3: Bleeding but Adorned

Illustration by Madison Griffiths

Illustration by Madison Griffiths

Content warning: This show looks at domestic abuse head on. This particular episode starts—and ends—in a hospital, and while it’s an uplifting story, it’s also a bit heavy at times. So, be gentle with yourself, listen with care, and know that support is readily available for any unpleasant feelings that might pop up. If you or someone you know needs assistance, please contact: Lifeline (13 11 14), 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or any of these support services. Listen with care.

“Over the span of my life, I had to get my nose re-pierced five times. It was a no-brainer: I was obviously going to do it. And, in a way, there was something quite powerful and commanding about my body’s insistence when it came to healing itself. Just this time, they were my wounds: and the sort that allowed me to bedazzle myself, time and time again, bleeding but adorned.”

In episode 3 Bleeding but Adorned, Roia delights in all of the small, but significant ways she is able to reclaim her appearance after abuse: from buying her first pair of skinny jeans, to getting her nose pierced. After her divorce, she is also forced to make a map of what it means to be ‘an Australian’ in the early 2000s, in the dawn of 9/11, when xenophobia was - and still is - rife in the Western world.


Further information

Credits

Co-producers: Madison Griffiths and Beth Atkinson-Quinton
Lead Storyteller: Roia Atmar
Sensitivity Editor: Shakira Hussein
Assistant Producer: Danae Gibson
Sound Designer and Engineer: Jon Tjhia
Guests in this episode: Debbie, Dr Mehreen Faruqi, Maha Krayem Abdo OAM

Debbie is a close friend of Roia Atmar.

Dr Mehreen Faruqi is the Greens’ senator for New South Wales. She is a civil and environmental engineer and life-long activist for social and environmental justice. In 2013, she joined NSW State Parliament, becoming the first Muslim woman to sit in an Australian parliament. In 2018, Mehreen became Australia’s first Muslim senator. She has been a passionate advocate against racism and misogyny.

Maha Krayem Abdo OAM is a passionate advocate for social justice and uses the common language of faith to clarify in the community how Islam regards justice and equality. She serves as the CEO of Muslim Women Australia (MWA), a representative body for Muslim women working to enrich humanity, advocating for equality and the rights of all women, through authentic leadership based on Islamic principles.

Tender season two is Broadwave podcast supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and proudly sponsored by the Victorian Women’s Trust.

Get in touch

We love hearing from our listeners. Stay in touch across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @broadwavepods, and @tenderpodcast on Twitter.

Download a transcript of this episode here (Adobe PDF format).

Episode Three: Bleeding But Adorned

[Music: ambient, expansive and sharp.]

Madison Griffiths: Hey, Madison here. Just before you start: this show looks at domestic abuse head on. This particular episode uncovers Roia’s experience of racism and Islamophobia as a young mother in suburban Perth. It is explicit at times, so be gentle with yourself, listen with care, and know that support is readily available for any unpleasant feelings that might pop up. Check out our website for a list of people you can speak to if the going gets tough. 

Meghan Roberts (CTV News reporter): A fifteen-year-old girl is calling her school’s dress code sexist after she was told to cover up her shoulders. The school division insists its policy is enforced equally… [cuts off].

Erin McLaughlin (CNN reporter): These images have sparked an intense and global debate. Armed police stand over a Muslim woman interrupting her enjoyment of the french seaside… [cuts off].

[Music: ambient, eerie and and evocative.]Jolene Cardenas of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault for WRTV Indianapolis:A judge declared that there was obviously consent because the woman was wearing tight jeans and would have had to have helped remove those jeans.

Roia Atmar: Throughout history all over the world, women have long protested oppressive regimes that have decided—implicitly, or through sanctioned legislation—how they should dress, or what they should wear. Whether in the name of conservatism, religious compliance, or even liberalism—as seen in how Australia largely condemned the wearing of headscarves in public schools in the mid-2000s—a woman’s expression of self through clothing, or the absence of such, is still, to this day, contentious.

