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Nor was she old enough to appreciate the injustice, to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.
she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.
“You know what he told his wives by way of defense? That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault. Didi? You see? This is what it means to be a woman in this world.”
It’s shocking to me that someone would treat thier own child like this but perhaps if you’re raped and forced to keep a child and beholden to the rapist you are changed. Bitter and mean to those who show kindness?
“What a stupid girl you are! You think you matter to him, that you’re wanted in his house? You think you’re a daughter to him? That he’s going to take you in? Let me tell you something. A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you. I’m the only one who loves you. I’m all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You are nothing!”
What pain causes a mother to talk to her child like this?
Is she right? Is this the mother’s fear?
She gave herself over to the new life that awaited her in this city, a life with a father, with sisters and brothers, a life in which she would love and be loved back, without reservation or agenda, without shame.
And the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of her past.
What seems like torture to me was a comfort to her. Hmmm
Rasheed saw sanctity in what they had together. Her honor, her namoos, was something worth guarding to him. She felt prized by his protectiveness. Treasured and significant.
This is not how I would feel
It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid. And Mariam was afraid. She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not.
had been six more cycles of hopes raised then dashed, each loss, each collapse, each trip to the doctor more crushing for Mariam than the last.
If the only purpose of a woman is to have babies, when she can’t how does she feel valued or worthy?
We have ended decades of tyranny. Power is now in the hands of the masses and freedom-loving people. A glorious new era in the history of our country is afoot.
Doubtful
communists and their decrees to liberate women, to abolish forced marriage, to raise the minimum marriage age to sixteen for girls.
communists and women's rights... wow
crashed.
if you pin your hopes pin someone who doesn't or can't love you... you are lost.
Sometimes…I feel like you’re all I have, Laila. These were the circumstances of her life, the inescapable truths of it.
it makes me crazy when people give upthier live fur others who don't care it deserve it
They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful, solitary lives—and there the weight of all that they’d endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.
There’s nothing more I want. Everything I’d ever wished for as a little girl you’ve already given me. You and your children have made me so very happy.
