Mateen’s Story
When I married Kasim, I had no idea I was in for a lifetime of misery and violence.
My parents, especially my father, showered me with love and kindness throughout my early years growing up in Saudi Arabia. Yet, Kasim was nothing like my father, and instead of the happy marriage and loving household that I dreamed of, I suffered constant sexual, physical, and emotional torture at the hands of Kasim for over two decades.
Kasim brutally hurt me all the time. He beat me for lifting my veil from eyes so that I could see, he beat me in front of our children (and often beat them, too), and he would beat me and call me derogatory names in public. Once, when I asked him not to beat our maid, he became furious at me, beat me so severely that he sheared my earlobe, and locked me up in the house for fifteen days straight. When I begged him to allow me to use the bathroom during this imprisonment, he told me to use the garbage can. I felt so humiliated. Kasim had an easy time getting away with hurting me because he was a wealthy, respected physician. He boasted to me constantly that he could do anything to me in Saudi Arabia and no one could stop him.
Kasim would force me to have sex with him constantly from the very beginning of our marriage. Once, when I gently told him that I did not feel like having sex because I had severe back pain, Kasim beat me so hard on my head and body that I lost consciousness. When I woke up, he had removed my clothes and was forcing himself on me. I felt sick and wanted to vomit. Another time, when I was in the United States for my son’s kidney transplant, I called Kasim, who was in Saudi Arabia, and told him that I used our credit card to get the tires on our car changed. He screamed at me for changing the tires without asking for his permission first and told me he was going to come to the United States to kill me. I was shocked when he actually showed up at our house in Virginia the very next day and started beating me. Luckily, a neighbor saw the beating, and the Virginia police came and arrested Kasim for a few days. After they let him out, he returned to Saudi Arabia, and when I went back, he punished me for his arrest by beating me for a whole day. He broke my left eardrum such that when I breathed, it felt as if I were breathing in air from my left ear. To this day, I suffer from problems in that ear.
After that incident and almost twenty-five years of this torturous marriage, I finally mustered up the courage to file for divorce from Kasim. I moved from place to place in Saudi Arabia so that he would not find and kill me as I was fighting for divorce. I am still surprised that I was able to obtain a divorce, because Kasim had the police come to arrest and harass my family members to threaten me to revoke the divorce petition. Even the judge tried to convince me to withdraw my petition. Kasim vowed to kill me when I got the divorce from him, and I knew he meant it because he felt I had dishonored his manhood. I decided to flee to the United States because it was the only place Kasim had ever been arrested for hurting me. I felt it was the only country that could protect me from Kasim.
With the help of the Tahirih Justice Center and Fidelis Agbapuruonwu at Mayer Brown, I was granted asylum in the United States in the spring of 2008. I wept so much when I heard the good news. The experience of a twenty-five-year long violent marriage will never go away. But I am finally free and safe to build a new life for myself and my children.
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*Names have been changed to protect privacy. The photograph included here is not of Mateen. Photo by Sergio Pessolano.
