Vincent the Peaceful Assassin

I had a very interesting conversation with my Arabic language Ustaz yesterday during class. Or rather, I listened to my Ustaz's monologue. You see, I am doing an independent study, which means I go to his office for my classes whenever he and I are coincidentally free.

So, I was reading a text and when he stopped me and he said, “Reading about this reminded me of something that happened yesterday.” I politely nodded and put my pencil down. The text was about the power of Allah over everything. (Naturally.)

He said, “A student was here and she saw a picture of my wife on my laptop. And she asked, is that your wife? And I said, Yes that's my wife. Then the student asked, but there are two women there. Are they both your wives? And I said, Yes I have two wives.”

Jeng jeng, I go in my head. But my expression remains unreadable, so I think.

He continued. “The student started asking me about my having two wives. I find out that her father also took a second wife, but because her mother disagreed and demanded a divorce, her father left them. So she decided that polygamy is bad and wrong, that it's all a lie, and she hated it.”

He then proceeded to explain that he wasn't a man who looked for women. (Honestly, I believed him.)

He said, “I don't know, I never thought I would be the type of man to have two wives. But when I met my second wife, I felt different.”

Involuntarily, I said “Aww” in my head.
It's gets even more touching when I heard him describe her.

He met her after her accident. She was in a car crash with a gas tanker. Her husband died at the scene. She tore her diaphragm, broke her hip and injured some level of her spine, but luckily her nerve wasn't or she would be paralyzed.

She is 42. His first wife is 43.

He said she had a temper, (the word he used was 'bekeng' :) ) and would fight with him in the car. But then she would also quickly try to 'pujuk' him. Her back would hurt often, remnants of her accident, and he would massage her. (there are other details that I omitted/ don't remember)

He said all of this as a matter-of-fact. No expression other than his crinkly old man's smile.

(I was starting to feel a bit funny inside. That warm knotted 'sadness' in the abdomen.... rising up into the form of a hand, ready to choke my throat.)

Then he told me that all this happened while his first wife was ill in the hospital. She's better now, and at home. But now all their kids are in boarding school. When its his second wife's turn, he would have to leave her all alone. At times he would feel so guilty. He felt so cruel. And he would tell her so.

He said, again as a matter-of-fact, “But of course, when I tell her I felt bad about leaving her alone, she wouldn't believe me. She'll just give me that look.... Because I broke her heart.”

At that point, the 'sadness' reached my eyes, poked it, and I could feel them stinging. But I swallowed it down, like a ball of fist, and just kept nodding.

Then he went at length to give me advice about how to deal with my future husband and how important it is to keep quiet in the heat of things. Even if I was 100% right and my husband was 100% wrong. He said men can never accept opposition, especially from their wife, especially when they're angry. It's better to just keep quiet, and wait until things are calmer. If you're able to do that, then you can get him to agree with anything. You can say, “Abang sometimes you're like Hitler.” and he probably would agree with you. (of course my Ustaz didn't say that, but he implied it.)

I continued to nod. He then told me another story, about a lady who came to him to complain about her husband who left her and her 5 kids to marry a woman with 5 kids. That man neglected them and only supported his new wife and new 'kids'. My Ustaz said that his advice to her was this:

Whatever happens. Don't let someone else's bad character make your own character turn bad. When you marry someone, you think you and your husband are the same entity, but at that point, when he does something unexpected like choose another woman over you, you have to accept that you are now separate entities. Anything you do, anything you say, he will only look at it negatively. But don't let his bad character, which will be judged by God, ruin your character. Be patient and move on.

I nodded, and my eyes stung again. (He even drew diagrams, a wife and a husband, represented by two boxes separated only by a horizontal line—then, later a broken couple: two boxes apart.)

Then he said, “Sorry, basically. Everything is under the power of Allah. Continue reading.” And I did.

I guess that's life huh. Sometimes there are no perpetrators. Only victims victimizing each other.