Tag: shame

From Justice To Just-Is and Back

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

If one could crawl inside a psychologists office, one would soon realize that human beings are liars. They lie to themselves, they lie to the world and God. God in fact is used to numb, deny, obfuscate and cope with the most heinous injustice and crime behind a smiling and happy face.

When Jahir Jaffer’s family sit in court praying on Tasbihs…..it sends a shock wave through society who wonder, do we pray to the same God for justice for Noor? Who are we praying to? The same God that sat in heavan, watching a very rich and very psychopathic man rape, kill and then behead a friend he danced with a short year ago. A girl who looked at him lovingly, like friends who trust each other do. But, alas, God didn’t descend to save Noor when she tried to escape from her captor several times. In fact, the domestic servants ensured that she couldn’t run from the house. It doesn’t surprise anyone that they didn’t raise a finger to help her. It doesn’t surprise anyone that his parents who must have gathered from their dozens of calls that something was afoot, didn’t do anything to save Noor.

When Zakir Jaffer was arrested, he said, ‘we want justice to prevail’. I don’t think it was justice that he meant, he actually meant “Just Is.” Just Is is a state of blaming the victim that freezes any process of truth and justice. So what is Just Is?

Just Is

In a state where Just Is prevails, friendship couldn’t save the day. In a culture, where people generally stop what they are doing to help a stranger, nobody helped an injured bleeding girl escape when her friend became violent.

Just Is means that the entire family and friends and domestic servants were outside or on the phone while Zahir killed Noor. The murder was done on the celebratory holiday of Eid where the men take a knife, mouth a prayer then slice an animals neck as a symbol of sacrifice for God. This time in 2021, a girl was sacrificed. This too is Just Is.

In Pakistan’s history many fundamentalists have beheaded people. For example Daniel Pearl, a journalist was beheaded. The ISIS and Taliban have beheaded countless people to exert control and authority. Jahir Jaffer must be around 30 years old. He probably grew up inundated by the news of Islamic terrorism in the shape of bombs, shootings and beheadings. These killings were done ostensibly for God — but we all know that killing isn’t about God, it is about power and ego.

The killing was done for his male ego. Jahir stated that the murder was done because Noor refused to marry him. One wonders why he would want to marry a woman he hated so much that he killed her. But here is the reality of Pakistan. There is not much love between people who have sex. In fact the fastest way to kill any love between a man and a woman is to get them married. There is domination, power and control towards women. In other words, men don’t respect women they have sex with, they own them.

There is A LOT of victim blaming. Why did she go to his house? why did she call him so many times? why was she dating him? shouldn’t she have done a nikah? As if a nikah would mean that he wouldn’t kill her.

If you scan the headlines of the last 6 months, there is a repeated theme of women, children, and girls being molested, raped, violated. Some of them publicly. For example in a major landmark park, a tik tokker and nurse was violated by a group of hundreds of men. The security failed to protect her. The news rises like plastic waste on the oceans, leaving its disgusting debris on the shores of our screens. She was blamed, and not only that the public and media went after her as a person, and questioned her friendships and relationships.

The average Pakistani is still in love with their prime minister, Imran Khan. Never mind that None of the promises made by the PTI have been honoured. The much promised billions of dollars that Nawaz Sharif and family looted from Pakistan or the billions siphoned by Zardari are still floating in the air, between court cases. Pakistan’s debt is at an all time high. Apart from some administrative improvements, the government doesn’t seem to have lived up to its promise. When asked they blame previous governments for everything. The government released its universal curriculum in which it can be seen that Pakistaniyat or the identity of Pakistan has been once again associated with conservative patriarchy. In one text book cover, men and boys sit on sofas, girls and mothers occupy the floor. People throw around the opinion that Aurat March activists were funded by NGOs and that women talking about their objections to being used sexually in public is not indigenous. It seemed that here was some attempt being made to expose the sordid reality of Pakistan’s sexually violent culture, that lurks beneath the surface of religious propriety, making it nearly impossible to defend women and children against predators. However the Aurat march crowd has dissipated. Shamed, humiliated and persecuted on social media, many many women can’t take the trauma of being mistreated because they asked for Justice instead of accepting Just Is.

