A Dangerous Husband

My friend's first husband, Abdalla, turned out to be kind of a horror. Eight years into their 12-year marriage, he began disappearing for days at a time, and when confronted, he would vanish again. He ignored her pleas, her questions, her tears. Eventually, he stopped talking to her at all unless it was to chitchat or to disparage her in public. Finally, calmly, he told her he wanted both her and their marriage gone.

Because there was nothing left to do, Halima, the girl in question, began a new life, still clinging half-heartedly to the hope that he'd change his mind. Halima clung for about a year, right up to the day that a strange woman called, introducing herself as Abdall's girlfriend-- a woman he had been seeing behind her back for three years. (She wanted some relationship advice.)

All right. There it was. Abdalla was a disgusting, adulterous, vile husband. Halima finally served him with divorce papers, asking for no alimony at all, because She didn't want to ever have to think about him again, or even see his name, even if it was on a nice fat check she surely could have used. And besides, by then, to Halima's astonished delight, she was madly in love with someone else. She had begun to think about remarriage, maybe as soon as the ink was dry on the divorce decree.

Unfortunately, it was Abdalla's unoriginal conviction that if he didn't want me, he didn't want anyone else to want me; being a lawyer, he knew all the tricks necessary to hold up a simple divorce. He disappeared to avoid signing the papers. Then he claimed he lost the papers. Finally, he filed his documents so incorrectly that the judge refused the divorce, and it had to be done all over again.

Halima was furious. "No matter what you do, I'm getting married," she told him. What should have been a simple filing for divorce took two years, but it did happen. All that was left was to have it finalized. Halima and Abshir, her fiance, were delirious. They celebrated by buying wedding bands, by setting a date and booking the Greenwich Village restaurant where they wanted to be married. "I'll never have to think about Abdalla again," she told Abshir.

And All of a sudden, Abshir died. He died of a heart attack so massive,not even a miracle could have saved him. Crazy with grief and rage, Halima looked for someone to blame and the most likely suspect was Abdalla. She called to scream at him, to vent her fury and grief. She raged at him because all his disappearances and legal tricks had postponed her wedding, denying her time when she could have been married to Abshir, the man she loved more than she had ever even considered loving Abdalla.

Halima was ready to slam down the receiver when Abdalla suddenly interrupted. His voice was quiet and sure. "I'm flying to New York to take care of you," he told me. "I'll do whatever you need to make you feel better."

"I don't know why I said OK", Halima said. Maybe because she wanted to punish him in person. Maybe because she was insane from grief and wanted another drama to focus on. Maybe because she was desperate, so drowning in despair she was terrified that she would never recover. Maybe she was ready to take any lifeline offered her. Even if it was Abdalaa's.

Okay let us read what she said about her bad husband and how he changed from eveil to angel. I was not surprised to hear this story, but something like this happens all the time. No one knows what type of husband this guy was, but I will leave you to guess after you finish reading the rest of the story.

Every weekend for nearly three months, Abdalla flew into New York. He booked me into suites in expensive hotels neighborhoods away. He stayed with me so I wouldn't be alone. We each took a bed and we both wore pajamas and the only time he touched me was to hold me while I wept, to wipe my face with a cool cloth.

Abdalla let me talk on and on about Abshir, and he never once looked away or talked about his life or talked about the life we had once shared. He gave me money because I was in no shape to work. He made sure I ate, taking me to the best restaurants in the city; and when I decided that the best thing for me to do was just travel cross-country, staying one step ahead of my grief, he booked my flights and saw me off. "Take this," he said, scribbling something on a pad of paper. "It's my private line and my credit card number. You call any time. It doesn't matter."

I did call. At 4 in the afternoon and at 4 in the morning. For 10 minutes, for two hours. From Santa Fe, N.M., and from Santa Rosa, California. Abdalla never cut me off or told me he was busy. Sometimes he just listened to me weeping incoherently on the phone. He never told me to call back, and if he wasn't there, he called as soon as he got the message. I depended on him totally--because I could.

Abdalla was there for me in a way he had never been--ever--during our marriage. "Why are you doing this?" I asked him in a call from Lubbock, Texas. "Why are you suddenly being so good?" I heard the wires humming.

"Penance," he said finally. "I made myself a promise that I'd be there for you whenever you wanted, the way I should have been there for you all the years we were together."

If there is such a thing as karmic debt, well, Abdalla paid his and then left a little as an advance on the next crisis. He put his work and his life on hold to be at my beck and call. When I came back to New York, he came back, too. He never once kissed me or crawled into my bed with me or even spoke of whatever feelings for me he might have still harbored. For the first time in our relationship, he was exactly who and what I needed when I needed him to be it: a safe, asexual male presence. A whipping boy. A shrink. A comforting father. A comic to get me to smile a little. And for all that I was eternally grateful.

My grief began to abate. I got to the point where I could walk into my home and not feel physically ill from my memories. I could spend a night alone and not need drugs to douse my sorrow. I could go out and have a nice evening with friends. I could go back to work, be with people. I could feel hopeful about my life. And gradually, my time with Abdalla began to taper off. I didn't need to have him be with me or call me every night. And when I did call him, I was healed enough to want to know something about his life, and strong enough to let him tell me.

"Well, I'm looking for change," he told me. He was thinking of getting out of the law entirely, it wasn't satisfying for him anymore. "Maybe, I'll go get therapy," he told me.

"I'm glad," I said. And I was. I called him a few more times after that, on bad nights when a movie had reminded me of my loss and I had had to leave the theater in tears, when I found an old touching card Abshir had once given me. And sometimes, too, I called Abdalla on goodnights, when I felt happy, when the city seemed promising to me again. We always talked for a while, exchanging news, and every single call, Abdalla always asked, "Are you OK?" Is there something I can do?" And more and more often, there wasn't.

And then the divorce was final, and maybe it surprised and silenced us both, because our conversations stopped. We both moved on.

Until a few years later.

I had delirious, happily, remarried, and my husband and I had run out of money doing renovations on our house. We couldn't get a loan and things were beginning to look desperate, and the only person I knew who had both wealth and generosity was Abdalla. "You can't possibly call him!" my husband protested, but I laughed. "Oh, yes, I can," I said, and so, out of the blue, I did.

"Halima!" Abdalla said. "I'm so happy to hear from you!"

We talked a little bit. I told him about my marriage, about my home. He told me he hadn't left the law, hadn't gone into therapy. But he was remarried, to a woman I didn't know. And when I asked for money, well, he came through. "I wish it could be more," he told me. His voice grew low, hesitant. "But I'm thinking of leaving my wife. I think I'm in love with someone else."

Some things always and never change. I didn't comment, didn't give advice. Instead, I thanked him for the loan, and I hung up. Abdalla, my husband from hell was once again my angel of mercy.

I guess it's funny. Abdalla and I fell out of touch not long after that. I talk with his sister, who was and is close to me. Every once in a while, I still think about him, wonder how he's doing, and sometimes I ask her. But now, even though Abdalla and I don't really have contact, when I think about him, it's never as my terrible first husband, Instead, it's as a sort of friend.