When
Every Home Became a Chamber of Confinement
When
the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown, streets fell silent,
offices shut their doors, and families retreated within the sanctity of the
home, in the name of safety. But for countless women, “home” did not mean
sanctuary—it became a prison, a torture chamber, or a concentration chamber. A
site of terror. A sealed chamber of confinement, echoing with the violence of
men who now had unrestricted access to their victims.
During
those months, I was inundated with calls and messages from women—some
desperate, others resigned. Each voice carried a different kind of fear, but
all shared a common thread: they were trapped with their abusers, and the
outside world had disappeared. Their options were few, and their pleas felt
like cries into an abyss. Some of the episodes of violence were so painful that
I felt helpless.
Courts
were closed. Any support became inaccessible. No one around to help. One cannot
go out to seek help from family, friends, or neighbors. Even otherwise, stigma
has prevented many women from speaking up or calling for help in such matters.
As a
lawyer and a social worker, I have long engaged with violence in its many
forms, but something about this moment felt distinctly heavier, more
suffocating. The volume, the intensity, and the utter helplessness struck with
an unprecedented force. I could not understand what had happened and how I should respond to the gravity of the situation.
I
had no framework for the sheer collapse of the protective systems that women so
precariously rely on. No tools seemed adequate. No intervention felt swift or
strong enough. The anxiety and futility of being helpless overtook me. Every woman
I talked to enhanced my anger against the system and society. The horror of
atrocities beyond the human realm shook my humanity.
Some
stories were so brutal that they left me shaking, sleepless. The weight of
those disclosures settled into my chest, pressing heavily with each retelling.
The feeling of impotence—of knowing and yet being unable to act with
immediacy—was psychologically paralyzing. I found myself haunted not only by
their pain, but by my own. Their stories resurrected old ghosts: my own
experiences as a victim and survivor of violence. I have known what it feels
like to be unheard, unseen, and dismissed. I recognized the silence on the other
end of the phone when words failed. The pauses between breaths, when fear
clutches the throat. The tears of pity, the melancholy of the universe, engulfed
me again and again, reminding me of the horrors of my own past as a victim and a
survivor of violence.
The
sense of experience of drowning in the pain and sufferings and sheer immediacy
of the terrifying moment nullifies the existence of the trapped body and spirit. I
was forced to confront a terrifying realization of how homes, the so-called
safe spaces, for many, become chambers of unspeakable suffering. The term
"lockdown" began to feel less like a health mandate and more like a
state-sanctioned trap.
In
the midst of it all, I began to question the very structure of our society.
What kind of world have we built where a crisis, meant to preserve life, so
casually sacrifices the lives of the most vulnerable behind closed doors? The
metaphor that kept surfacing in my mind was unsettling but accurate: had every
home become a kind of concentration chamber? A place where bodies were
controlled, confined, and broken—psychologically and physically—without witness
or escape?
The
mind, desperate for solace, searched for antidotes—distractions, reassurances,
rationalizations. But nothing offered clarity. In fact, the very act of trying
to process the violence—while being surrounded by it, unable to stop it—only
intensified my inner disquiet. My thoughts raced. And each new story brought
another layer of anguish. It was not simply a professional crisis—it was a
moral and existential one.
I
tried to hold space for their voices, knowing that many of them were struggling
even to find language to describe their pain. The trauma was too deep, too
fresh. And not all could afford the emotional cost of telling the whole story.
Some had no time, no privacy, no faith that it would matter. I listened—fully,
quietly—but I often felt inadequate. I stood bare before their vulnerability,
my own scars no shield against the enormity of theirs.
These
interactions were more than cases or complaints. They were testaments to the
terrible things human beings can do to one another—and how systemic neglect
allows that terror to thrive. We often imagine violence as isolated, as
personal pathology, but it is also deeply structural. It flourishes where
institutions are indifferent, where silence is rewarded, and where patriarchy
is allowed to dominate unchecked.
The
memories of those months linger like smoke in the lungs. I fear they will never
fully leave me—or the women who lived them. They have become a dark residue in
our collective memory, a permanent tear in the fabric of time. A hole in the
moral ozone layer of our shared history. Through that rupture, what seeps in is
not only the memory of a horrific past, but a warning: when society prioritizes
safety in abstraction without considering whose safety is truly being
protected, we risk repeating these cruelties over and over again.
We
cannot afford to forget what the lockdown revealed: that for too many, the
greatest danger was not outside, but within the walls of their own homes. And
if we continue to turn away, to relegate domestic violence to the private
sphere, we become complicit in that suffering. We owe it to the witnesses, the
survivors, and the silenced to listen, to act, and to refuse to accept this as
normal.
Labels: COVID-19, horrors, lockdown, unsafe homes, violence, vulnerability
