I Saw Him Hit Her

I was walking from my car to my front door when I heard screams. I was just back from the mundane task of getting a flu shot, and the sound of raised voices on my usually silent street caught my attention. I turned around and saw a man and a woman grappling with each other, and I did a double-take. My first thought was that maybe these were high school students horsing around, being playful. Then I saw him hit her. There was nothing playful about it.

As I watched from across the street, the 6’2’’ man pursued the 5’ tall woman across an open green space between my house and theirs. He kicked her and grabbed her hair. I grabbed my phone and started filming him. Simultaneously, I rang my own doorbell five times in quick succession, and when my nanny opened it I said, “Call 911.”

Then, there was nothing left to do but continue to film the assault. He wasn’t throwing punches, but as I watched in horror, he swung the bag she’d been carrying high in the air and hit her in the head with it. As I moved closer, trying to get a better view, they broke apart and both began walking towards their house. Then, in a move that I now recognize as fairly foolhardy, I crossed the street and called him out. I let him know the police were on the way and I had the whole thing on video. He came towards me, pointing his finger and cocking his head the way only a pissed off, macho dude in a baseball cap can. “You’re not allowed to film me without my permission. That’s illegal! I’m going to press charges against you!”

“Beating someone up is illegal!” was my retort. Strictly speaking, he was correct. We live not in a normal city but in an enclosed community in Saudi Arabia, where we are under the jurisdiction of our own security forces, rules, and community regulations. Filming isn’t allowed. But neither is abusing your wife, and even if I had remembered the rule in the heat of the moment, it wouldn’t have stopped me from taking out my phone. The scene was indelibly seared into my brain, but for too many others, I knew a situation like this would be easy to brush off without hard evidence.

Then the chump pointed at my house and said, “You live there, right?” I just reiterated that security was on the way.

“Are you okay?” I called to the woman, who hung her head and didn’t speak. Now that I was closer to them, though still a good 40-50 feet away, I realized that I knew this woman. We had been in the same book club for almost a year.

The couple retreated to their house and I to mine, and by the time I did, the police had arrived. I pointed out the house and went inside again as five or six more security vehicles pulled up and numerous uniformed officers converged on their stately four-bedroom villa.

After they spoke with the man and his wife, they came to talk to me. The man had apologized, they said, and the wife didn’t want to escalate it further. One of the things he yelled at me during the confrontation–that he was leaving the country the next day, for good– was true. The whole family would be on a plane early the next morning, so, for the security guys, the matter was closed.

“With a husband and wife, sometimes these things happen,” a young Saudi officer explained to me apologetically, in somewhat broken English. “It’s not good, and it shouldn’t happen outside.”

I wanted to scream, it shouldn’t fucking happen at all!

I wrote down my statement of events and showed them the video, promising to email it to them later and delete it from my phone without sharing it with anyone else. I used the words “frightening,” and “aggressive.” I had to explain to the officer what they meant.

As we talked it began to occur to me that I didn’t want this violent man stewing inside his house, a stone’s throw from mine, for even a few hours if it could be avoided. He had told me he would get me in trouble, and he knew where I lived. Couldn’t the police put a patrol car on our block for the rest of the afternoon, until he was gone? I was told that no, unfortunately they had too many other things to attend to and not enough man power. That excuse would make perfect sense in any normal city, but where I live is anything but normal. This is a planned community; you have to pass a background check in order to live here. 90% of the people have Bachelor’s degrees, and many have graduate degrees. There are no homeless people. The speed limit is 25 miles per hour. And prior to that day, the only time I had ever reported anything to security in more than five years of living here was when someone plucked a sunflower from my garden. In short, there’s essentially no crime, or at least that’s what I used to think. Now, I know better.

I was on edge for the rest of the day, and my husband was none too pleased either. After raising the issue a bit further we got confirmation that the man would be leaving in a taxi about 6 p.m. that night, and we would be notified when he was officially gone. He and his family have been gone for over a week now, but I still find myself peering out the window towards their house, scanning that grassy area, almost as if I expect to see them appear again, though I know it’s impossible.

