Maheen Humayun's Blog, page 3

Thoughts I have while going to bed

10:00 pm

Okay, I should probably do something aside from Netflix

10:10 pm

Re-watching gossip girl for the umpteenth time, not even really watching because I already know the show by heart

10: 45 pm

Maybe I should start a new show?

11:00 pm

Hmm but Chuck and Blair are about to get back together. Must not miss this

1:00 am

Okay if I sleep now, how many hours will I get?

1:05 am

Do I really want to go to my workout tomorrow morning? Maybe I’ll skip again. I mean my body, my choice

1:10 am

I did eat a shit ton of fries today though. And those brownies. Maybe I should work it off. I’m low-key hungry though. Why is my fridge always empty aghhhh

1:15 am

Chuck and Blair are definitely not getting back together in this episode. Why don’t I write a little? Random words. Random thoughts. Why did I ever want to be a writer? It’s boring as hell

1:25 am

Let me scroll through Thought Catalog. Maybe I’ll find some inspiration

1:30 am

Scrolling. Scrolling. Scrolling.

I need some tunes to scroll to. Spotify, I’m so sick of this playlist.

Types ‘Sad indie songs to write to’

1:40 am

I give up. There’s no good music out there anymore. And my writing isn’t going anywhere. Maybe I’ll watch another episode of gossip girl

13 Reasons Why: If someone told you they were in pain, what would you do?

She is laying in a tub, fully clothed, the water filled to the brim. Her heart is beating; her hands are shaking as she scrapes the blade onto her wrists. There is blood everywhere. There’s blood on her wrists as she shakes over and over again. There’s blood in the water as it tips over the edge of the tub onto the once pristine white floor. I feel my own blood flowing as I watch, glued to my screen. I feel the lub dub of my heart, relentlessly beating. And then I feel emptiness. I feel nothing at all.

Heads up: Spoilers are involved.

No one should have to feel so alone. But society is funny that way isn’t it? The way you can be surrounded by people yet feel so alone at the same time? Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) says at one point on the series,

“You can’t love someone back to life”.

And that is so real and so true. One of the most important things in life is knowing that people are listening. We speak to be heard and understood but Hannah wasn’t. She was a victim to the vicious cycle of social media that we so easily pretend does not exist.

13 reasons why is Netflix’s new venture. I started watching it last Sunday. All I knew was that it was about a boy (Clay Jensen aka Dylan Minnette) trying to uncover his friends suicide. I did not know of the emotional weight it would carry. I did not know how telling it would be.

It’s Monday night, I’m deep in the show. My mind cannot think of anything but Hannah’s pain. I can’t shake the feeling that we are living in a society of watchers. And followers. And stalkers. And pain. Most of all, so much pain. Our lives are laced with who does what and who does it better. We are the epitome of the watching generation. Sometimes to the extent that we do not realise how much a simple picture can change a life.

Many people will say that the rape scenes or the scenes involving sexual abuse and suicide were too gruesome or violent. But rape is violent, suicide is violent and cinema shouldn’t need to brush over it to make it into something it’s not. It’s supposed to make you feel uncomfortable; people ARE uncomfortable when it comes to talking about these issues in the first place and the first step is moving out of our comfort zone. We aren’t meant to be cushioned throughout our lives, we are meant to feel even if it is raw and painful. If you claim that these scenes were out there, do you support hiding rape? Do you support ignoring assault just because it causes you discomfort?

The show talks about how important it is to acknowledge someone’s pain, to hear them out,and to tell them that they are not alone. Every moment leading up to Hannah’s suicide is a moment too late. A word too late, an air of support just way too late.

What’s depressing as hell about the ending is the fact that Alex Standall (Miles Heizer) shoots himself. That’s the reality though isn’t it? No one noticed his pain either, there were all the signs as the show culminated to his demise, and yet everyone ignored them. Two suicides, two rapes, sexual abuse, slut-shaming, body-shaming – the list goes on. Every moment is more heart-breaking than the next.

We are the generation of the selfish. We care too much about what others think but not how they feel. We ignore. We placate. We brush over pain because it’s easier, because pain isn’t pretty. Suicide isn’t pretty and neither is death but that does not mean we shouldn’t talk about.

To all the people watching this show, understand that this does not only happen in high schools abroad. Us Pakistanis are not removed. Just because we live in a society that calls therapy taboo and does not like to speak about suicide does not mean that it does not happen.

If someone told you they were in pain, what would you do? Would you acknowledge their pain? Would you tell them that it isn’t tangible just because you can’t see it or touch it? Or would you ignore it? Most people would probably lean towards the latter.

Did you go to a high school like this? Did you feel this kind of pain? Did you see someone going through something like this? I think almost every high school has these problems. Slut-shaming any girl that dares to be bold, the rumour mill that destroys the sensitive, the ‘cool’ kids and the ‘nerds’ – all these issues occur almost every day in high schools. Even if it isn’t written in black and white, it exists.

