillar of strength and only refuge
He is her kindred heart, her gentle guardian,
The one with whom she shares her joy, her grief,
Who consoles her in her weariness,
Whom she tends to in his distress,
Whom she rushes to when problems get to much for her to bear
And when things get out of hand.
She feels joy in embracing his children
And bears the long hours waiting for him.
She prepares food for him with her hands,
And would sacrifice for him her most precious possessions
Because he is her intimate friend in her lonliness,
Her companion in a strange world.
We cannot measure in time the lives they share together for it is not in days, nor in weeks, nor in months.
Rather, in moments, in breaths.
When a woman gets married, she weaves for herself a special world
Whose morning is her children, her husband, and her home
And whose evening is light and hope.
Her joy is the sight of smiling faces;
Her felicity is peace in her home.
Her sky is not the sky we know
Nor her Earth the one we tread.
It is an inner garden, a timeless joy.
When her husband turns away from her by marrying again, the lofty cloud of dignity that had always sailed high in her sky dissipates and she is left with two choices:
To ask for her freedom and insist upon it,
Or rip her own dignity to shreds, gather up the pieces, and tread hard upon her injuries.
It is the breaking of a woman.
She only breaks because of the disregard for the womanhood within her.
Therefore, do not be surprised by the stories you hear or think that they are made up for they are the stories of women struck by the arrows of misfortune and cut by the blade of separation.
One woman prays, turning away from the direction of prayer. One is given a great sum of money and burns it on the spot.
One of them has her husband tell her the news right before the Tarâwîh prayer in Ramadan so she goes forth and prays in the ranks of the men.
From the severity of their grief, some women suffer strokes leaving them paralyzed or bereft of one of their five senses.
A womans jealousy might drive her to an unpraiseworthy outcome like murder, for instance as comes in the following news report:
When she heard the news of her husbands marriage, there built up inside her a great welling of fury and a desire for revenge. So she began to argue with her husband about it and she had concealed a knife under her gown and so, when her husband scoffed at her, she brought out the knife and stabbed him. He dropped down, murdered. She then turned herself in, saying that her great love for her husband compelled her to kill him; she could not permit anyone else it did not matter who it was to take him away from her]
Lying in a recovery room in a hospital in Riyadh is a woman paralyzed from the neck down. When asked what happened, she replies: My husband came to me accompanied by a woman and announced to me that she was his wife.
I could not bear it. I ran to the window and hurled myself three stories to the ground.
Those moments when a husband declares that he has married another woman, they are the most difficult moments in the first wifes life.
It is a pain that cannot be described.
It is a searing flame that does not subside.
It is a sense of loss, of sinking into an abyss, the depths of which rival the years they had spent together sharing the bitter and the sweet.
For the wife whose husband is, in the whole world, her pillar of strength and only refuge
He is her kindred heart, her gentle guardian,
The one with whom she shares her joy, her grief,
Who consoles her in her weariness,
Whom she tends to in his distress,
Whom she rushes to when problems get to much for her to bear
And when things get out of hand.
She feels joy in embracing his children
And bears the long hours waiting for him.
She prepares food for him with her hands,
And would sacrifice for him her most precious possessions
Because he is her intimate friend in her lonliness,
Her companion in a strange world.
We cannot measure in time the lives they share together for it is not in days, nor in weeks, nor in months.
Rather, in moments, in breaths.
When a woman gets married, she weaves for herself a special world
Whose morning is her children, her husband, and her home
And whose evening is light and hope.
Her joy is the sight of smiling faces;
Her felicity is peace in her home.
Her sky is not the sky we know
Nor her Earth the one we tread.
It is an inner garden, a timeless joy.
When her husband turns away from her by marrying again, the lofty cloud of dignity that had always sailed high in her sky dissipates and she is left with two choices:
To ask for her freedom and insist upon it,
Or rip her own dignity to shreds, gather up the pieces, and tread hard upon her injuries.
It is the breaking of a woman.
She only breaks because of the disregard for the womanhood within her.
Therefore, do not be surprised by the stories you hear or think that they are made up for they are the stories of women struck by the arrows of misfortune and cut by the blade of separation.
One woman prays, turning away from the direction of prayer. One is given a great sum of money and burns it on the spot.
One of them has her husband tell her the news right before the Tarâwîh prayer in Ramadan so she goes forth and prays in the ranks of the men.
From the severity of their grief, some women suffer strokes leaving them paralyzed or bereft of one of their five senses.
A womans jealousy might drive her to an unpraiseworthy outcome like murder, for instance as comes in the following news report:
When she heard the news of her husbands marriage, there built up inside her a great welling of fury and a desire for revenge. So she began to argue with her husband about it and she had concealed a knife under her gown and so, when her husband scoffed at her, she brought out the knife and stabbed him. He dropped down, murdered. She then turned herself in, saying that her great love for her husband compelled her to kill him; she could not permit anyone else it did not matter who it was to take him away from her]
