Letters To Louis: ‘Until death do us part’
Entry no:1
Louis was only three and half years old when he was snatched from the playground near our temporary home in Dubai. The person who snatched him wasn’t a stranger but he might as well have been.
On 29 October 2015, in an act of pure cruelty and cunning that barely took a few minutes, my little Louis was ‘gone’.
Louis and I had been in hiding for nearly a year and half. I had fled an abusive and violent marriage, hunted by my husband and the Dubai police.
I was not present when Louis was taken. This cowardly act was planned and calculated to inflict maximum suffering, the final chapter in my husband’s pursuit to have me punished for daring to leave him and taking our child.
So many times, he had warned me that if I ever left him, he would use Sharia law to punish me and stop me from returning back home to England.
And so, I was robbed of seeing our child one last time. I remember what Louis wore that day, I remember him smiling when he left for playtime. I remember packing his bag of snacks and getting a big hug as he waved goodbye. Beyond that, all I remember is that gut wrenching pain of loss I felt in the immediate aftermath upon hearing that he had been snatched. It was as if the life force that kept me going all those months had died on that day. I realised that the flame we know to be ‘life’ can be extinguished by the simple callous act of taking. No amount of words can describe the pain and anguish of losing one’s child in the most cruelest way possible.
I never saw Louis again.
I later found out, that in my absence, the Sharia court in Dubai had awarded sole custody to my husband, a practicing Catholic. He had deliberately chosen Sharia law to divorce me and gain custody of our son.
We had married in England. We did not have an Islamic marriage, my husband was a French national and I was a British citizen. Although, I was born a Muslim, I wouldn’t consider myself practicing.
The Islamic courts duly obliged my husband’s request to have an Islamic judgment. In what can only be described as a Talibanesque judgment, they found me guilty.
Guilty: Disobeying my husband. Domestic violence is not a crime in the UAE, in fact, husbands are allowed to chastise their wives so long as no marks are left on her body.
Guilty: Child neglect. Louis had a mild eczema and according to the Dubai court this was my fault. I was guilty of being a bad mother, because I hadn’t been able to breastfeed Louis when he was born. The judgment refers to Louis’ eczema as proof of my inability to care for him.
Guilty: Un-Islamic behaviour because I had friends who were gay and my husband didn’t want our child to be surrounded by ‘gay’ people. In court my Catholic husband used text messages to show that I was a bad Muslim because I celebrated Christmas and sent him Merry Christmas messages.
This would all seem so incredulous, if it wasn’t for the fact that it is all there in black and white, in the Sharia divorce judgment 71/2011, an indelible tattoo in my mind.
I had lost all my rights as a mother and wasn’t even allowed to see Louis without my husband’s permission.
Having robbed me of my son, I faced further prosecution by the Dubai authorities and was charged with further crimes.
In February 2014 I stood trial for kidnapping. My husband had accused me of kidnapping our son and going into hiding. Thus far, he had used the Dubai police and courts as if they were his own personal army and he would stop at nothing to have me imprisoned as he had done on previous occasions.
I would have been left to rot in a UAE jail had it not been for my family’s campaign to have me freed.
As if by a strange quirk of fate or luck (or both) my passport, which had been kept by the UAE for nearly three years had been released giving me free movement. I wasn’t to know it at the time, but the 48 hours following the release of my passport were the most critical in determining whether I lived or died in the UAE.
And so it was, on a frosty and windy day on 2 April 2014, I returned back home to London. The bittersweet taste of freedom marred by the painful knowledge that I could never return to the UAE and may never see Louis again.
My pain and suffering did not end on that scorching day in October 2013 and much has happened since that time.
I set up a campaign BringLouisHome to help me raise awareness of my case and be reunited with Louis. you tube afsana lachaux
Through this campaign, I hope, that one day, Louis will see that I have never given up fighting for him. He will see the many letters, the protest, the messages of love and support from his family, friends and well-wishers. I hope he will understand that I never abandoned him. I know pretty much nothing is guaranteed in life but I do know that no laws and physical distance can ever sever the bond between mother and child.
This journal is a living document of the past, the present and hope for the future.
Much has been written on my story but only I can own my experiences. I spent four long years in a foreign country being abused, violated and hunted. My liberty and freedom were taken away and I lost the most precious gift a mother can have.
The memories of those four years continue to haunt me. Fortunately, I still have photos and videos of Louis, which are not getting much of an airing at present because the memories of our time together are still raw and painful.
When I returned back to this country, I requested my file from the Foreign Office documenting the four years of their intransigence to my plight. I started gathering all the papers relating to my case, the UAE court transcripts, the police records and all my contemporaneous notes relating to that time. This edifice of information on which my story is built tell the story in a much more powerful way than I could ever imagine. Nothing is straight forward or simple. Private matters spill into the public sphere and one’s life is never normal after that.
Sadly my ordeal didn’t end in Dubai. The abuse continues.
It’s just taken on a new form and as with all traditional wars, my husband has launched lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions deployed hardware in the form of an arsenal of lawyers, taken advantage of our generous legal system, which unlike the UAE, affords everyone free speech and a fair trial. And all of this is made possible from the comfort of his poolside sharia paradise in the UAE.
With no ending in sight, it’s hard to tell such a complex story with so many facets and with events continuing to unfold. The past very much lives in the present and these entries therefore will be distinct, standalone narratives relating to a particular time, event or, in some cases, spontaneous outbursts of literary ADHT.
At times, the fire in me, like the pilot light on an old gas burner, goes out only to be reignited. Back in the day when I worked as a senior civil servant I use to stress at the thought of giving ministerial presentations and dreaded those inquisitions. These days I struggle with the most basic of acts, such as, getting out of bed everyday.
Going forward, I do know that what I’m doing is important. As things stand, I cannot see Louis until he is 18 years of age. Louis is now almost 6 years old. We have been separated now for nearly two and half years and it seems like I have been fighting for an eternity.
My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me. Steve Maraboli