Why are we so apathetic? Have we no courage to stand up against it? Instead, the film industry thrives on normalising these customs. They live for the high school drama and the pained teens. They breed upon the weak and the innocent but to what extent? The loss of a life? The demoralisation that gravely affects a person’s self-esteem and health?

The point is, this show reveals that normalising teen hardships is not okay. It has its backlash and the backlash is massive. Hannah’s tapes are so eerie and powerful they express her pain to the extent that the viewers can sense it in every episode. The dark reality that is her life isn’t unique to her alone. There are so many high school girls facing the same problems and yet Pakistani society ignores them. They ignore sexuality and drive it to the side-lines until they can live with themselves and their perfect picture of what’s right.

Mental health issues are not solely a mind game. They take over the physical body and envelope one into believing that their life is not valuable. So let’s start the conversation, let’s give it room to breathe and help all those in pain.

 

To my women

Today, let’s tell all the little girls out there to wish for something more, something bigger. Instead of reading them fairytales validating the notion of the damsel in distress – cause let’s be honest Arthurian legends can only bid so far – read them stories about our warriors. About the women that fought for our rights, and paved the way for our bright futures. 

Let’s remind our little girls that it’s not about being princesses, they should foster to be literary legends, doctors, lawyers, painters, dreamers. Believers in themselves as opposed to believers in happily ever afters.Remember that a woman invented the novel in the 11th century – where would we be without the novel? Free-falling that’s where.

Let’s remember that Virginia Woolf was the mother of modernism – her A Room of One’s Own goes so far in teaching young women that being a writer is boundaryless and that women need spaces. She was talking about this concept before it was even created. Let’s never forget her words,

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

Today isn’t about one upping another gender, it’s about finding balance and constancy. It’s about realising that gender should not be a deciding factor in determining someone’s capabilities. 

So today – here’s to all the strong women out there who aren’t afraid to speak their minds. 

Bukowski or Beyond

The rain fell softly in the distance.

Every drop created a melody that enchanted her mind into oblivion.

Rainy days were the best days, she thought. The drops danced off of the cobblestones as she sat at Baylon, reading Factotum by Charles Bukowski.

She looked at the cobblestones. Then back at the book. There was a lifespan of differences between the world outside, and the world of Bukowski.

The girl thought about her future—the vast openness of it both empowered and terrified her. She thought about Petrarch and how life would be so simple if defined in iambic pentameters, she wondered about Machiavelli and how life would be so entertaining if underlined by satire.

She took one last sip of her cappuccino, and got up. Deciding that today, Bukowski could take a backseat to Rome.

She walked down Via di S. Francesco a Ripa.

Sometimes she forgot how beautiful the city was.

Today was not one of those days.

The rain was stopping. The sun was rising off in the distance. The aura of fresh cones and coffee wafted around her.

That was the thing about Rome—movement wasn’t valued over a single moment. The city echoed a past that the people could not. The girl lived for the stories the city could tell her, as well as those that were left unspoken.

Rome wasn’t just one story. One past. One history. It was strewn together the way our blood pumped through our veins. Each cobblestone a diastole and systole meshing into the heart of Rome.

She thought about all the authors and artists that had once lived here. She realised that none of them could be her future because all that had been said and done, painted and written and now she stood in front of the open street; an empty canvas waiting to come to life with the stroke of her future.

Il Palazzetto and Me

I sat atop Il Palazzetto. Why I had never been here before? Maybe laziness did really confound me. Sometimes it was easy to wander in Rome. When you weren’t tied to a person or a place. There have been so many days where I sit almost trapped in Trastevere dreaming of open streets unmarred by cobblestones, and of buildings higher than two stories tall.

I sat atop Il Palazzetto. It was a strange feeling—beautiful. What did that word really even mean? It could mean so many things at once. Free? Maybe. Yes. Kind of. It was a kind of freedom that I didn’t feel in Trastevere. But then freedom wasn’t what I was looking for.

There was something about this city that made me want more than just that. I wanted inspiration. I wanted to sit in a Piazza and listen to the old man with glasses playing that song on his guitar that I now knew by heart. I wanted to write about it. But I couldn’t capture sensation on paper. The same way a picture doesn’t do justice to a feeling, sometimes words don’t either. I looked out and in the distance I could almost make out the top of St. Peters.

I looked down and saw the vast Piazza di Spagna. Across, I saw Via Condotti and the people that didn’t really look like people at all. There were so many tourists and I wondered where the Romans where. Were they hiding from the tourists? Was I? I guess not since I was sitting in the most touristy of places. I hope people didn’t think I was one. That was always one of my greatest fears—being deemed a tourist.

The bar was pretty, in a quaint Romanesque sort of way. The flowers that stayed hidden all throughout the winter had finally begun to sprung and the railing next to me was filled with a vibgyor of coloured flowers. There were too many people around me, but my table felt small. The city was stretched out before me, but I felt alone. It was a strange feeling, feeling so big yet so small at the same time.

The table I sat at gave me a perfect view of the cafe one story below, and straight ahead, of the people down in Piazza di Spagna. The people in the cafe were speaking in English and instantly I looked towards them. It was a group of international people. One of them was Indian and I kept my eye on him. Wondering if he felt the same way I did. If he missed Desi music, and weddings, and samosas as much as me.

