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."