Noor Mukkadam’s murder is echoed by many other murders where men have murdered wives, children, friends and just random neighbourhood girls. The world is being shown that frustrated men take out their worst instincts on women. They scapegoat women and blame them for their own emotions. Many men from Pakistan blame Noor because she was part of the liberal Aurat March (women’s rights activist crowd) and one of the ‘liberal aunties’ who shouted the slogan, ‘My body, my rights’. For the average Pakistani mindset, this meant that a woman was asking for sex. The average man’s psyche struggles to see a woman as a human being. A Pakistani Muslim man believes that sex is bad, and the woman he has sex with is bad. Any woman he is attracted is responsible for his feelings, because if she were to remain invisible, he wouldn’t have sexual feelings about her. A woman just isn’t supposed to be free enough to use public space. And if she uses public space, she is likely to risk family criticism/blame, public humiliation, acid attacks, social media attacks, gossip and more recently torture and murder. In an ideal Muslim world, every corporation, every government, every road would have a separate space for women, so that they never see any men and no man sees them. In the Muslim mindset, the problem is that they are too liberal because of Western influence. A fundamentalist Muslim utopia is a place like Saudi Arabia, which masks extreme decadence behind a strict moral code. In this world view Muslim identity is bipolar, a snake pit of moral contradictions, where the purpose of existence is to kill all those who question what lies behind the mask.

People ask: Other countries have gang rape, murder etc., why does Pakistan’s sex crimes and violence against women create a fuss in liberal circles?

  • Because sex crimes and violence against women is blamed on women existing. No other country says to a victim, you shouldn’t have worn these clothes, you shouldn’t have dated this man, you shouldn’t have gone out, you shouldn’t make vidoes, you shouldn’t be visible.
  • Because every women’s right to public space, jobs, relationships and family is at stake every time someone is attacked because she was trying to exist as a human being.
  • Because women are human and have equal value and worth as men; and they are not extensions of men in their lives.
  • Because the worst kinds of mental health issues are covered up scapegoating women. Women are married off to men who are incapable of relationship, just because of family values, thus they often marry just for basic survival and shelter.
  • Because a woman doesn’t feel as defensive about being a women anywhere else in the world as she does in Pakistan.

Virasate Madness

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Our children are good.

They put their head on their ground every day several times.

They cover their legs, their head and no part of their body shows.

They are full of fear of God.

Full of fear of God.

Oh they are so good.

We beat them when they laugh and run and play.

Our children are so good.

We tell them not to show

Any skin.

The body is just sin

Because God is watching

And will put them in hell

If they find any pleasure in life.

So good, so good, so good.

Oh so good, so good, so good.

So, Not good.

Oh, so anxious, so anxious

Unable to think,

unable to breathe

Oh but they are so good so good so good.

They marry who we tell them!!

Yahoo we are so good, our family name so good.

They study what we tell them.

Our family name so good, so good.

They can barely touch another human

So good so good so good.

And they are afraid of their body

So good so good so good,

Married to their parents

An extension of their parents

So good so good so good.

Oh! my darling son stabbed a girl

Not my baby!

She must have been a witch

Oh! my daughter cuts her arms!

Bad girl bad girl bad girl!

Let’s get her married to a rapist

To stop her feeling lonely

So good so good so goodA

And the good men kill the bad women

who dare to smile in the Virasate madness

So good, so good, so good!

But the bad ones

They need MORE religion

Better teaching of religion!

Let’s start when they are in the womb

Let’s cut their body parts out

Then they can’t feel anything

ANYthing except TAJALLI!

CLAP CLAP CLAP!!

Numb, High, Good, Robots

In the Verasate Madness

Being a High Minded Bum

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Synopsis of a person with high functioning depression.

I learnt depression in childhood. I also learnt how to mask it in childhood (pun intended).

Trauma and struggle with mental health has never been part of economic theory. It just doesn’t exist. Which is why for high functioning people with depression and anxiety, it just can’t exist.

Note: The story is fictional truth

Ever since I can remember, there wasn’t enough. Pretty clothes were a big deal. One day my mother bought something for me that made my sister upset. My sister refused to talk to my mother, because she wanted it. I told my mother to give the fabric to my sister. My mother refused. The drama went on for a long time. That sort of thing happened often. Every time I’d feel a sick dread in my stomach and all the breath in my body would go.

