No, I haven’t bought anything, I haven’t been kissing a stranger, (chance would be a fine thing) and I haven’t been horrible to your mother.
What I have to tell you is nothing to do with my
shortcomings. It is more, I’m afraid, to
do with yours.
I met a very interesting man, about a month ago now.
He is from Iraq, is married to a Tralee woman and living
happily in Kerry. He is a hero, in many
ways, more details of which will follow.
But what should worry you more, my darling, is that he is Ireland’s
reigning Husband of the Year.
Now, to be fair, he won this title in 1995. The competition hasn’t been run since. This is possibly because they know that they
won’t find someone worthy of taking his title from him.
Why, I hear you ask, if he’s that great, have I held my whisht
about him for a month? Not one of my
strong points, in usual circumstances.
I’ll tell you why.
Because, my darling, I am a fair and just person. I did not think it would be fair to arrive
home from my few days away, find the house in its inevitable uproar, and start
comparing you to him. So I thought I’d
keep him in mind for a month, and only start comparing when it was fair to do
so.
I did tell you about this man when I arrived home, you
probably don’t remember. You really
didn’t look like you were listening.
I admit I didn’t place a huge amount of emphasis on his
spousal achievements, but what little emphasis
I did put on it, you chose to ignore.
This new friend of mine met his Irish wife when she was nursing
his elderly mother during the war in Iraq in the early nineties. He was a member of Saddam Hussein’s army, and
wasn’t allowed to consort with foreigners in any way.
Cupid, however, had shot his little arrow, and the pair
found themselves falling in love. But
they had to do so in secret. This is, I think, a romantic notion in theory, but not in real life.
There was one horrible occasion when his lady love was under
serious threat from the Iraqi army. She
had been found in his jeep, where she had no business, the army felt,
being. A grim situation.
This man actually placed himself between her
and their enemies, convinced them that she, with her medical training, had been
helping the victim of an accident and that he was just taking her home. He told me outright that had they tried to
take her, they would have had to take him too.
Not quite like that time someone was giving me cheek. I looked to you, expecting you to strip to
the waist and suggest the Queensbury rules for the hand to hand combat that
would surely follow. But you advised me to carry on with my own argument, that my tormentors were probably more afraid of me than they were of you. Not a compliment, by anyone’s standards.
Although the couple did their best to keep their private
lives private, there’s always some unromantic sod to throw a spanner in the
works, and eventually they were reported.
She had to leave Iraq, having been kept in a “hostage area”
– a nice name for a prison, which didn’t upset the international press as much
as throwing her in jail would have, for some time.
He, being Iraqi, and to add insult to injury, one of
Saddam’s own soldiers, was not treated with any mercy and was flung into
prison.
Although she had to leave Iraq, she literally went next door
to Jordan, to wait for her love.
Eventually he was able to join her, and they came back to
Ireland, where she works in a hospital, and he runs a rather lovely café. Where he actually cooks.
They have two children, who seem to be both lovely and over
achieving, their son has been Young Entrepreneur of the Year on more than one
occasion, their daughter is carving a career for herself in the theatre, which
is pretty impressive.
Now.
I do not expect you to transmogrify yourself into a war hero. No, I’m not an unreasonable woman.
But this morning, when I told you that there was no sugar,
and you did all the sighing and moaning and acting as if the shop was ten miles
away, and you’d have to walk, I thought of my Iraqi friend.
We are the lucky owners of two cars, neither of which should
be used to go to the shop, which is less than a quarter of a mile away.I have met a man who went to jail for love. Centra shouldn’t be beyond you.
When I was asking this man how he got involved in the
Husband of the Year competition, almost twenty years ago, he told me that a
nurse colleague of his wife’s had originally nominated him.
His wife had arrived home from a night shift with her
uniform and spare in a bag. Both had
been destroyed during her shift, which I think implies a difficult night for a
nurse.
When she got home, she was naturally exhausted and went to
bed for a few hours. She slept longer
than she meant to, and woke up panicking because she didn’t have a uniform to
wear that night. Her husband had washed,
dried and ironed both uniforms and they were hanging in the wardrobe waiting
for her. Also, her dinner was ready.
While I was being told this story, you were in our house
suffering from washing machine amnesia, and hadn’t even gotten as far as
bringing the laundry basket down the stairs.
And need I remind you of your mini-fit last Monday evening
when I refused to iron you a work shirt?
Your own shirt?
When his wife arrives into the café to visit her husband on
her way home from her hospital work, she is provided with a comfortable seat
and refreshments. Then, if she decides
that maybe she has a few ideas on how the place could be run more efficiently,
or where things should be kept, he smiles and indulges her and puts everything
back where he wants it when she’s gone.
He does not raise his voice and insist that the watering can
should be kept in the kitchen, rather than the glasshouse because “it would be
handy for me.”
And I very much doubt that he keeps putting her lovely fruit
bowl in the dog food bin to keep the bag closed and keep the dog food fresh.
He just doesn’t strike me as that kind of husband.
I know for a fact that this couple are always going out for
lovely dinners. Where, I assume, she is
allowed to have dessert if she chooses, and allowed to eat her own. I can’t even put a Cadbury’s Tiffin in our
fridge without it disappearing within minutes.
I’m told that there’s someone for everyone. And I suppose we’ll have to accept that you’re
the one for me, and I’m the one for you.
We are lucky. We haven’t
had to escape a war, or travel over three thousand miles to settle in a town
that must have been a bit of a culture shock after Baghdad.
But if you’re expecting any kind of “World’s Best Husband”
card for an occasion in the future, I’m afraid you’ll have to feck off for
yourself.
