Zakiah, a twenty five year old Malay woman with a four year old son came to seek shelter early last year. She is a victim of domestic violence and her husband had pronounced ‘talak’ several times when she had gone out of the gate of their house or had gone to see her parents after an incident of abuse.

Background

Zakiah comes from a middle class family and was educated in a religious school. She is a beautiful petite woman, soft spoken and very articulate in her thoughts. She met her husband at a wedding. There was mutual attraction and despite protest from both sides, they got married. According to her, he was a confident person, good looking and attached to a multinational company.

After the marriage, they moved into his parents’ home and she performed all the household tasks. She was                  expected to serve his mother, cook and clean. She had no freedom to do what she wanted or free time for herself.             

 

Abuse                                                                                                                      

Just two months after the marriage, the abuse started. She was quite stunned in the manner it started. They would check into a hotel, and he would pick a fight with her for no reason and then beat her with his bare hands. This became a norm and as time went by, he was bold enough to abuse her in front of his parents. She being an obedient person, would tolerate it and forgave him. After sometime, she managed to persuade him to move out of the in-laws house and into their own. She believed that by doing so, they would be able to resolve their problems.

 

However, her problems were far from over. Her husband was hot tempered and got angry for the slightest reasons. He would often demand that she cut the vegetables the way his mother used to cut and if she made a mistake of not doing so, he would lash out at her. He would slap her till her face was swollen, strangle her, kick her and bang her head on the wall. He used to use words like ‘swine’ and ‘bitch’ and other vulgar words that she never heard before.