I think I got married to move out of my parents home. I wanted to live the creative life and I thought that getting married to another creative person would allow me to also live the creative life. Being married was a passport to being a person and an individual.
Marriage meant freedom. The man I chose seemed to be all right, except that he wasn’t. But, I coped….women are told that their husbands must be obeyed and I had been well trained to be a submissive wife.
I loved doing up homes. I loved antique, unusual pieces with unusual patterns and colours.
When I got a job, most of the money would go on gifts for my mother and making a dream home.
Ironically, home is something I’ve never had.
After my marriage didn’t work, I was like a zombie with pain and then I moved to my parents home. I was pregnant and decided I’d keep the baby. I felt guilty that I’d be leaving my husband, but I just couldn’t take being violated. Keeping the baby meant keeping a part of the love that I felt for that man.
My family avoided talking about emotions. Depression was an American disease, Pakistanis didn’t get it. Admitting to being depressed would mean I still loved my husband–and I did, but it was very hard to live with someone who was like Peter Pan except albeit a sadistic version. I lived in two worlds. The world of fantasy, that I shared also with my husband and the world of abusive reality, that I also shared with him.
Memory is a strange thing. When I stood in front of the little house with an attic that I am about to move into I remembered seeing a series of artwork in a hip coffee shop near the arts council in Karachi. The pictures showed a doll house, from which a tiny cut out doll was walking out or peering into. In one picture she was peering in the windows. In another she was walking away from the home. In all those pictures, she was never inside. She was never home.
Leaving my husband meant leaving my home but not being free to be me. My parents decided that as a divorcee I wouldn’t have dignity in Pakistani society. I was that strange creature, neither single nor respectably married. My only hope for social respect was a great professional career or finding some man again. The right one this time. Right.
Yet, the prospect of being someone’s wife, and having more children and running in the rat race did not fill me with joy. Lose weight, find a man. Get a job, find a man. Raise a kid, find a man. The pressure was bizarre. It is as if I needed another person just to exist.
The family thought I should move to Canada, as I’d be safe here–a family member said, “there are many women like you here in this society, you will be fine here.” Perhaps I read too much into harmless sentences…an iceberg of misogyny that underlies the moral code and ethics of my family. My father didn’t spoke about women with any degree of respect, except mothers. It is the macho man thing in our somewhat pakhtoon value system. There were unwritten rules in the tribal code of honour. Women had to be a certain way to prove they were okay.
Around the years when I should have been happily pursuing my career, I was just a woman. I remember how a girl was killed for falling in love…it was an honour killing. As a liberal progressive I felt appalled. A dear friend said how she had heard that the girl was a slut, not a good woman. It was a sort of justice that the family killed her for her crime of being involved with a man or two.
I didn’t have all that to face–in comparison my family was very progressive. As girls we ate the same food as the men. yet, I always felt I shouldn’t eat more so I don’t get fat. As girls we got the same education as the male, except that it was important that he is more successful. To be considered equal, I should be a well paid professional. to have any social status I must be at least as wealthy as the men.
So I worked hard. I did whatever I could to make money. Money meant status, dignity and respect. My heart however was emblazoned with the image of the girl walking away from a home.
During my life, I’ve moved countless times, decorated and redecorated countless homes. My life or most of it was spent being a single parent. On most days my inner state was a numb shock at the reality of life. Reality is highly over rated.
I know that this place here, we call Earth, with its rich men and its banks, and its land owners and its violence and war isn’t my home. My home is elsewhere, a kinder place and a gentler place. The only difference between me and someone else is that I don’t give up on that dream. I see no point to reality if there isn’t a dream of something better.
Thus it doesn’t matter if there is space for me or not. It doesn’t matter how people treat me or don’t. No place is home and there is a sense of deep peace. The most peaceful people in the world don’t own land. The most peaceful people on the planet don’t have bank accounts or insurance policies. They live in harmony with nature and die when it is time. I found this simple thing–‘non-attachment’ to things far braver then any war waged for the ‘protection’ of borders.
Vulnerability is the greatest act of courage.
Behind The Veil 