Roia Atmar: A judge in Italy decided that a 45-year-old man accused of raping an 18-year-old girl was to have his conviction overturned because she was wearing a pair of tight jeans. And those are just bookmarks in a huge inventory of decidedly cruel regimes, designed to limit a woman’s agency when it comes to her own expression of self. 

Roia Atmar: Even now, in Afghanistan - my home country - the rights and aspirations of Afghan women are wavering thin given the Taliban’s recent return to power, forcing many into hiding.

Roia Atmar: Many female presenters are being barred from working on state television, their womanhood a threat to whatever it is the Taliban aim to protect. In a desperate plea, Roya Rahmani—former ambassador of international relations between Afghanistan and the United States—told David Smith of the Guardian, “what happens to Afghanistan can be determined by what is going to happen to the women of Afghanistan.” 

[Music: atmospheric and reflective.]

Roia Atmar: However, for every ruling exercised in public, or every scowl from an old conservative as they pass a woman in a crop-top down the mall, is a man exercising that power, as if it is his very own right, in the home he shares with his family.

Roia Atmar: What scared me wasn’t the judgemental gaze of my community, but rather the man I lived with, who decided what I would wear, when I would wear it, and how the fabric would fall on my body. 

Roia Atmar: Like a life-sized mannequin, I had no say: undergarments were shipped from Pakistan, and tags were left on particular pieces he chose for special occasions, which he would then send back to the store after I had worn them once. From 14, I was told that my body wasn’t mine to adorn. It was his. 

[Sound effects: the dull echo of a busy shopping centre.]

This meant that, by the time I was able to shop for my own clothing, it was an experience made fraught by my relationship with fabric, control and my body.

[Sound effects: the flicking of various clothes on coat hangers.]

And then there were the wounds, of course: the first few times I flicked through a supermarket clothes rack, I had to shop not just for my own clothes, but for clothes that didn’t aggravate my burns. Clothes that didn’t prick and irritate the hurt I was already forced to wear. 

[Music: hopeful, upbeat and gentle. Paired with sound effects of seagulls squawking softly. A door closes.]

Roia Atmar: It is the early 2000s, and I am living in my own home, with my brother and my children.I am safe. Safe enough to peruse through shopping centres. To watch films and laugh heartily at the best bits, to know that my children are safe to wonder, to explore, to be themselves. 

[Sound effects: Children laughing joyously.]

Roia Atmar: Things are different to what they were before, and whilst it’s difficult to not be reminded of what happened—especially given my burns—life, in its scariest form, life as I once knew it, was starting to fade. And this new world was exciting, stimulating, full of curious adventures and the opportunity to play with my children, to make new friends, and—well—to sport a gorgeous pair of skinny jeans, an item of clothing I want to wear, that I am able to imagine myself in. 

Roia Atmar: When you leave a kind of relationship that constantly informs every decision you are able to make about yourself and your body, something as trivial as buying a pair of new jeans that you decided you looked good in, meant a whole lot. I had fallen into a brand new love affair with denim. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to do something a little riskier. 

[Music: a sweeping rousing Bollywood track begins.]

Roia Atmar: I wanted to get my nose pierced. 

Roia Atmar: I’d always loved Bollywood films, for as long as I can remember. There’s a kind of glossiness you can’t find in other genres, a will to live and celebrate that is reserved especially for the most glamorous depths of the screen. The heroines in Bollywood movies aren’t just beautiful, they are often cheerful, unencumbered by fear, and aspirational in how they galavant playfully around any given room they occupy. The plot is charming and unapologetic, and those in Bollywood films know spontaneity of a different kind. They know a kind of spontaneity I wasn’t used to, that’s for sure. 

[Sound effects: A plate smashes abruptly.]

[Music: eerie, high-pitched piano melody resounds.]Roia Atmar: Ask any survivor of abuse, and they’ll tell you that all it takes is a sudden scene break for our set to be filled with fear, and violence, for plates to be smashed and insults to be hurled.

[Sound effects: Another plate smashes abruptly.]