Like I said, this place is an idyllic bubble. The odd, amazing safety that can be created in a unique place like this is one of the reasons we have stayed here longer than we originally planned to live abroad. There’s no place in America like this, maybe no place in the world. And yet, under my nose, a well-educated, 30-something mother of two was being abused by her husband, who looked for all the world like an All-American guy. I remember thinking when I was filming the assault that this couldn’t be the first time it was happening. Then the security confirmed it. “We’ve been called to this house before,” they told me. I have no idea if this abuse was the reason they were leaving, if it had cost him his job here or was about to if he didn’t quit. But it chills me to think of him whipping her in the face with a handbag in broad daylight, in a public park, at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. If that is what he was willing to do where anyone might have seen, what has he done to her within the confines of their home, where there is no one to bear witness? What WILL he do to her next time, if she stays with him?

I know domestic violence exists. I have seen it in movies, and I have heard accounts after the fact. But to see it in action, to see it invade my perfect little world, was shocking, and it has made a permanent impact on me. Who else do I know who is living like this, trapped in an abusive relationship? What other smart, beautiful women around me endure treatment like this at home but can’t leave their abusers because of the kids, because of finances, because of cultural taboos, or because they fear for their lives? So they come to book club and sit on the couch and smile, sipping tea and discussing the problems of that month’s female protagonist. How tragic that story was. You know, it really disturbed me to read how…

But they themselves are also living fiction, a shiny exterior hiding a dark reality.

As I have reflected on this incident in the past few days, I have realized how lucky I am that my dumb move of confronting an angry, abusive man didn’t have any consequences. If this had all been playing out in the US, what are the chances that he would have had a gun? Just last month, in my hometown, a man shot himself and his partner to death in a parking lot after a domestic dispute. What if I had tried to intervene in that? If I were to call the cops on my abusive neighbor back home, things would pan out much the same way. The battered woman would tell the cops it was all a big misunderstanding, and since she didn’t want to press charges, the police would get in their car and drive away. But the difference is that I’d still be living next door to the guy, and he’d know I knew his dirty little secret. All around, I was lucky that day. I am lucky.

In this case I never had reason to fear for my life, because fortunately for me, the asshole didn’t have a weapon, never threatened me physically, and was literally on his way out of the country, never to return. But it was still the first time I felt, if not afraid, at least uneasy in my own home. The security guy’s advice to me, after telling me they were too busy policing four-way stops to park a car on my block? “Keep your door locked, and always ask who it is before opening it to anyone.” Many of my friends don’t lock their doors at all here, but you can bet I did that day.

And what about her, my neighbor, acquaintance, could-have-been friend? As next month’s book club meeting approaches, I’m sure she’ll send us an email apologizing for not being able to join us any longer, letting us know her family left for “personal reasons,” or “a new opportunity.” We’ll all gather and sip our tea and discuss the month’s literature, and someone will wonder aloud what happened to her, why she left so suddenly. And I will have to sit silently, shrug, and change the subject, because I won’t contribute to the gossip that already breeds like a mutating disease here. But I will know what happened, at least on that day, their last day in our community.

What I don’t know is where she goes from here, what her next move will be. Will she summon the courage to leave his despicable ass? I could hope that perhaps that process is already in motion and she’ll be free of him soon. Or will she stay, because they are a family despite the evil in him, because he promised her a fresh start this time, because she’s in love with him so deeply she can’t see another way?

We didn’t acknowledge each other that day when we stood across the grass, and I’m sure I’m the last person she wants to hear from about this, but if I were to send her an email, I’d say something like this:

Girl. I’m so sorry that happened to you, and I know I don’t know the whole story, the backstory, or the history. I don’t know why he was angry that day, what you might have done to enrage him. I don’t know how you met, what made you fall in love with him, or how long you’ve been married. All I know is I saw him hit you, not once in a moment when he just snapped, but repeatedly, doggedly, intentionally. He didn’t leave bruises, but he made you cower in fear in one of the safest places in the world. All I know is that you don’t deserve to be treated like that, because no one does. Leave his ass, pick up the pieces, and teach your sons to be better men than their father. Even if that’s the worst it’s ever been, and you think you can handle that, DON’T. Run. You deserve to be safe.

She’s gone and he’s gone, and I’ll never see them again. But every day I see that park, the place where I saw my naivete about domestic violence and about the safe bubble I live in shatter into a million pieces. A few months from now, my boys will probably take some of their first steps toddling across that grass. A couple of years from now I might kick a soccer ball around with them there, chase them and hear their shrieks and squeals, happy ones this time. Innocent ones. But no matter how much time passes and what else transpires on that green, it will always be the place where I saw the ugliest side of men for the first time. It will always be where I saw him hit her.