It was overwhelming, if anything. To be sitting so high up, surrounded by nothing but my thoughts. I ordered a glass of wine. The waiter looked at me and said “solo?” I nodded, trying to show him I was confident in my own company. My phone had no service. My bag had no books. I was alone. I hadn’t been alone in a while.

I tried to decide what to do as the waiter placed my wine glass in front of me, I call it a glass but it was more like five drops of Chianti in a jug. I sipped on it, feeling peaceful but extremely uneasy at the same time. I looked around me, people watching. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. The couple on my left sat taking selfie after selfie, tourists, I rolled my eyes at the air.

There was a man at the far end of the cafe, and I thought yes, someone else is here alone. But soon after he was joined by a woman and they sat looking elegant and classy sipping on some red wine. The woman was dressed in a white chiffon suit, and I secretly hoped her wine would spill on it. I wondered what I looked like to them. Definitely not elegant. Definitely not classy. My hair was in a bun, my denim shirt was swaying around in the wind, and my shopping bags sat in a fort around me. Yeah—definitely not classy.

I decided people watching was not working out for me so I began writing notes on my phone. “I haven’t felt this relaxed in a long time,” I wrote. But then I didn’t know what else to write. Writing on my phone seemed silly. I scored through my bag for my notebook, why was today the one day I left my house without it. Finally, I found a pen and almost let out a little shriek. I grabbed a napkin that sat under my wine jug, since that was the only thing I could even think of writing on.

I slowly wrote my name, curling the M and the N like I used to in fifth grade when my teacher would tell me to write in cursive. But then the pen stopped working. Just my luck. The need to write was kicking in. Everyone was either laughing, or talking, or silently swaying to the music and I needed to write. I looked through my bag again. There was another pen, it wasn’t my favourite. I had grabbed it from the front office right before class the other day and it was not appealing to the eye. It wasn’t a writing kind of pen. But it was my only option. So I began.

The laughter coming from the cafe below would have been distracting on another day. But today didn’t feel like just another day. Why I didn’t do this more often? Why I didn’t do this everyday? I kept writing, trying to block everything else out. This was what I was here for. This moment, this feeling, this pen (well maybe not this one) and its contact with paper. I felt, after a long time, that there was something uplifting in being completely alone.

There was no phone to distract me from my thoughts. No book to guide my stream of consciousness. I could think of anything my mind let me. I was alone with my pen and my napkins. I didn’t need anything else. I realised that happiness was easy to find. In the small moments at least. Yes, it was fleeting and fickle. But it was also ephemeral when you found it. I wrote on napkin after napkin until the waiter came up to me asking if I was a writer. I smiled. Yes, maybe. In this moment, on this day, I am.

I sat atop Il Palazzetto. Alone. Happy. Writing.

Maybe this kind of happiness couldn’t be found just anywhere. It had to be the right place, at the right time. And today, it was. The music was low in the way my mother whispered stories into my ear as I lulled into sleep as a child. The sun was heavy in the way it scorched my skin on endless summer days at the beach back home. “I haven’t felt this relaxed in a long time,” I wrote again. I called for the bill, picked up my napkins and headed down the stairs back into a reality I was all too familiar with.

I found her at Caffe Greco in 1824

 

August 2016

I sat at Caffe Greco, staring as the raindrops dissolved into puddles. It was a picturesque day—if people still used that word. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about this place.

I tried to think about how I got here, how or even why. There were so many things he hadn’t told me, so many things I longed to know. But he wouldn’t let me. If I was the bridge, then he was the barbed wire at the end of it. Forever trapping me into places I didn’t understand, around people I didn’t recognise. He never told me what was happening. I always had to figure it out myself. This time, I didn’t think I had it in me anymore. It was hard. Constantly changing and rearranging your life. Especially when you felt the need to be grounded into reality so badly. Especially when you knew you didn’t always have that option.

I sat at Caffe Greco. The carved wooden statue on my right reminded me of Thursday evenings when I’d come here with my friends and sip on cappuccino after cappucino. This was the only place that was familiar to me. That was I why I brought him here. He had gone to order himself a tea because he didn’t like coffee. I sat on my table, sipping on my cappuccino—trying to remember what it was like before I met him.

Everything else on Via Condotti had changed, and transpired into names I couldn’t even pronounce. I felt uncomfortable out there. In here was the only ease I got. I rearranged the table, moving the cutlery to one end and the candle on the other. He never understood why I always did this. I took out the small book of John Keats’ poems I had hidden in the back of my jeans, he would kill me if he found out I still had the book. I opened the cover, and placed the book in front of the candle. Perfect, I murmured to myself. I traced my fingers over the smooth texture of the words inscribed on the first page. The handwriting was hard to decipher because of how many times I had traced my fingers over these very words. But I didn’t need to read them to know what was written, I would never forget those words.

“I don’t understand why you like this place so much,” he barked.