Roia Atmar: But Bollywood knows spontaneity, too: and the viewer never knows when each scene could break suddenly into song and dance, into romance and playfulness, into whatever the heart—and mind—desires. 

Roia Atmar (echoed by an eerie Bollywood melody): Like walking, talking, rhinestones, the women in Bollywood cinema shine, made likely easier to do given the sort of jewellery they wear, the silver and gold that hangs from their noses and ears. Nose piercings aren’t—and especially weren’t—common for Afghans like me. And so, I made a plan.

Roia Atmar: I went to get my nose pierced with my friend, Debbie.

Roia Atmar: Procedures were different then to how they are now. A piercing artist, who worked at the hairdresser Debbie and I went to, held up a small gun to my nostril, and as the shiny metal punctured my skin, my friend stood before me, and laughed.

[Sound effects: Debbie laughs cheekily.]

Roia Atmar: Despite being in a haze from pain and adrenaline, the moment I spotted it in the mirror before me was joyous. I absolutely loved it. 

[Music: electrifying, evocative and rhythmic tune begins.]

Roia Atmar: Over the span of my life from that moment, I had to get my nose re-pierced five times. It was a no brainer: I was obviously going to do it. And, in a way, there was something quite powerful and commanding about my body’s insistence when it came to healing itself. Just this time, they were my wounds: and the sort that allowed me to bedazzle myself, time and time again, bleeding but adorned. Each time a piercing of jewellery would somehow find itself squirming out of my body, my skin would do its thing and work its magic, and flesh its way back together. 

Roia Atmar: Back to Debbie. I’d met her when I enrolled myself in a small course at TAFE, and she was full of life, a true-blue tomboy in a backwards cap, forever sporting a keen smile.

Roia Atmar: And with Debbie came Marty, Carol, Christine… a whole collection of wonderful friends. It was the first time I had established a group of close-knit mates, and they were all so incredibly different, in the best ways. Debbie was charming and outgoing, Marty was a dancer by trade, and each of them had a relatively sheltered, white Australian life up to that point.

Roia Atmar: There was also another friend, funnily enough named Debbie too. 

[Music: electrifying, evocative and rhythmic tune fades out to silence.]

Debbie (Roia’s friend): So, I just went to a friend’s barbecue, a mutual friend, and met Roia there. Well, when I met her, she was still quite covered up, and very quiet. All I could see was her face and the ends of her hands. She was completely covered, and I’d not really had a lot to do with Muslim people. I do remember thinking, this is someone I’d like to be friends with, and someone I’d like to know.

[Music: evocative, reminiscent music resounds.]

Roia Atmar: I was still trying to understand, or make a map, of what it meant to be an Australian. And while I was surrounded by good-hearted people, xenophobia, confusion and curiosity was rife in Perth.Andrew Thomas for Al Jazeera:It should have been a special day out, and after taking her mother to see a musical, Asma Faqmi was returning to her car, when from a balcony from up above men started shouting racist abuse, and throwing hard-boiled eggs… 

Asma Faqmi: One of them narrowly missed me, and so I ducked…Newsreader #2 for Euronews: Ugly scenes in Australia as Anti-Islam and anti-racisms demonstrators clash. There have been injuries and arrests in Melbourne…

Newsreader #3 for 9 News Perth: An anti-Muslim attack on a Perth mother has cost a man $2500. The 33 year-old through a bottle at the Muslim woman in front of his four daughters.

Reporter: Are you Islamophobic? Are you racist, Mr. Peterson?

Newsreader #4: One group blames the Government for encouraging bigotry. It’s rhetoric and anti-terror laws legitimise abuse…Newsreader #2 for Euronews: Reclaim Australia denies being racist or anti-Muslim.Mehreen Faruqi (in her maiden speech): The reality is that my presence in the senate is an affront to some. They are offended that people of colour and Muslims have the audacity to not only exist but  to open our mouths and join the public debate. Some politicians call us cockroaches. Some say we are a disease which Australia needs a vaccination for. Some, if they had it their way, would ban us from making Australia our home. So, it is with great pride that I stand here before you unapologetically, a brown Muslim migrant feminist woman, and a Greens Senator.

