Single and mother of two dahuters said ‘My daughters are suffering greatly. I am suffering. And I’m writing this from Pakistan as a supposed privileged woman. My ex-husband brutally removed my kids from me and kicked me out of our house six years ago, leaving me with nothing. His preferred polygamy. I refused and requested a break.
So, in order to discipline me, he took everything away from me. I was gaslighted into servitude during the course of my eleven years of marital compromise—in Pakistan, compromise refers to women caving in to oppressive demands. I devolved into a pitiful shell of the person I once was, with no dignity.
I was told that the reason my marriage was miserable was because I couldn’t “manage” him, as if my husband were a stick of dynamite. My daughters would question me, “Why is Baba constantly angry and Mama always crying?” I was at a loss for words. At that point, I realized how drastically different their childhood was from mine.
Some of you have followed my struggles to get custody of my three minor girls from their father after winning legal custody from the high court; my youngest daughter was only three years old at the time. Starting when he and I were still sharing a home, I was buried in pointless legal battles intended to intimidate and bankrupt me in numerous courts in numerous cities – Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Hasan Abdal, you name it.