“The service is terrible. The tea is cold. They charged me 20 euros for this,” he went on, tossing the teacup onto the table, and ruining the time I had spent rearranging it.

I quickly slipped the book onto my lap, and as usual, he didn’t notice. He was too busy glaring at the waiter to care about what I was doing.

“Let’s try to enjoy our drinks, okay?” I whispered.

Afraid of him causing a scene in the one place I felt relaxed. I leaned back in my chair and looked down at the book. It was my little secret, the only one he hadn’t had the chance to steal away from me. I remembered the day I got it. How I was sitting on this exact chair. Staring at the same wooden statue. I couldn’t believe how much time had passed. Everything was so different now.

January 1824

“Take it,” he said, as he nudged the book into my hand.

“I don’t have much time.”

“How will I see you again?” I barely made out, my throat was dry even though I had just finished the last sip of my capuccino.

Maybe this is what crying does to you. It makes your eyes red and throat dry, and most of all—it makes you resent yourself. The big mirror in front of me was already telling me I wasn’t happy. I didn’t need him leaving to tell me that even more.

“We’ll meet here,” he said.

It had been three years since John’s death. Three years since we had been pretending everything was the same.

“When?”

“You’ll know when to come.”

He planted a light kiss on my cheek, and with a silent Arrivederci he slowly walked out onto Via Condotti. I looked at the book in my hand, it was a leather bound pocket-sized book. I opened the first page. Above John Keats, there was a small inscription in his cursive script that I would recognise anywhere.

Never doubt that things won’t be as they once were.

That was it. No name, no date. I guess it didn’t need one. But then, at the bottom of the page in writing so small that I would have normally skimmed over, I read, GB. George Byron.

I didn’t wait for him to come back. I never came back, until today. I heard that George died later that year in April. I cried for seven days. But by then, I had already met him. He had already taken me.

I always wondered why George had given me John’s book when he knew it would make me nostalgic. They had never gotten along. I was always the one that forced them to come here. Even during John’s last days, we sat here, drinking cappuccinos while him and George fought over whose poetry was better. They always asked me to choose. I never did. John would stand up on the chair he was sitting in right now, and read his poetry out loud, almost as if he were at a mead hall. George would mock him. And I would listen. But then John died, and it wasn’t the same. We still came and sat on this table, George still read me his poetry, but it wasn’t fun anymore. It almost seemed forced. I think that’s part of the reason why he left—he would never have told me that though.

I sat at Caffe Greco. It was no longer 1824. There was no longer any poetic competition, no longer any friendly banter. It was just me and him now. Him and me.

“Emma?”

I shook my head, and smiled at him. I had no choice but to smile. Otherwise he’d know something was wrong. And he’d take me back there. That was the last place I wanted to be.

March 1824

I was sitting in Piazza di Spagna. I was close enough to Caffe Greco to see the people that walked in and out. George wasn’t one of them. I was reading the book he had given me. It was most of John’s poetry, and I still didn’t understand why George didn’t just give me his own poetry. Maybe they did really respect each other. Maybe this was George’s way of showing it to me. I started reading Ode to a Nightingale, I had always loved it when John read it aloud. I looked up to the window on my left, wondering if he was looking out of it when he wrote the poem. I could almost make out the damage that had been done to the apartment from down here. All that was really left were ruins. Ruins, and this book.

“Excuse me?” A male voice interrupted.

I looked down to see a tall, well built man around my age. His hair was the colour of mahogany, and his eyes were small. So small I couldn’t make it out his expression.

“Yes?” I answered.

“I’m looking for Viale Trastevere. Would you know where that is? I need to walk there,” he said.

What had I gotten myself into. I couldn’t describe the way under any circumstances and have him actually understand. Something on his face told me he wasn’t going to give up.

“I could show you the way, if you want,” I whispered hesitantly.

But as soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them. I didn’t know him. He could be dangerous.

Little did I know just how dangerous in that moment. I don’t even remember how it happened really. But on our way there, we got to talking and I was having fun. I hadn’t had that much fun since the days at Caffe Greco with George and John. I was still young then. It was a year later that we got married.

That was when it really began.

July 2015

I can’t breathe. It’s so dark. I can’t see and I can’t breathe. I try screaming. But he’s the only one that can hear me. He’s the one that brought me here. I didn’t understand how, or why, for a moment I thought maybe he had drugged me so I wouldn’t see where we were going. But this felt real. I was awake, and every single sense of mine had heightened. I looked around me, and could almost make out a door. I opened it, and saw a room. A room with a large table, and a lot of lights. Across the table was a huge window. Outside the window was something I had never seen before. This didn’t look like the view of the Roman Forum from Capitoline Hill. They were monuments of some sort, towering overhead, so high I couldn’t make out where they ended. I could see the tip of St. Peters, but the rest of it was hidden by these new buildings.

This was not my world.

I didn’t understand how we got here. He had been reading a Ray Bradbury short story about a future dystopia. I had been drinking a cappuccino. That was all I remembered.

