“This is a lie.”
“I have dates. I have messages. I have written down what happened.”
He laughed once, sharply.
“Written down? You have been preparing a case against your own husband?”
“I have been trying to protect myself.”
His father rose from his chair.
“Khalid, sit down.”
Khalid remained standing.
“Father, she is trying to destroy my family.”
His father looked at him for a long moment.
Then he said, “A family is not destroyed by the person who tells the truth about what is happening inside it.”
I had never heard him speak to Khalid like that.
For the first time, my husband looked uncertain.
But the moment passed quickly.
His father asked us to leave the room while he spoke privately with his son. Fatimah took me into the kitchen and held my hands.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
I wanted her to say that she believed me. I wanted her to promise that she would help me.
