"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." —
Maya Angelou
Chapter 48
I didn't regain consciousness for several days. I had suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage from my head injury which, left untreated, could have led to paralysis or death.
Thankfully, Jacobi and his team were able to control and reduce the swelling, and there had been no damage to my brain.
They were also able to tackle the internal bleeding from my abdominal trauma. I was lucky to have escaped with no permanent damage to not only my brain and internal organs, but also my face, save for some lacerations on my brow and lips.
Regardless, it was clear I had a long road to recovery.
Jacobi took complete charge of my care, handling things himself even the nurses should have.
It was he who changed the dressing on my wounds, inserted my IV lines, checked my vitals, and topped up my medication, all in addition to closely monitoring my injuries.
In the early days, when I was still heavily sedated, as I slipped in and out of consciousness, he was the one constant, the person I was always sure to see standing over me or sitting in the chair beside me.
He guarded me like a hawk, not allowing me any visitors, not even madam mariai. He even limited access to my room to a small handful of his own medical team.
It was clear he didn't want to run any risk of exposing me to anyone who might have been complicit in Ibrahim's attack.
But I was grateful for the solitude, the time it accorded not only my body to heal, but also my mind…my spirit. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on the last twenty years of my life and realise things couldn't continue the way they had.
Another beating like the one that had landed me there, and I wouldn't survive it.
"The housekeeper was here again," Jacobi remarked one evening, referring to madam maria. "She keeps coming every day, undeterred, armed with a basket of food each time."
I couldn't help but smile, my heart warmed by my longtime friend's concern. "Please, let her in next time. She's been like a mother to me."
Jacobi nodded. "Are you sure you don't want me to contact your family?" He asked the same question every day.
I shook my head, the same response I gave him. The last thing I needed was the complication of getting my father and brother involved. The time would come when my brother would have to be, but that time wasn't now.
"Why did you do it, Ibrahaim?" Jacobi asked, late one evening when the hospital had emptied, and we were pretty much the only ones on the premises. "Why did you throw your life away to marry the minister?"
Something in his tone irked me. It was almost like he was implying it was something I had wilfully done.
"What do you think?" I threw back at him. "If you were asked, what would be your guess?"
He shrugged. "the minister saw a beautiful young girl and expressed his desire to marry her. The girl and her parents saw a wealthy suitor and decided accepting his proposal would be better for her than continuing her education."
I shook my head and smiled sadly at the insinuation that my mother, my dearly departed mother, would have mortgaged my education for anything at all. If she had lived, he would have fought tooth and nail for my siblings and I to have had only the very best in life. "Is that what you really think?"
He was quiet for a while, looking at me as if trying to read me. "If I'm to be perfectly honest, there have been times the notion hasn't added up for me. Your humility, your kindness, your willingness to go out of your way for other people…not quite the hallmarks of a -"
"A gold-digger?"
He smiled. "I was going to say hypergamous. You know, hypergamy, meaning –"
"Marrying up. Yes, I know the meaning."
"I hope I haven't offended you."
I shrugged. "Why be offended when it is what most people think, and with good reason too. What other possible reason could there be for a thirteen-year-old girl to marry a man forty years her senior?"
"The true reason, it sounds like."
"My mother would have cut off his right arm before doing anything to stop my education. She would have done everything in his power just to see me actualise all the lofty dreams I had as a young girl," I smiled, memories of her encouraging me vivid in my head. "Back then, I was so sure I would end up in NASA as an engineer, and she never laughed at me. Not even once."
"NASA? Now that would have been impressive," Naeto teased. "The first girl from Boston to NASA."
My smile waned. "I don't come from here."
"So, what happened? How did you go from dreaming of NASA to ending up as the minister's wife?"
"Domestic violence has killed my mother. My father was a police man and my mother was just a woman in love with the wrong man but I don't blame her, we don't choose who we love ," I shrugged. "Long story short, he never loved her, he was after what her family had MONEY when my mother's family disowned her she lost use to him and she died by his hand and I was next instead of Killing me he exchanged me. I'm sure you can guess what happened afterwards."
"He married you off to continue his cash flow?"
I nodded and laughed sardonically. "Can you imagine? A father married off his thirteen year old daughter to feed his greed. He didn't believe female children were good for anything except being a slave to man . So out of reach. And as if that wasn't enough, my younger brother wanted to go to school even with his failing heart, and we were told the only cure for him was a transplant. Papa didn't care, he said man up, you shouldn't show weakness but he promised to send him to school."
"In exchange for your hand in marriage."
I looked him in the eye. "in exchange for money."
We were silent for a while before he sighed deeply. "That must have been a very tough decision for you to make. Do you have any other siblings?"
"A brother, and he wasn't crazy about the idea either. But we had no choice."
"How is your other brother now? Did she have the transplant in the end?"
"He did, but she died a few years after," I answered, wiping tears away from my eyes. "It was a cruel joke. Everything I gave up, all the dreams I had to kill, were all for nothing in the end."
"So, why on earth didn't you leave, ZEYNEP?" he asked in astonishment. "Why did you stay here?"
"I did. After her funeral, I didn't return. I tried to build a new life back home in india. I tried to get a job, but nobody would hire me. My reputation was in shreds."
"Why?"
I looked at him and realised that he honestly had no idea of my notoriety, the notoriety the minister…and his son…had given me.
"Because I was sleeping with my husband's son," I answered, looking away. "I came to America as a virgin but didn't make it to my husband's bed. Ibrahim raped me very shortly after I got here."
Jacobi's face reddened, but I couldn't stop talking, not if I ever wanted to tell him what I'd had to endure for decades.
"Not even when his father found out about it did it stop. After a while, I just stopped fighting and gave in to it. They rotated me like I Was a toy, until the minister eventually tired of me in favour of his city courtesans. In the end, I just learnt to live with it. By the time Ibrahim got married and moved away, his attacks were not as frequent, and I found solace in gardening," I laughed, attempting to lighten the tense conversation. "I've probably grown the best flowers in all of Boston!"
But he didn't crack a smile.
"Was he the one who did this to you?" Jacobi asked, his face now beetroot, and his jaw muscles clenched. "ibrahim?"
I nodded. "My punishment for Blaze. He did the same after Jason," I looked at him. "The other boy you referred to the day you fired me."
"Is it true what the media are saying? That you also had an affair with him?"
"'Affair' is such an ugly word. Jason and I didn't have an 'affair'. We were in love," I answered. "It was such a beautiful, pure love. He didn't even touch me. We were going to run away somewhere far."
"The townsfolk say the minister had him killed."
"And they're correct," I answered. "He told me so himself. But Blaze's attack was Ibrahim. It was brutal and sloppy, just like Ibrahim," I chuckled sadly. "Funny thing is nothing even happened between Blaze and I. That night, I wasn't even thinking. I don't know what came over me."
"Why hasn't anyone stopped them all these years?" Jacobi asked. "Why have the people around you allowed this abuse to go on for so long? Why hasn't anyone reported them to the police? Why did you never tell your brother or father?"
For the very first time, I realised I had no answer