I learnt to be nice to people to avoid being shouted at and I learnt how to listen to people and make people feel safe and happy to avoid being humiliated. Because I was that little scrawny kid that got scared. I learnt depression in childhood and I also learnt how to mask it in childhood (pun intended). There wasn’t much psychological safety. I learnt how to be just fine and get along, because it was risky to show my feelings. Behind the mask of being cheerful and calm, I avoided getting too close in relationships. It was easier to fall in love with narcissists, they don’t see or hear me. It is always about them. That way nobody knows. Just. How. Sad. I Felt.

The joy of life would disappear in the awful feeling that was part of my daily experience as a child. I learnt years later that it was assimilated trauma.* In the past, being around members of my family meant depression or immune system breakdowns. I hate being that person, I know my family loves me, despite the abusive patterns towards me, to the best of their ability. However, my body seems to have a bio-logic of its own. It doesn’t like feeling unsafe for long periods of time.

Economic theory agrees that resources are scarce and life is a struggle. Since resources are scarce, you have to trade. You have to trade at a profit in order to get more resources for yourself. Most economics is not about resource sharing, it is mostly about resource control and trade. I wanted inclusion, but the other person has to want it also. I would have liked to offer one of my fabric pieces to my sister in return for a happy smile, but it wasn’t possible. My sister saw me as the usurper of her opportunities. If she was a country, she would have bombed me. My body would feel like it was bombed as a child. Being actively hated for just existing is a familiar yukky twinge in my stomach. My genes are programmed to respond to hostility with a freeze/fawn response. My nervous system and immune system get dysfunctional around conflict and aggression. If someone abuses, criticizes, humiliates or yells at me I feel drained and miserable.

Of course if I said this sort of thing in a Psychology class, it would be analyzed in clinical terms. My colleagues who use jargon like a dictionary on autoplay would say, ‘developmental trauma in childhood.’ Basically, trauma gets assimilated. Parts of the brain believe it is still happening. Ergo, I don’t feel psychologically safe around control, manipulation, blame, humiliation, shouting, criticism and shame. Ergo, I get triggered. Ergo, I get relapses. Ergo I can’t tell anyone because I am not supposed to feel upset, because it is happening in my head, it is my problem, because they love me. Ergo, I avoid people.

I have a million ways to calm and soothe my brain. I can fool my brain into thinking it isn’t depressed for long periods of time. My periods of depression have high creativity. It is an old friend, a not so horrible demon in my closet, who is fed with cheesecake, yoga, tears and a few friends who know. But going near the people who caused my trauma means drinking poison, a poison that slows my brain, makes me cry at the weirdest things and generally feel exhausted.

Of courses the men I have fallen in love with are loud, resentful, angry and very broken, who use me to take care of them, then dump me when I ask for something back. For a long time, people could barely hear me when I spoke. Developmental trauma. Yes. I learnt that I must have enough money to shop. Nice stuff meant survival. I was miserable. But well clothed. With a nice home. Trauma and struggle with mental health has never been part of economic theory. It just doesn’t exist. Which is why for high functioning people with depression and anxiety, it just can’t exist.

An Economics student or anyone who studies business walks away with the idea that we are here essentially to exploit the planet, get rich and die. Science or rather technology is also part of the same mental paradigm. So humans have to work like robots or else be replaced with them. After all robots can’t get Coronavirus.

Most economists would shudder at the idea of having any kind of ‘ideal’ or ‘moral’ other than free market economics. Never mind that people aren’t actually free or rational. Economists believe that they are rational scientists who study the flow of goods and services, not play God. Yet human behavior isn’t rational. I wonder about the actual behavior of people during and post pandemic, given months and months of uncertainty.

Perhaps our collective, global narcissism is the religion of our times. Our obsessions with our self image have made us blind to the consequences of our behavior. The way we cope with big stuff is by thinking, “It is somebody else’s problem” . We can’t help it, it is in our biology :). Maybe I want to stop working so hard, but my life would be meaningless.

Work is my baby soother. My addiction. My meaning. The only difference between the 16 year old who sacrificed herself to be who her mother needed, and this woman is that I know that my depression will never go away, not completely. I just know how to cope, so that I function. If I had known that at 18, I’d never have joined business school, instead I’d have studied Psychology and Journalism. I’d never have tried to have more money, because more money meant the same unfreedom as less money. Because my enemy isn’t poverty. My enemy is depression. My enemy is part of me. My enemy is me. My enemy is assimilated trauma at an age I could do nothing about it. My enemy is my destiny.