No.

I had to say it. I hated to say it. I wanted to crawl under a rock and not have to say it. I stayed up all night, working out scenarios in my head on how to say it. I dreaded the morning’s arrival when I eventually needed to say it. I knew the kind of impact it would have on my client, 32 years-old and mother of three. But in the end, I looked her straight in the eye and firmly said no.   

I had been her advocate for nearly two years. The bond we formed together during that time was difficult for me to break. I saw myself as her sister or her best friend. But on that particular morning I recognized my selfish desire to be more than that. I needed to feel effective. I wanted to be in control. I searched for ways to make her agony count for something better.

She told me that when she called for help, she was sure no one would believe her because her husband never left visible marks on her body. She didn’t know what she would do if someone did step in to help her. And when I showed up at her doorstep, she had a panic attack. Hyperventilating and crying, she pointed repeatedly at her head and kept saying, “Inside. The bruises are all inside.”

Most people don’t realize there are many forms of domestic abuse. Physical abuse is the easiest to detect. But emotional abuse is another type of monster. It destroys the victim from the inside, like termites eating up the house structure without anyone taking notice. An emotional abuser tears down his victim by convincing her she’s worthless, that every thought in her head is questionable and needs his approval, and that she is the cause of her own misery, not him.

Isolation was the first step. My client told me her husband prevented her from communicating with family members. Neighbors were off limits. She had a car, mind you, and she was allowed to take the kids to school and get groceries. He wrote down the mileage before each trip and calculated the distance to her destination. Had she gone anywhere else, he would have known. He monitored the home phone and her cell phone, so she couldn’t make an unapproved call. He convinced her he could watch her online through surveillance cameras when she went to the grocery store, and demanded to see the receipts. He knew her email account password and stood watching over her shoulder whenever she used the computer. If she used it in his absence, he would track the browsing history and know where she went online. The list goes on.

Intimidation came next. When she took an miscalculated step, or traffic caused her to come home later than expected, he would walk out to the backyard, spray paint a big “X” in one area, then three smaller ones adjacent to it. She knew those “X’s” marked her grave and her children’s.

And so she complied and remained his prisoner. She thought no one who interacted with her would think she was in danger because, after all, she had the freedom to leave the house, had a car and money to spend. No one saw the shackles around her ankles.

I’m not going to tell you how she eventually managed to call for help, or what exactly happened that pushed her over the edge. But she did, and her long journey to independence began. She probably cried every day and every night. Sometimes I was a witness to those episodes of emotional breakdowns, but I knew that the real horror happened to her when she was alone, when she physically felt her world falling apart.

The morning I said no to her marked the end of her case in court. I had to tell her that her abuser, her ex-husband at that point, would not go to jail. She couldn’t understand why the judge would allow him to walk away. I had to explain that his actions were not considered criminal in the eyes of the law. He never laid a hand on her or the children. It was her word against his.

Having won her divorce case with enough child support was not her ultimate goal, I found out. She wanted to see him in handcuffs so he would experience what she went through during her thirteen years of marriage.

“Not even for one day?” she had asked. “One day in jail would be enough for me.”

“No, not even for one day,” I had to say.

You may find yourself judging her, thinking she should have been content in her new life. She had escaped with her children and was finally free with a secure future. She should thank her lucky stars - you may want to say. If you think that, then you really do not understand the devastation of abuse. It was not about revenge in her case. It was about restoring balance. In her mind, seeing him behind bars, even if for just one day, would give her closure.

However, there are no “just” solutions when it comes to domestic abuse problems, neither is there redemption. The damage is always irreversible, and balance is never restored even with counseling. She must continue on with all the holes in her soul wide open. If emotional abuse is a different type of monster, its victim is certainly a special kind of survivor.

What kind of name is Lilas?

I learned my real name the first day I set off to school at Hawalli Elementary in Kuwait city. I was a mere five year old, but I wished I were nine like my brother. First grade was my introduction to public education. I remember exactly what I wore that day: Soft blue pants and a matching sleeveless top patterned with scattered white clouds. Small and skinny with a short, rather boyish haircut, I ran to my father's car and plopped an empty school bag on my lap.

My father delivered me to the front office, placed his strong, comforting hands on my shoulders, and said, "You're a big girl now, Lulu."

He kissed my forehead, exchanged a few words with a lady behind a huge desk, and walked away. The lady took me by the hand, escorted me across a big square court and deposited me in one of the classrooms.

The heat hung in the humid air, typical of a late summer day. Four ceiling fans spun pathetically, pushing the warm breaths of thirty young girls around the room. Those days, only teachers' rooms had proper air conditioning.