Roia Atmar: In saying that, I felt protected by my newfound group, and able to experiment with new ways of being. Like, for example, learning slang from Christine, or establishing rituals together. We’d always go out for lunch twice a week. And given that they were all quite a bit older than me, sometimes if they were talking about things they thought I’d find confronting or strange, they’d say “Roia, cover your ears!”

Debbie: Roia has never ever been a jeans and t-shirt girl. She’s very… you know, when we go out, I once told her we’re like the country mouse and the city mouse sort-of-thing when we go together.

[Music: atmospheric, hopeful and delicate.] 

Roia Atmar: Debbie and I spent weekends together: so much so that she practically lived with me, crashing on the lounge or the floor or wherever she felt fit. And, as she says, she always saw me, the real me, not the woman my husband attempted to quash, to fit into baggy cloth and ill-fitting fabric. The me who loves to dress up, to shop, to adorn the body she was given. 

Debbie: Like I can, I can wear the high heels and get dressed up and I have done that at times for occasions but majority of the time I’m jeans and t-shirts and flat shoes, and she’d be like, you know, her high heels, and her nails all done and make up and hair always done. 

Roia Atmar: My new friends were quintessentially Australian, and embedded in this experience was their ability to fit in, to walk down a Perth street and not be followed by curious eyes. And then there was me: young, visibly Muslim given my head scarf, my skin healing in parts. In a lot of ways—I represented some kind of spectacle to white Australia. But I wasn’t the only one. 

Mehreen Faruqi: Obviously over the years, myself, my family, my kids, I was subjected to racism. Um, but I would always ignore it. And the few reasons why I ignored it was, initially I thought there was something wrong with me, something that I was doing and that’s why people were, you know, doing what they were doing. Or, it was, you know, once they get to know me better, they’ll understand. They’ll be educated. Um, or the third thing was, that, you know, I really didn’t want to have another notch in my trouble maker belt.

Roia Atmar: That’s Senator Mehreen Faruqi, whose voice you might recognise from her maiden speech, where she challenges Islamophobia and racism head on in parliament.

Roia Atmar: Senator Faruqi describes what it means to exist as a Muslim woman in a predominantly white context, but also how deeply personal and internalised that experience is. 

[Music: rhythmic, electronic and atmospheric tune begins.]

Roia Atmar: There’s being different, sure—but there’s being made aware of your difference at every turn, having it inform your every decision. And I wasn’t just a Muslim woman: I was a Muslim woman who had been assaulted by her Muslim partner in a period of time where Islam was feared in the West and branded a kind of creed that depended upon violence, upon terror, upon destruction.

Roia Atmar: As David Shariat Madari writes for the Guardian, “Islam can be a convenient focus for the rage we feel after hearing about acts of brutality. But don’t mistake something being seductive for it being accurate.”

Roia Atmar: Existing in the world as a Muslim woman who hadbeen abused made for a tempting narrative for those unwilling to learn, or understand, my faith. Despite not having my husband dress me anymore, my expression of self was inevitably being tainted by another oppressive force: racial prejudice. 

Man #1: Is it… do you have like something, some explosive in the bag? Is it a bomb? I don’t trust you lot.Woman #2: No! Don’t touch my bag. 

Maha Abdo: If we look at Muslim women, right now the global terrorism aspect of blaming and naming and the shaming of Muslim women, due to the dress or undress. 

[Music: atmospheric, hopeful and delicate.] 

Roia Atmar: That’s Maha Abdo, President of the Muslim Women’s Association.Maha Abdo: By association, as a Muslim women - you are having to first of all jump over all of the hurdles when you’re vulnerable already. And it is about, as well, understanding and acknowledging that there are intersectionalities. Just because you’re a Muslim woman doesn’t mean you fit 1, 2, 3… right?

[Music: evocative, reminiscent music resounds.]

Roia Atmar: But in saying that, there was an invincibility that I had adopted, and the women that I had become friends with could see that strength. Their curiosity wasn’t necessarily overpowering or based in misconceptions. They wanted permission to see me, for who I was. And I afforded them that. 

