The Black Burqa part one by Diana the Valkyrie My name is Ayesha. I am a pious Muslima, married to Raafid, my four children are Maryam, Gamali, Nasif and baby Kaadiha. I wear the veil, because I am a modest woman. I'm not smart like my friend Sfiyah. She seems to know everything. I read my Quran, and I'm still rather ignorant, unskilled and often I don't understand what people are saying. But I'm happy. At least, I was happy, until Raafid decided that he didn't like my cooking. To be honest, I don't blame him - cooking is one of the many skills I've never mastered. My food comes in two varieties, soggy or burned. So for the last two years, we've been at loggerheads. First, he spoke to me and told me to improve my cooking. I asked "How?" but he didn't have an answer. Then he tried to punish me by not joining me in bed. That's supposed to be a punishment? And when neither of those worked, he started beating me. Every day, I had new bruises. They didn't show, because as I said before, I am a modest woman, and don't allow people to see my bare skin. But the children knew - they knew because they watched it happen. And that added to my worries - what if they grow up thinking that this is how a husband ought to treat his wife? Yes, I know that the Quran commands wife-beating, because Raafid showed me the verse, 4:34. But is it really a good idea? I suppose it must be, if Allah has commanded it. They say that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. That seemed to be true for me - I noticed that I was thickening in the places where the blows landed. And it was hard muscle, protecting my body from Raafid's rod. He kept it hanging on a hook on the wall, and I knew that when he took it down, I was in for another beating. But what could I do? His actions were condoned by the Quran, so I couldn't even complain to the Imam at the masjid. I asked Raafid if I could join a cookery class. He said "No" because he wasn't going to allow me to go out on my own, and he certainly wasn't going to sit through hours of cookery class. I asked if I could learn from one of my female friends - he kindly permitted that, so I asked Sfiyah, who I knew from taking the kids to school, if she would tutor me. "Of course I will," she replied, "when do you want to start?" "As soon as possible, please." So a couple of days later, she arrived carrying various ingredients - Raafid had forbidden me from going to her home without him. We went to the kitchen, and Sfiyah took off her veil and rolled up her sleeves. "You need to taste what you're cooking," she explained, "and you don't want to get your clothes dirty." So I took off my veil and rolled up my sleeves since there were only the two of us females, I felt that it was OK to do that. She stared at my arms. "So big," she said. I looked down at them, they seemed the right size to me, but when I compared them with Sfiyah, I could see what she meant - my arms were maybe three times as big as hers. "How did that happen," she asked. "I don't know, they've been gradually swelling up ever since Raafid started beating me. And my legs the same." "Show me!" So I pulled up my dress so that Sfiyah could look. "First of all," she said, "you have green and blue bruises all up your legs and on your arms, that was Raafid?" I nodded. "He uses a rod sometimes, about a centimetre thick, but lately he's been using a baseball bat, and that's a lot more painful." "That's why your muscles have expanded," said Sfiyah. Sfiyah is very wise about so many things. "And they'll keep on growing if you let him continue to beat you." "Let him?" I responded, "I have no choice. He's my husband, and he's strictly following the Quran, the words of Allah. If he thinks that I deserve a beating, then I get a beating." "How often does this happen," she asked. "Pretty much every day," I answered, except on some days I get a day off because he's too tired to bother." "Or too lazy," added Sfiyah. Sfiyah shook her head. "This is so not right," she said. I showed her in my Quran, verse 4:34. "Maybe it was right back then, but not now. And not just because your cookery is poor You need to put a stop to it." "How," I asked. "He thinks I'm a bad cook on purpose, and that if he beats me, the food won't be soggy or burned." "That's stupid," she replied. "It's simply that you're a poor cook. But he doesn't have the right to beat you for that." I showed her 4:34 again. "Ayesha, it doesn't say that you can be beaten for poor cookery. It says "if you are rebellious", and you are not, you're doing your best, but you're just not very good at it. No, you need to explain this to him, and put a stop to these beatings." "How," I asked again. "Let me think about this," said Sfiyah. "I'll visit again tomorrow and tell you my thoughts." The next day, Sfiyah arrived and showed me what she'd brought - a tape measure. "Make a muscle," she said, and she measured my biceps. "Forty eight centimeters," she said, "and for comparison, mine are twenty one." She pulled out her phone. "So you're more than twice my size, and since strength is proportional to cross section, you're five times my strength." I didn't understand what she was saying, except for the "five times" part. "I can just about lift 18 kilograms, so you should be able to lift 90. That's 200 pounds, and I doubt if Raafid could do much more than half that." Read the rest of the story on https://www.amysconquest.com