The teacher pointed to an empty desk and ordered me to take a seat. She held a folder in her hand and instructed each of us to stand when we heard our names. And thus, the process began. I watched classmates respond to their names and made little stories in my head about each one while I patiently waited to hear mine. As the number of vacant chairs increased, I started to wonder when my turn would come. Maybe I didn't belong to this class, or maybe she'd call my name last because I was the last one to arrive, or maybe my name was not even added to the list yet. I wiggled nervously on my wooden chair, anxious, with beads of sweat racing across my forehead. When the teacher finished calling out the names, she looked up at me, the only girl who had remained seated.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Lulu," I mumbled.

She slammed her hand on the table. "Tell me your full name."

"Lulu Taha."

She checked her folder, raised her thin eyebrows, and shot me an angry glance. "Your name is Lilas." She closed the folder, and, returning to her stiff commanding tone, told me to stand up.

Needless to say, I did not stand up. I insisted that my name was Lulu because my name was Lulu. Before that day I had never heard the name "Lilas." I cried as the teacher dismissed my objections and my tears. I cried the whole day.

I was told that everyone in the family called me Lulu because Lilas was so unusual. Over the years, I dropped my childhood persona and accepted my true name. And in this process I noticed an interesting reaction that "Lilas" stirred. People took notice when they came across it, and I came to anticipate a conversation, if not about me, then about my name. It made me feel special in some unique way.

I'll tell you this, though. Sometimes, when my childhood friends instinctively call me Lulu, my heart skips a beat. I immediately regress to that age of purity and innocence, and it never fails to put a smile on my face.

So what kind of name is Lilas? It is the French word for the Lilac flower, but to me it means much more than that.

Would you like to have chicken or beef?

It was dinner time and I was ready to eat anything the waiter would put in front of me, be it chicken, beef or any high protein combination. My client didn’t choose, and so I waited for her to make up her mind. 

She was restless, shifting her eyes around the restaurant, looking more and more embarrassed and uncomfortable. I forgot about my protesting stomach and took a couple of deep breaths while I waited.

I have been with this client since eight in the morning, when I picked her up from the police station. The day ran away from me as I explained every detail about what would happen when her case was viewed in court, went through the horrors of her many years of abuse at the hands of her husband, detailed the protective order proceedings, filled out forms, and finally transferred her to a safe shelter.  All the while, I listened to her unspeakable story, felt her pain, and tried very hard not to cry myself. It was an emotional train wreck of a day for both of us. I was physically exhausted and mentally depleted of positive attitude. She was going through a never ending nightmare, and it was my job to hold her hand as she woke up. 

So I just sat there, surrounded by appetizing aromas, stomach churning and nerves tightly stressed, waiting for my 37 year-old mother-of-four-client to make a decision by herself probably for the first time in many long years. Pretending to carefully study the menu to give her more time, I realized how we tend to take so many things for granted. The many freedoms that we exercise each day without even processing their importance or knowing how lucky we are to have them in the first place. This woman was not able to make the simplest decision on what to eat. How did she reach this point? What mind altering process did her abuser use to reduce her to this level of mental handicap?

She finally looked up at me with a nervous smile and said, “I’ll have what you’re having.”

She was a victim of domestic abuse, I was her advocate, and this was the beginning of a very long road in our relationship. She needed me to tell her what to eat, just like she’d been told what to do most of her married life. But I couldn’t start the journey with her on that same level of dependence. As much as I wanted to take charge and dictate to her what to order, I couldn’t let her go down that road with me. I had to distinguish myself from the one entity that she'd unwillingly relied on for survival for so long, and I had to not tell her what to do. 

After a good 15 minutes of sipping water and munching mentally on the food on the adjacent table, I decided that she was not capable of making a decision yet. I was too hopeful, and I had to do something to end this limbo. So I extended my hand to touch hers and gently said, “Everything is good here, it’s always hard for me to decide. I think I will have the beef shawarma.”

I could tell she was relieved, so I made the order.  I figured since she talked non-stop all day about her agony, that she might want to enjoy her meal in relative silence. I avoided asking questions, or making remarks about her life past or life to be. She didn’t ask any questions in spite of the fact that she had so many unknowns in her immediate future. She was numb. I dropped her off at the shelter afterwards, and she gave me a long hug. I promised I’d visit her the next day and left.

Eighteen months after that dinner, my client was on her way to independence. She had her children with her and a protective order under her belt. She held and maintained a job, and for the first time in her life, was financially independent from her abusive husband. She moved into an apartment in a safe neighborhood, had a family lawyer pleading her divorce case in court, learned how to drive, found a decent enough car, and was going to night school to better her chances. 

She had come a long way. I want to say that I am proud of her, but I cannot claim any of her accomplishments. They were all hers. Her courage, her determination, her struggle, and her command on her life. I cannot imagine a more courageous step taken by a woman trapped by fear than the one she took to ask for help. She had no knowledge of any laws in this country, thought her husband would take away her children and deport her if she called the police. She didn't speak a word of English. Yet, she made that step. What honor it was for me to be by her side.