A determined journey from despair
Rumana Monzur completes her master’s just two years after brutal attack left her blind
“I cried for almost one- and- a- half years and nothing changed ... This year’s resolution was that I will bring my smile back.”
Rumana Monzur
Alittle more than two years ago, Rumana Monzur’s husband brutally attacked and blinded her.
On June 28, before faculty, colleagues, friends and family, Monzur successfully completed an oral defence of her master’s thesis at the University of B. C.
It was a day that, at first, nobody — including Monzur — believed was possible.
But with that behind her, the 34- year- old is getting ready for her next academic challenge. In September, she will be in UBC’s freshman law class.
Rumana Monzur’s journey is an extraordinary one; a testament to her quiet, determined strength and to her faith.
“After this incident, I cried for almost 1 ½ years and nothing changed and nothing happened,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “So this year’s resolution was I won’t let anyone choose whether I will be happy or sad in my life. I will decide myself.”
She resolved to smile and keep smiling.
Monzur wants her friends to see the person she was before the attack, “not thinking of me as a blind person and as a victim.”
Monzur’s journey began long before the June day in 2o11 when an enraged Syeed Hasan Sumon attacked his wife in front of their five- year- old daughter, Anusheh.
Monzur is among a Bangladeshi elite, one of a very few women who made it to university. Instead of going even to high school, most Bangladeshi girls are working in the fields or for dirt- poor wages making cheap clothes for export in barely regulated factories.
With only an undergraduate degree in political science, Monzur was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Dhaka. But she yearned for more education and after being accepted as an international student at UBC, Monzur left her husband and daughter and came to Vancouver to do a graduate degree, focusing on climate change and its effects on her homeland.
In June 2011, after she returned home, the couple argued. It escalated into a physical attack.
Over the next 25 minutes, Sumon gouged her eyes. He bit off part of her nose and left teeth marks on her lip and throat. He did it all in front of their daughter and left his wife lying in a pool of blood.
She was found by the family’s maids and taken to hospital. She spent months in hospital in Dhaka and later in Vancouver as surgeons tried unsuccessfully to save her eyesight, while others worked to reconstruct her face.
She says her quest for higher education was “an ego problem” for her controlling husband. Sumon was charged with the catastrophic attack, but was never tried. He died in jail in December 2011; reports of the cause of his death varied.
“I’d heard about village housewives being burned alive because of dowry. But that was a distant problem,” Monzur says. “I’d heard about domestic violence. But until it happens to you, no one believes it.”
Monzur has heard all the criticism of Islam as a violent faith; she knows only too well how misunderstood her religion is, including by those who profess to follow it.
It’s simply wrong, she says — a result of some Muslims deliberately misinterpreting sections of the Qur’an to meet their own interests and maintain through fear their control of others.
It’s her faith that sustained her through the long hospital stay, which she describes as the darkest period of her life. She is a devout Muslim and on the day we met, it was the first day of Ramadan daytime fasting and Monzur refused even a glass of water.
“I didn’t have anything else that could keep me moving or surviving. The only way I survived in the hospital back home was because I knew that the Almighty was with me, is always with me. That played the most important part in my recovery. I only find peace when I’m praying.”
Although she’s able to find peace and is working on happiness, Monzur says she will never be able to forgive her husband for what he did.
“Because I am not able to see my daughter, not able to draw with her, or make pictures for her or see her grow.... For that, I don’t think I will be able to forgive such an act.
“It doesn’t make any sense. How can a person become so vicious that they can harm other people like that? He was the father of my child. I don’t know how people can do something to the mother of his child.”
So what does she tell her daughter, who is now seven?
“I tell her that something bad happened, but mama is still with you and I assure her of my love and she sees that I’m doing everything for her like the way I used to do it. It’s just a fact that I can’t see her. But she found a way to interact with me. She’s the best describer in the house.... She doesn’t ask anything about her father. She understands that he did something bad and that fathers don’t do such things.”
Aside from the torture of not being able to see her daughter, Monzur says the hardest part of suddenly being blind is the loss of independence. She manages fine indoors, but she remains frightened of going outside alone.
And then there are the challenges of studying and learning without being able to read. She’s learning braille, but isn’t yet reading fluently. She’s learning from books on tape, but has admitted to her professors that hearing textbooks often puts her to sleep.
But she’s determined to complete a law degree. She’s interested in environmental law because of her concerns about low- lying Bangladesh, which is predicted to be heavily flooded in the coming years as global warming leads to a rise in sea levels.
Monzur also wants to help the victims of domestic violence.
“I was among the most highly educated women in our country. Still, the experience that I had of the legal system and the social challenges that I faced [ after the attack] made me understand the need for someone who can understand the pain of others and work on their behalf.” But all of that is for the future. It’s a future that Lisa Sundstrom, Monzur’s graduate program supervisor, believes holds incredible promise.
“She’s amazing,” says Sundstrom, an associate professor in UBC’s political science department. She describes Monzur’s completion of her master’s degree only two years after the attack as “an exceptional achievement” given the time needed for her physical and emotional recovery and the changes she had to make to adapt to learning in a new way.
For now, Monzur’s focus is on keeping her daughter safe and starting a new field of study.
She remains on leave from her job at the University of Dhaka and now, along with her daughter and parents, is a permanent resident of Canada.
When asked where home is, Monzur doesn’t hesitate.
“Canada.... When I came here as an international student, I didn’t know anyone and didn’t have any connections. But UBC stood by me and people from all over Canada stood by me and supported me during the most difficult period of my life.”