Mehreen Faruqi: I did get a lot of kind of pride and support from the communities that I had worked with in my first 20 years in Australia before I had a public profile. And these were many communities: it was the people fighting for action on the climate crisis, for instance, or for social justice. Or, the anti-racism movement, the refugee support movement… so obviously a lot of support from them. The Pakistani community in, you know, Sydney was also very proud of the fact that someone with that background would be a voice for them as well. You know, many migrants came up to me and said they could hear their story in mine because we have very common migrant stories in Australia no matter where you come from, actually.

Roia Atmar: We find our people. And we hold onto them. And we exist as we are. 

Debbie: Quite obviously, one of the first questions was how she ended up with her burns so… [gently sobs].

Debbie: Um, we’ve been friends for 20 years and it still does this to me.

Roia Atmar: There’s something I discovered when I started meeting others, and becoming close with various women, and it was this: my experiences had very little to do with my faith, or rather—they weren’t the product of my husband being Muslim. There were women all around me, women donned in baggy jeans, who drank beer and smoked cigarettes and apparently reaped the benefits of a white, liberal culture, who had been subjected to interpersonal violence in ways not dissimilar to me. My closest friends knew terror intimately. In a way, we all had our scars, regardless of if they existed in the grooves of our skin or otherwise. 

[Music: atmospheric and gentle.] 

Debbie: Considering where she’s been, and like, mine wasn’t that bad. Um, like I left. I decided it was time to move on. He was violent, and we had the kids so we had that thing in common.

Roia Atmar: But scattered in the intensity of our shared experiences was a want to have fun, to let our hair down, which is what Debbie and I did best. And, with the support of my friends, I gave it a go the Australian way. With the support of my friends, I wandered into a local pub, headscarf and all, for the first time in my life. 

[Music: upbeat, high-pitched and hopeful.]

[Sound effects: People chatting loudly in a pub, a beer is being poured.]

Roia Atmar: It was so new to me, like a restaurant… but with music. It wasn’t scary necessarily, just new. A friend of mine had passed one of her exams, and she was holding this massive glass of beer, it was really tall. I’d never seen a glass of beer that tall. And here we were, like it was nobody's business, at this old pub called the Foundry.

[Sound effects: The echo of laughter in a crowded pub.]

Roia Atmar: I’d never had a drink, which also has absolutely nothing to do with my religion, I just didn’t really like the smell. I also had this idea that drunkenness was somehow tied to violence, but Debbie turned into this puppy with the reddest cheeks, and she kept telling everybody, “I love you all so much.” She never left me alone, because she knew I was nervous. And that’s what friends are for.

Roia Atmar: There’s something about standing in a space foreign and intoxicating, wearing your own headscarf and a bejewelled, golden accessory in your nose, laughing with your friends.Each of us arrives at our authentic expression of self in different ways, and that didn’t mean shaving off the parts of myself that were different or at odds to those around me. If anything, it meant the opposite. There is power as well as vulnerability in being seen. As Elliot Page writes, “My joy is real, but it is also fragile.” It was time for me to show the world who I was, even if that world was a rowdy group of TAFE students drinking schooners. I was ready to take it on… one suburban pub crawl at a time.

[Sound effects: A joyous laugh.]

Roia Atmar: I want to thank my dear friend Debbie for contributing to this episode, as well as Senator Mehreen Faruqi for her work with the Greens in dismantling racism, and protecting women all around Australia. I also want to thank Maha Abdo for her relentless activism when it comes to the rights and freedom of Muslim women in this country. This season is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and UNESCO Melbourne City of Literature, and is kindly sponsored by the Victorian Women’s Trust, an advocate for violence prevention, fair wages for equal work, and the equal representation of women, men and gender diverse people in the decision making processes that shape our lives.

Roia Atmar: You are listening to Tender, a Broadwave production about what happens once women leave abusive relationships. This season is created by Madison Griffiths, Beth Atkinson-Quinton and me, Roia Atmar. Until next time. 

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