I looked at him. He looked back, taking in my expression. I didn’t understand what was happening. My throat was too dry. All I knew was that he had taken George’s life and brought me here. Wherever here was. He knew we were friends. I found out through a letter from his brother. I can never look at him the same way again. He was the reason I hadn’t gone back to Caffe Greco. He was the reason so many things had changed.

August 2016

I had finally learned the way this worked, or at least, the way he did.

“Emma,” he said loudly.

“Yes?”

“Let’s go. It’s time.”

I stood up, forgetting that I still had the book in my lap. It fell open right in front of him. Page 45. Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

I looked at his face, as he read the verse. I watched as his expression changed from being mildly annoyed to surprised, and then completely shocked. He tried to snatch the book up. I didn’t understand what was happening. But I grabbed it before he could. At the bottom of the page, two lines were circled. George must have done it.. I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know why he had killed George. Nothing made sense anymore.

So I read the lines again.

Do I wake or sleep?

Do I wake or sleep?

I couldn’t sleep anymore. I had been sleeping for too long. The lines kept echoing in my head. I couldn’t see clearly. I couldn’t breathe. Everything around me was dark as I screamed. There was a door leading to some light, so I walked towards it. I opened the door and I was back at Caffe Greco. Except, he was gone. I went out on Via Condotti. It was almost as if I had never left. There were no longer any shops with names I couldn’t pronounce. No longer any buildings hindering my vision. There was a newspaper stand on my right, and I grabbed the first copy.

I looked at the date on the top.

August 1824.

 

But I ask you, what’s in a name?

Think identity, personality, experience.

It’s your first day of university in a new city, in a new country. You think about how everything around you is so foreign and new. The professor is reading off names on the roster in a calm and easy manner. As the list progresses, the professor begins to tug on his collar, sweat buds forming on his forehead, and you know – you just know it’s your name next and he doesn’t know how to pronounce it. That’s when you realise the only thing new and foreign around there, is you.

I understand that my name is foreign, and different, but that does not make it hard. I have the right for you to learn how to say my name, the same way I learnt how to say yours. Sometimes, people don’t try. They feign indifference and keep on saying your name as it comes to them by nature. But in so many places, names have a significance that you can’t just disregard. Oh, what is in a name? A name defines a history, a past, a tradition, culture, religion – and beyond. Your name is what your parents or grandparents chose for you – it is yours and yours to keep. It is you, as an individual, you as a person, and changing that, when it isn’t your choice, that means something.

Is it wrong that every time my name came on the roster, and my professor sweated a little, I felt ashamed? Is my name such a strain that it brings stress upon those that do not know of my culture and ancestry? I don’t know. It shouldn’t have to be.

Recently, a programme called “My name, my identity” was put into works to express the importance of pronouncing a name correctly. Let’s be honest, it’s not that hard to learn how to say a name when we live in this modern world where technology is a mere tap away and knowledge is irrevocably infinite?

So don’t ask me what’s in a name, don’t ask me what’s in my name. Because frankly, you should already know.

Fighting patriarchy with my pen

Part One: The yes girl

At 22, I moved home. Back into my parents house, back into the bubble that is Karachi, Pakistan. Living away from home, especially when you come from a country like mine, is liberating, groundbreaking, and eye-opening to say the least. My life in Karachi had always been controlled. I was controlled by my teachers in school, by my parents at home, by my religion in life. Everything I said and did was somehow watched and valued. As a writer, I never liked rules. I didn’t care for them. My writing was my constant solace. I rebelled through characters, letting the girls free their minds while I sat on the edge of my bed, listening again to what my parents told me to do.

I was always the yes girl. I nodded when my parents told me that I had to wear a shawl over my sleeve-less top to cover my arms in public – because of the apparent male gaze that followed every girl in Karachi. I silently agreed when my teacher told me that Biology was a man’s subject, and I was better suited to humanities. I was always agreeing. I was always saying yes. Until one day. I finally said no.

Part Two: The girl that grew up

It’s 9 a.m. Karachi is cool in a way that it never usually gets. My mother is banging on my door to get me to wake up for my workout. I can’t miss class. I have to be thin. I must be thin. My mother says I have to be thin for wedding season. What will all the aunties say if I’m not? How will I ever get married if I’m not? This is the constant battle in my life. I am constantly told to prepare myself for marriage.

The module, The Social Construction of Gender states, “Every society classifies people as “girl and boy children,” “girls and boys ready to be married,” and “fully constructs similarities among them and differences between them, and assigns them to different roles and responsibilities” 278)

Eat better, my mother says. Back straight, my father says. Head up high, my mother says. Get a manicure, my father says. My life is a series of do-betters and get betters. I am the opposite of the epitome of what every Pakistani mother wants her daughter to be. Yes, I can cook. I can clean. When I was six-years-old, I learnt how to iron, not because I wanted to, but because that’s what girls do. But it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want someone to judge me on my ability to make roti, or nod my head when someone older spoke to me. Ali Tazeen explains how gender is constructed in such a way that men and women have roles that are predetermined, like it or not.

