Aotearoa in 20: Zaheda Davies found hope after a life of abuse

Friday, 28 August 2020

Zaheda Davies talks about her past experience of an abusive marriage in Russia and how it makes her appreciate her life in New Zealand now.

Zaheda Davies managed to escape a life of abuse after getting married against her parents’ wishes. She shares her story for Aotearoa in 20, a Stuff special project.

I was in my early twenties when I met this guy in India. He was a friend of a friend. I’d finished university. He was really very different. He came from a completely different background and lifestyle. What I saw as confidence was actually just arrogance and cockiness. I couldn’t tell the difference then. He wasn’t a Muslim either. We got married against my parents wishes, then went to Russia. They had to live with it.

For a while I was estranged from my family. They had cut me off because they were disappointed. But my sister managed to patch it up for me. We lived in Russia for about nine years. I found out pretty early on that he was an alcoholic and abusive. I felt I’d done it to myself. I got married to him against everyone’s wishes, clearly my parents could see that it wouldn’t work.

Because I felt guilty I’d gone against the family, I didn’t want to go back and say it wasn’t working. I didn’t want to put them through that heartache. If I’d gone back and told them half the things he’d done to me, that would have broken them completely. I just couldn’t do that. Not at their age. My parents were in their 70s or 80s. They died within six months of each other, which was a really hard time for all of us. We’re close-knit. It was tough enough that my dad died of cancer. Then six months later it was like the rug had been pulled from under us with mum.

It was after then I realised I've got no one to protect any more. I realised if I didn’t get out of there fast, I wouldn't be alive much longer. That was when I told my sister the first time about what I’d been going through and what my plans were. At that time, I didn’t really have a plan. But I knew I had to make one.

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Zaheda Davies, now 57, grew up in Bombay, attending boarding school at a convent there.

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Davies refers to her time spent in Russia with her ex-husband as a previous life.

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Living in Russia is different. I knew the language, but I didn’t have any friends that I could count on to help me out. Really, it was all about whether I could do it myself. There was one moment where my ex was drunk, and he told me something I never forgot, there was so much conviction in the way he said it. It was the dead of winter. Moscow was about -40 degrees Celsius and the snow was about a metre and a half high. He said he’d cut me up into little pieces and spread my body around, and that no one would ever know I existed. Sometimes I think, ‘did I dream it up? Was it a nightmare?’

I was working at the time and couldn’t tell anyone in Russia what I was going to do because I was afraid he’d find out. I had a lot of stuff from my parents that was of sentimental value that I needed to get out because I didn’t want him to have it. Without my parents around, I needed a way to have financial security, too. So I started ferreting money away. He was so drunk that most of the time he didn’t realise.

I worked for Lufthansa, the German airline. I could fly at the drop of a hat. For the last year my dad was in England, I had been doing that anyway. We were trying to maximise our time with him. I’d work one weekend, then the next week I’d take Friday off and take a long weekend and go there. I started gradually packing in all of these things of value. I’d drop it off at my sister’s place in England, or at the family house in India. This was September. It was March by the time I could leave him.

Zaheda’s late father, Padma Shri Zainulabedin Rangoonwala, pictured second right front row, with former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, third right front row, about 1984. Rangoonwala was co-founder and managing director of the Bombay Mercantile Cooperative Bank, which became one of the largest cooperative banks in Asia. He was the first banker to be honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in India. Pictured far left is a young Zaheda. Immediately left of Gandhi is Zaheda’s late mother, Shireen.

I told him there was an inheritance coming through and there was a lot of red tape in India, with the bulk of the family being in England. I said nothing was happening because five signatures were needed, which we wouldn’t be able to get in time. I said I’d leave Lufthansa, go to India and work on the inheritance because otherwise it’ll never come. I blamed my brother, saying he wasn’t doing anything and sitting on it. And he believed me.

Zaheda wears a pendant her father gifted her, made out of a coin from his bank. It is engraved with a prayer from the Holy Quran.

So I left the job, packed up and went to India. A few weeks later he asked how it was going. I pulled him along for a few months that way. Then I couldn’t hold it off any longer, and he asked when I was coming back. I said I wasn't, and he laughed. He said, ‘Really? Who’s going to take you? You’ll come crawling back to me’. That was hard, but I had the support of my siblings.

