‘Why are we such abject creatures, Sehti?’ I burst out. ‘Completely without pride, bearing whatever is thrown at us in order to survive? First, we live on the dream that our husbands will be nice to us. And if that fails, then we carry on living on the sorry hope that our sons will be kinder than our husbands? Are we nothing in ourselves? Why do we not own property? Even the children we bear out of our wombs carry their father’s names. Are women weak because they own nothing or do women own nothing because they are weak?