In Pakistan, gender roles are constructed of a combination of traditional roots and social values, primarily based on the concepts of production and reproduction, taken to mirror masculine and feminine traits of an individual. More than 50% of the women lack basic education and approximately 30% do earn some income, but most women in Pakistan are confined to their homes to do housework for the extended family and are excluded from main decision making.

(Ali)

There is a majority of women that aren’t allowed to work or leave the country, and through that notion, I fall under the exception. My life isn’t as gender determined as so many of the girl out there, trying to gain even a remnant of freedom, but being told they cannot.

Part Three: The girl that speaks

My mother tells me i’m not lady-like enough, that my voice is too loud for a Pakistani girl, my clothes too wild, and my thoughts too provocative – I live in a society where patriarchy reigns. My world is woman-centric and every things I do is measured.

My clothes are measured, the tone of my voice in public is measured. My whole life is measured by customs and rules that I no longer believe in.

I am chained within four walls constantly. The walls of my house, the walls of my gender, the walls of the ever dominating patriarchy that keep growing taller and taller as I grow smaller to fit into my self-made box. I cannot breathe because I am larger than the box, my thoughts do not fit within it, and my actions do not either. One of the reasons why I’ve even been able to realise this is through my education. As Alavi illustrates through the quotation below, many do not even have the chance to realise how much of a difference their gender makes to their lives because they have not been given an education. This is both a cultural, and religious problem.

Education is the key to acceptable and respectable jobs. Lower middle class families would find it degrading to let their women take up jobs as domestic servants or to work on the factory floor for which education is not a pre-requisite. Families who expect their women to take up jobs as teachers or office clerks (or better) tend therefore to put a high value on women’s education which, at one time, was thought to be mere indulgence and wasteful of money spent on it.

(Alavi 1329)

There is a vast majority of women who long to express themselves creatively but are not given the chance. The social structure in Pakistan is set up in such a way that women cannot walk on the streets in certain places because of the constant stares from men and the fear of rape. Since women cannot even walk on the streets without being questioned, it is hard imagining a place in Pakistan where women’s voices are not challenged in the least.

Pakistan is infamous for its gender gap. Within the country exists a society that adheres to patriarchal beliefs and authority, one that pushes the conception that a man must be in charge of a woman’s life, and a woman must be in charge of her house and obtain the role of a caretaker. The woman is seen as the primary caretaker, while the man is seen as the primary provider, since his duty involves leaving the house to provide monetary wealth for his family. Even though in major cities in Pakistan, such as Karachi and Islamabad, the role of a woman outside the house is not always condemned, there are still many people that are firm believers in the woman as the center of the domestic sphere.

Culturally, household work (in her own home) is considered a woman’s primary role. Due to the increase of economic pressures on families in the past few decades, the traditional restrictions on women have lessened and large numbers of women have taken on paid employment; but domestic work remains a woman’s principal duty.

(Hussain 4)

Thankfully, my family doesn’t believe that I have to be a domesticated housewife, and I do work at a newspaper. Working in the media is an interesting job, as every day I see so many women that have been wronged. Honour killing and rape are always on the front page of the paper, and I can’t escape it. I can’t get away from the rising patriarchy no matter how hard I try. It seeps into my life. The video, “How does gender affect the workplace?” explains that occupations like engineering and law are usually filled by men, and this does reign true in Karachi. My little brothers are told to become doctors and lawyers, and then here, I am – I studied Literature and Creative Writing in Italy.

There is an inherent need for the questioning of societal norms in Pakistan. A woman’s independence and freedom of choice should be her priority during her formative years, not her presentation in the eyes of possible proposers.

Maybe my life wouldn’t revolve around gender if I lived somewhere else. But I’ve realised that standing up for yourself is the best way to go about it. I can’t help that my society values the damsel in distress, and the perfect housewife, but I don’t have to follow those rules. There is always room for the girls that say no. The girls that raise their voices even when everyone around them wants to silence them.

Sources:

Ali, Tazeen S., et al. “Gender Roles and Their Influence on Life Prospects for Women in

Urban Karachi, Pakistan: A Qualitative Study.” Global Health Action (2011): PMC.

Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Bhamani, Shireen Shehzad, and Nida Zahid. “Am I Born To Be Hurt? The Voice Of Women

Living In Urban Squatter Settlement Of Karachi, Pakistan: A Case Study.”

International Journal Of Nursing Education 7.4 (2015): 137-141. CINAHL Complete.

Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Hussain, Iffat. Problems of Working Women in Karachi, Pakistan. Newcastle: Cambridge

Scholars, 2008. Web. 8 Dev. 2016.

Lorber, Judith. “Chapter 32: The Social Construction Of Gender.” Inequality Reader:

Contemporary & Foundational Readings in Race, Class, & Gender. 277-278. n.p.:

Perseus Books, LLC, 2006. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

http://wwnorton.com/common/mplay/6.8/?p=/college/soc/family/&f=gender&ft=mp4&cdn=1

&cc=1

Fighting patriarchy wth my pen

Part One: The yes girl

At 22, I moved home. Back into my parents house, back into the bubble that is Karachi, Pakistan. Living away from home, especially when you come from a country like mine, is liberating, groundbreaking, and eye-opening to say the least. My life in Karachi had always been controlled. I was controlled by my teachers in school, by my parents at home, by my religion in life. Everything I said and did was somehow watched and valued. As a writer, I never liked rules. I didn’t care for them. My writing was my constant solace. I rebelled through characters, letting the girls free their minds while I sat on the edge of my bed, listening again to what my parents told me to do.

