Secret Love
Amy and Christoffer met at secondary school and started going out. But Amy’s family wouldn’t agree to let her have a relationship. In the end, she had to choose: Accept her family’s decision or fight for the right to live her life the way she wanted.
You’ve always said I could love whoever I wanted”, Amy shouted. But her mum shouted her down: “But not him! He’ll break it off. Boys that age don’t want to have a serious relationship. They only want one thing. You have to end it.”
“I don’t want to, I like him.” Yelling and fighting. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this kind of row.
Half a year ago, Amy had told her mum that she had a boyfriend. After that, there was fighting almost every day. But this time it was more serious. Amy’s mum had gone through her daughter’s bedroom and found her birth control pills. And it became clear that Amy was no longer a virgin. The anger grew by the second and tears ran down both of their cheeks. Finally, things just gave way.
“My mum said, ‘Either stay here and live the way we want you to or pack your bags and be out of here tomorrow’”, says Amy.
She stayed in her room and cried. The questions mounted up: Was Mum serious? What would happen now? Amy made the decision of her life that day. She thought, “This time I’m going to do something for me and not for them.”
That same night, when everyone was asleep, she packed her bags. And the next day, when no one was home, she left her childhood home for good and moved in with her boyfriend, Christoffer.
“What she said made me realise that I either stay here and live like they want or I do what I want. There is no in-between,” says Amy.
Her dark, confident eyes look calmly at me. Now and again her gaze is caught by the candlelight from the table. You can tell it’s a sensitive subject.
It’s been two years since she left home, and Amy is now 18 years old. Her relationship with Christoffer has turned out to be lasting and strong. They have been together for two and a half years. Longer than anyone had believed in the beginning.
THOUGHT OF BREAKING IT OFF
Christoffer tells that in the beginning he often thought of breaking it off.
“Basically every day; it was doomed to failure. There were times when I bought 50 roses so I could break it off, but I couldn’t,” he says and laughs softly.
It wasn’t until Amy left home that he began to believe in their relationship. Amy and Christoffer grew up in completely different worlds. Both have parents who immigrated to Sweden. But he is from a non-religious, liberal and well-educated family. She, from a traditional, strict Muslim family.
Amy and Christoffer met during the second year of secondary school, where they both took the “image and form” elective course. They got to know each other and fell in love. Christoffer tells that his friends warned him of getting involved with an immigrant girl.
“There’ll be problems with the family, and it can get dangerous.” So the talk went.
But he couldn’t help seeing Amy. Because he liked her so much.
FIGHTING, SCREAMING AND THREATS
It turned out that there was something to the talk.
“If you go to bed with her I’ll kill you,” Amy’s brother threatened the first time they met. At first, Christoffer thought the brother was joking.
“I thought he meant I should be careful with Amy,” he says.
But, another time, he was properly threatened. Christoffer became tired of Amy’s family trying to control her life. And when they tried to force him to marry her, he’d had enough. He called up her mum and shouted, “You can never run my life. Understand? I won’t marry her.”
Amy’s brother was sitting next to his mum and listened as Christoffer told her off. It made him furious. That was when the second threat came.
“I’ll make you wish you never lived”, the brother screamed into the phone.
Christoffer realised the seriousness of the situation and went to the police and reported it. He soon understood that his report only made things worse, so he took it back. Was there any truth to all the threats?
MOVED TO A SECRET ADDRESS
To feel secure, Christoffer left home and moved to a small flat he secretly rented. There was no registered address or phone number where he could be reached. Apart from his parents, no one close to him or Amy knew where they lived. No one knows to this day. When Christoffer or Amy took the bus or train, they sat at the back, so they could see what was happening. If they saw anyone with the same background as Amy, they got off the train, since there was a risk that they may be relatives of hers.
“I was mostly afraid for Amy; I kept thinking about that young girl, Fadime, who was murdered by her relatives because she wouldn’t obey the family,” says Christoffer.
During the interview, Amy talks a lot about how her family acted. She says she was naïve when it came to her contact with them.
“I thought they loved me and that they couldn’t live without me.”
Amy hoped all along that her family would accept her decision. But in the beginning they did everything they could to get her back home again. First they tried going the legal route, since Amy was underage.
When that didn’t work, they changed tactics. Among other things, they tried to get Amy sacked from her job. That would force her to go back home when the money ran out. But that didn’t work either.
The family’s contacts with the daughter quickly got worse. Both Amy’s brother and father refused to talk to her the first two years. The mother stayed in touch and called regularly the first few months. The conversations always upset Amy, and for half a year she cried every evening. Finally, Amy couldn’t stand the crying any more. She asked her mum to stop contacting her.
“After that day, I lived as if I had no one,” says Amy. “No parents and no brother.” She tells that her family and many others believe she only left home because of Christoffer. But that’s not true. Amy didn’t want to live like her family. She wanted to decide over her own life.
“When you’ve been free for the first time, you don’t want to go back. You can’t.
Amy tried to explain that to her mum several times. She has said she can’t stand to live like them, that she isn’t a devoted Muslim. But then her mum only answered, “What? Do you eat pork?” says Amy and laughs. The family could never quite understand why she left them. Finally, contact was broken off entirely. Amy began to live her own life.
SEES THE FAMILY AGAIN
It isn‘t until just recently that things have begun to change. The mother called again three months ago. And since then, Amy has been to dinner several times at her family’s place. Now she visits them about once a week. Their relationship has improved. But they choose not to speak of Christoffer or the fact that Amy doesn’t live with them.
Perhaps it’s too early yet to talk about all the things that have been difficult. When Amy is with them at home, she feels welcome, but sometimes she’ll get a dig from her brother.
He can say things that mean that she isn’t like the others in her family.
“My brother has said several times, ‘She’s “Swedish” now’, thinking he was hurting my feelings,” says Amy. “But I really don’t mind that. I’m happy to be back in contact with them. But I’m not dependent on anyone. I’m my own person now.”