It appeared to everyone who witnessed what happened that she simply tripped and fell down face to the ground. She appeared from no where! Some saw a silhouette standing in front of the short siege dividing the walkway from the sea. Then they saw her turning around and taking one step before falling. Two ladies saw her fall and one giggled and said to the other that it must have been the cheap heels she was wearing. They didn’t bother to wait to check if she wasn’t hurt. They walked the other way and left her behind. A group of three men in jogging outfits saw her on the ground and hurried towards her but froze abruptly, realizing that they won’t be able to touch her because it wasn’t appropriate. One of them saw a bunch of women approaching, so he shouted calling on them for help.

The first time she fell was in her family’s backyard after she was beaten by her brother so hard that he broke her rib. It was on the day she left home behind her brother’s back to enroll in college. Her mother advised her against that and threatened her that she would inform her brother, but she couldn’t believe that her mother would do so. But she did. Her brother waited for her in the backyard, and without giving her a chance to explain he had started beating her with the stick he was holding, a blow after a blow till she fell unconscious. When she remembers that first fall, she remembers the death of her dream to go to college. The falls that followed were many that she had forgotten the reasons behind them.

Four women came running. When they reached the woman on the ground, they formed a circle around her, blocking her body from the stares of passers. Two of them turned her around to see a pale face with a black eye and a bruise and swelling on her chin. One of the women pointed to her leg that was partially exposed. It was covered with red and blue bruises. “Oh, this lady was savagely beaten”, one of them said. The others responded, “May God protect us.” “I can’t sense her breathing”, one of them shouted, “Call the ambulance”.

The women in her life were as passive as she was, or was it their fault that she turned out that passive? Her mother had taught her that it is a man’s right to discipline his women, because when one of them behaves inappropriately it will rub on him as he is the one who will need to face the bigger community, the male-dominated one. She told her that God gave him this right and she is not supposed to question it. Her brother married her sister off without her consent to a diplomat who took her away, and they haven’t seen her or heard from her since then. He also married her off but if he had asked her she would have agreed. All she wanted is to get away from her mother and brother.

The ambulance arrived and the women stood there until she was put on the stretcher and into the ambulance. None of them volunteered to accompany her. There was a sense of fear disguised in their worried looks and only was exposed in their silence. Who wants to get involved in such a thing? Maybe she had done something that brought this violence on her! The siren filled the air as the ambulance tried to cross the busy conjunction.

The first time her husband slapped her was on their honeymoon when she uncovered her face in public to drink from her water bottle. He slapped her then and there. Then slaps turned into kicks when wearing his leather shoes and when all she had were her bare hands to protect her face, stomach, sides and back. She complained once to her brother, and his response was beating her on the same spot she showed him to prove the assault on her. He threw her out of her family’s house, a house that is also hers, as it is a part of her inheritance from her late father that had never been paid to her.

In the emergency room, the doctor requested certain tests and x-rays to check if there was an internal bleeding. The machine they hooked her up to started beeping and the doctor shouted “clear”. Her heart had stopped and needed reviving.

The only time her husband took her to the hospital was two days ago when his beatings resulted in her losing her baby. She was angry and bitter to the extent that she wanted to report all the beatings to the doctor in the hospital. She wanted to scream and set herself free. She wanted to flee and hide. But where would she go? And who would believe her? After all, the doctor was a man just like her brother and husband. And as her mother had told her she would certainly be blamed or accused of brining it upon herself. She didn’t say a word; still she lost her baby and her will to live. The doctor asked her if there was anything she needed to tell him only once and then kept his distance, which confirmed what she had thought!

She was admitted for two days, but she left after one. She left without her doctor’s consent and before her husband came to take her back home. She took a taxi to the Corniche and there she stood in front of the sea and contemplated plunging into the rocky side of it.  She wanted to end her life and tried to convince herself that she was already doomed in hell for disobeying her husband and running away. She couldn’t though, so she turned and asked for God’s forgiveness.

“Her heart stopped; there is no use of this anymore. Let’s call it”, said the doctor. She died with no one by her side. She died a victim, but she will certainly be engulfed by God’s mercy and forgiveness. She never found love, but she will find a loving God who would bring her justice and punish those who have abused God’s creatures and His name.

This entery was published in April as a column in Woman Today, a Qatari based monthly magazine