I was always the yes girl. I nodded when my parents told me that I had to wear a shawl over my sleeve-less top to cover my arms in public – because of the apparent male gaze that followed every girl in Karachi. I silently agreed when my teacher told me that Biology was a man’s subject, and I was better suited to humanities. I was always agreeing. I was always saying yes. Until one day. I finally said no.

Part Two: The girl that grew up

It’s 9 a.m. Karachi is cool in a way that it never usually gets. My mother is banging on my door to get me to wake up for my workout. I can’t miss class. I have to be thin. I must be thin. My mother says I have to be thin for wedding season. What will all the aunties say if I’m not? How will I ever get married if I’m not? This is the constant battle in my life. I am constantly told to prepare myself for marriage.

The module, The Social Construction of Gender states, “Every society classifies people as “girl and boy children,” “girls and boys ready to be married,” and “fully constructs similarities among them and differences between them, and assigns them to different roles and responsibilities” 278)

Eat better, my mother says. Back straight, my father says. Head up high, my mother says. Get a manicure, my father says. My life is a series of do-betters and get betters. I am the opposite of the epitome of what every Pakistani mother wants her daughter to be. Yes, I can cook. I can clean. When I was six-years-old, I learnt how to iron, not because I wanted to, but because that’s what girls do. But it wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want someone to judge me on my ability to make naan, or nod my head when someone older spoke to me. Ali Tazeen explains how gender is constructed in such a way that men and women have roles that are predetermined, like it or not.

In Pakistan, gender roles are constructed of a combination of traditional roots and social values, primarily based on the concepts of production and reproduction, taken to mirror masculine and feminine traits of an individual. More than 50% of the women lack basic education and approximately 30% do earn some income, but most women in Pakistan are confined to their homes to do housework for the extended family and are excluded from main decision making.

(Ali)

There is a majority of women that aren’t allowed to work or leave the country, and through that notion, I fall under the exception. My life isn’t as gender determined as so many of the girl out there, trying to gain even a remnant of freedom, but being told they cannot.

Part Three: The girl that speaks

My mother tells me i’m not lady-like enough, that my voice is too loud for a Pakistani girl, my clothes too wild, and my thoughts too provocative – I live in a society where patriarchy reigns. My world is women-centric and every things I do is measured.

My clothes are measured, the tone of my voice in public is measured. My whole life is measured by customs and rules that I no longer believe in.

I am chained within four walls constantly. The walls of my house, the walls of my gender, the walls of the ever dominating patriarchy that keep growing taller and taller as I grow smaller to fit into my self-made box. I cannot breathe because I am larger than the box, my thoughts do not fit within it, and my actions do not either. One of the reasons why I’ve even been able to realise this is through my education. As Alavi illustrates through the quotation below, many do not even have the chance to realise how much of a difference their gender makes to their lives because they have not been given an education. This is both a cultural, and religious problem.

Education is the key to acceptable and respectable jobs. Lower middle class families would find it degrading to let their women take up jobs as domestic servants or to work on the factory floor for which education is not a pre-requisite. Families who expect their women to take up jobs as teachers or office clerks (or better) tend therefore to put a high value on women’s education which, at one time, was thought to be mere indulgence and wasteful of money spent on it.

(Alavi 1329)

There is a vast majority of women who long to express themselves creatively but are not given the chance. The social structure in Pakistan is set up in such a way that women cannot walk on the streets in certain places because of the constant stares from men and the fear of rape. Since women cannot even walk on the streets without being questioned, it is hard imagining a place in Pakistan where women’s voices are not challenged in the least.

Pakistan is infamous for its gender gap. Within the country exists a society that adheres to patriarchal beliefs and authority, one that pushes the conception that a man must be in charge of a woman’s life, and a woman must be in charge of her house and obtain the role of a caretaker. The woman is seen as the primary caretaker, while the man is seen as the primary provider, since his duty involves leaving the house to provide monetary wealth for his family. Even though in major cities in Pakistan, such as Karachi and Islamabad, the role of a woman outside the house is not always condemned, there are still many people that are firm believers in the woman as the center of the domestic sphere.

Culturally, household work (in her own home) is considered a woman’s primary role. Due to the increase of economic pressures on families in the past few decades, the traditional restrictions on women have lessened and large numbers of women have taken on paid employment; but domestic work remains a woman’s principal duty.

(Hussain 4)

Thankfully, my family doesn’t believe that I have to be a domesticated housewife, and I do work at a newspaper. Working in the media is an interesting job, as every day I see so many women that have been wronged. Honour killing and rape are always on the front page of the paper, and I can’t escape it. I can’t get away from the rising patriarchy no matter how hard I try. It seeps into my life. The video, “How does gender affect the workplace?” explains that occupations like engineering and law are usually filled by men, and this does reign true in Karachi. My little brothers are told to become doctors and lawyers, and then here, I am – I studied Literature and Creative Writing in Italy.

