8th of October, 2021. Region 6, Guyana, South America.
Last updated: October 8, 2021 at 11:14 am
A young woman from Region 6, Corentyne, Berbice, Guyana, South America, who claims to have suffered nearly a decade of domestic abuse at the hands of her former husband, has reached out to his publication to tell her story. This is her story.
My name is Shazeena Ayube, and I am married to Mohamed Shazim Ayube. We have known each since we were 16 years od. We got married at the age 22 which was in the year 2010. We eloped for a period of time initially due to his family’s objection our our union, so this is almost 11 years of marriage and 17 years of togetherness.
Before marriage, my husband was always loving, caring, and always there for me. He was so perfect to me, but from the time we got married, he changed. From the second week into our marriage, he started abusing me and hitting me. It all started when his family started to interfere in our lives. Before marriage, they hated me, and after marriage they decided to break up our house. The first attempt was in 2011, in the month of April, when his father, sister, stepmother, and gay brother came to Georgetown to attend his uncle’s reading (a religious ceremony) in Chesney,
They stopped by us first, which was at his mother’s house in Chesney where we had been staying at that time. They insisted to take him alone to the reading and leave me behind. When I insisted that I wanted to go, my husband got angry and sent them away telling them that he would be coming shortly. But after he didn’t show up, his step mother came back to look for him. I asked to go again.
At this point, my husband started yelling expletives at me telling me that I could not go. After I kept persisting, his step mother started abusing me. Then he went to shower. After he finished showering, he went into the room to change and, as I was going into the room, he pushed me out and called his step mother into the room and locked the door. What went on at that point, I don’t know, but after some time, they came out and the two of them left the house together and left me behind. My husband never returned home.
I saw my husband again after 1 month and 20 days. The second episode of physical abuse was in 2011 Christmas when his mother came from Trinidad to Guyana. She tried to come between us. She even chased me to chop me and broke up many of our things in the house. She then kicked us out…we were staying at her house at that time.
There were many intermittent breakups and getting back together during my marriage and I always took back my husband because, for some reason, I couldn’t move on to be with anyone else. I was in it for better or worse. And for this reason, I endured a lot of abuse during my marriage. I had to endure his family shouting expletives at me and abusing me, but what’s worse is I didn’t have his support in anything.
He would allow them to do whatever they wanted with me and if I dared say anything about them, he would react angrily and start hitting me…and that’s the worse part. My husband would hit me in different ways…in different homes. I tried living with him by his mother, my home, rented house etc…at all of these places, the same physical abuse was meted out to me. On every occasion that he hit me, it was always grounded in some issue with his family.
Its was as though there was this hatred immediately after marriage and no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough. All I received from his family was abuse and insults, and all he received from mine was love and acceptance. He would slap me about my head and face. He would cuff me on my head and face. He would beat me on the road. For example, one time he hit me from the Albion Estate all the way to the Albion Primary School — all because I caught his mother hiding a cake she had brought from Trinidad. She was hiding it because my husband ate a good piece from it and she didn’t want him to eat all. So at 5 o’clock in the morning, I woke up to cook for my husband and I saw her transporting the cake from her house where we were to her mother’s house a few houses away. That’s how ridiculous these people can get.
My husband would cuff me on my body, especially my back. Whenever he hit me, if my mom intervened, he would hit me more and show her that she can’t stop him. He would lift me by the neck and fling me on the floor, and if we were in the room, he would fling me on the bed. He would hold my head and hit it on concrete walls. During an episode of this, I blacked out twice.
He would cuff me in my eye causing it to become swollen and with black and blue scars. He would sit on my stomach and cuff me about the head. He would hit me in all the ways possible but mostly on my head perhaps because, now that I’m thinking about it, it was either he was trying me turn me crazy, kill me, or because marks of violence are less likely to become evident on the head.
He would even run to beat my elderly mom and dad if they stood up for me. He was everything a bully is. He would pick up a cutlass and threaten to chop me. Sometimes when hitting me, he would question me about stuff, and I would have to answer correctly like it was a schooling session. He threw paint on my whole body. He would break many things up that we bought, example stereo set, washing machines, and general household stuff. He would break even those things which he had bought during his fits of anger.
There was so much that I went through during my marriage! We all say there are two sides to a story and my side is I never wanted to leave my marriage, and I believe that was the reason for all the beating because he frequently walked out, and I stupidly went to bring him back.
He often asked for a divorce, and I refused to cooperate with this request so I believe that it was all my fault. However, my in laws are now painting a different picture with the intent of brining scandal to my name. They have called me a “whore” because I couldn’t bear any more of their son’s abuse towards me and family, and because I finally called the police and got him locked up.