Over the next three years I fought with him. We had an apartment between us in Bombay. It was quite expensive. He wasn’t willing to give it up. When we had our divorce proceedings, he told the judge he wanted two nights with me to make me pregnant and then I wouldn’t leave. He knew exactly what I wanted – how to hold me. He was a real piece of work. He wouldn’t let me into the apartment to take my things away. He was back and forth between Russia and India.

Zaheda and Chris have been married 17 years. They live together with their children at their home in Wilton.

Nisha and Isaac pictured in various contexts. Bottom left L, R, respectively; top left pictured with Chris on a bike; middle right pictured at a triathlon left and centre; top right Isaac trying out baking; bottom middle Nisha on a dinosaur. Centre pictured is Zaheda’s parents at their golden anniversary (50 years), incidentally the same year as that of the bank.

The couple, pictured front seat, have fraternal twins Nisha and Isaac, aged 13, both pictured in the far back seat L and R, respectively. In the middle are international students the family hosted at the time from China and Hong Kong.

Then I moved to New Zealand, and still had the lawyer. One day I got an email from her, saying he wanted to employ her and pay her twice as much as what I was paying. By this time I was friendly with Chris. I sat down one day and thought to myself, I’m still young, I still have a whole life ahead of me. I’m now in a country where I can live with dignity. I can do anything. If I’ve managed to get away from him, those things are just material. They might have financial value, but that’s it. So in my mind I just let go. I thought that’s it, I don’t need that stuff, he can have the apartment. He can have all of those things that I had spent all that time putting together. I wrote an email to the lawyer saying I'll just let it go. Soon after that Chris proposed to me. And I thought, you have to shut one door to be able to open another window.

I don’t think I knew how to recognise another human being. Growing up, I would lie to my parents and meet my ex on the sly. I never got to see him for what he was. You’d end up going to a place where it’s just the two of you on your own in a room and one thing led to another. I didn’t get to see how he interacted with people, what kind of person he was.

All there was in our relationship was him and me. I didn’t even meet his parents. Maybe that was one of the clues, but I didn’t pick up on it. His parents refused our marriage as well, saying they didn’t know me, or the family I came from. I was Muslim, he was Hindu. Socially, his father was a civil servant. Back in India, that’s the bottom of the rung. My dad was a well-known, high-profile banker and was mingling with royalty and politicians. There was no common ground.

To come to New Zealand and meet somebody who’s a plumber was the other end of the spectrum. Back home, a trades-person has no value. Absolutely none. In India, they’re not educated or well-paid. It’s not really considered respectable, which is sad. I had all these levels and layers I had to work out for myself. I was quite amazed that I was friends with somebody like that. In my relationship with Chris as a friend, I was kind of chipping away at those layers. Every time I’d look at his hands, his nails would be black from the products they use. It wasn’t dirty, but I didn’t know that initially. I learnt that over time.

I didn’t introduce him to my family for a long time. My cousin here didn’t meet him for quite a few months. She knew I was friendly with him, but I didn’t bring him around. I didn’t know how they’d react. I didn’t want them to not show respect. And if it wasn’t going anywhere, then it wasn’t fair on him to put him in a situation where they might not react well. Finally, once I’d worked it through in my own head, that’s when I was able to see it for the purity of what it was.

The few friends who were awkward just fell off. With my family, they’ve just accepted him as my husband. They’ve taken him into the fold. They’re amazing. I’m the youngest of five. We kind of joke that our family is made up of the United Nations. We’ve got all of these cultures now through marriages. Even in the Western world – no matter what we say – when you marry a person, you marry the family. There has to be some kind of value system that’s common to both of you.

For me bringing up my own children, it’s important I don't isolate them in the same way I was. I think the more you say no, the more you attract the person to it. I wasn’t allowed friends who were men. I didn’t really recognise the signs. I had no idea how to sift out the good from the bad. I didn’t know how to be a friend to someone from the opposite sex, because I’d never had that opportunity. If I had been able to see him the way he was, it would never have gone as far as it did.

It does worry me. I’m not for them coming home saying they’ve got a boyfriend or girlfriend. But time will tell how I react. It’s almost like you’re standing on a different level on higher ground, and can see down there and how it works. When you’re in it, you don’t see it. I’m thinking my mother must be standing up there saying, ‘see? I told you’.”

As told to Andre Chumko for ‘Aotearoa in 20’, a Stuff project.