There is an inherent need for the questioning of societal norms in Pakistan. A woman’s independence and freedom of choice should be her priority during her formative years, not her presentation in the eyes of possible proposers.

Maybe my life wouldn’t revolve around gender if I lived somewhere else. But I’ve realised that standing up for yourself is the best way to go about it. I can’t help that my society values the damsel in distress, and the perfect housewife, but I don’t have to follow those rules. There is always room for the girls that say no. The girls that raise their voices even when everyone around them wants to silence them.

Sources:

Ali, Tazeen S., et al. “Gender Roles and Their Influence on Life Prospects for Women in

Urban Karachi, Pakistan: A Qualitative Study.” Global Health Action (2011): PMC.

Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

Bhamani, Shireen Shehzad, and Nida Zahid. “Am I Born To Be Hurt? The Voice Of Women

Living In Urban Squatter Settlement Of Karachi, Pakistan: A Case Study.”

International Journal Of Nursing Education 7.4 (2015): 137-141. CINAHL Complete.

Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Hussain, Iffat. Problems of Working Women in Karachi, Pakistan. Newcastle: Cambridge

Scholars, 2008. Web. 8 Dev. 2016.

Lorber, Judith. “Chapter 32: The Social Construction Of Gender.” Inequality Reader:

Contemporary & Foundational Readings in Race, Class, & Gender. 277-278. n.p.:

Perseus Books, LLC, 2006. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 10 Dec. 2016.

http://wwnorton.com/common/mplay/6.8/?p=/college/soc/family/&f=gender&ft=mp4&cdn=1

&cc=1

A flower, a petal, and a stone.

I am a flower. A petal. A stone.

I am all of these things and none.

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I am burning with follicles; I am bound shut by earth.

I am two polar opposites, striking against each other at all times.

I am the thunder raging war on the sky

I am the rain dancing softly in the moonlight

I am the book that you never want to put down

I am the necklace too deeply knotted to ever wear

I am sin

I am sadness

I am hope on a tree

I am lost, eternal, freefalling misery

I am light in the dark

I am the wind in a desert

I am every cliché that you think I deserved

I am lost I am found I am almost always a raging sound

I am loud and fierce an fiery

I am darkness as it drowns your lungs you cannot breathe.

I am suffocating ego and eternal

My arms, across your neck – making time ephemeral

I am payback dark and dirt

I am your hear when it is not heavy

I am the whole in the donut you never get to see

I am, inexplicably always me

I am a flower a peel a stone in the ground

Oh, how much I long, for you to break any sound.

 

My voice rages, louder than a pentameter, oh how I long to shrink back into the rhythm of your meter.

I am lost, deep in the midst of your notes.

I am struck in a crowd of people I do not know,

I am hope but hope is not me,

I am and always inexplicably me.

I am light when I want; I am the darkest part of your heart,

I am free as a bird flying out of bounds,

Yet I am the small creature tapped to your sound,

It calls me – dark within the night,

Luring me towards it,

Its fight or flight.

I cannot fight any longer,

I hear your heat beating – oh it’s stronger.

I dance in the rain, its pouring down on me,

Drowning me–

Its rain drops fierce, and unforgiving,

They come down on me–hard–I am never pleasing.

They shatter my bones and then my skull.

 

They take me under, under into the deep blue abyss,

Into a world full of places I did not know I could miss.

I drowning deep and trodden – I am walking the line, of a rope long forgotten.

Batting your scars, yet battling my now,

Oh my heart it aches – how it aches – to be alone.

I feel it deep inside my soul.

I feel you coming,

To take control,

Yet I cannot wait,

I cannot surrender,

Because my voice, my heart it grows so tender,

I feel you creeping into my bones,

And no, I do not want you; I do not want you anymore.

 

Yet here you are again,

Taking me down with you–

When will it ever end?

They call you darkness; I call you my best friend.

You are my strength, my guide, my hope,

Yet you are the one that always cuts the rope

No matter how hard I try to run and pull,

Your strength is too much for me and once again, I fold.

I crumble into ashes, my words are note even my own –

10,000 lashes.

They bleed through the pages, through my heart.

Taking everything I once thought that I owned

And tearing it apart.

 

I see the sea because I’m drowning within it,

All around me is this force but I once longed for this abyss.

Yet now I’m stranded, so stranded within its mist.

There is no one to call out to,

No one to take me to shore,

And still I stand, knocking and knocking on your door–

Hoping you’ll open it, wide and vast, and let me back into my world,

Oh please, this one time, let it last,

Let my freedom soar,

Leave me be,

Because I am and always inexplicably me.

 

Yet you do not stumble, you do not sway,

You cast your shadow onto me,

And drift me back into the bay.

I am here.

I am drowning.

And I do not resist-

No more.

I let you have me,

Whole and soul,

I let you take me,

Back into your overarching control.