Honor Aside

Chapter 2

I was born in one of Pakistan's major cities. One of my earliest memories is playing in the lush green park across from our house, furtively swallowing candies bought down the road with money stolen from our parents. The pale pink bubble gum nearly choked me once. I struggled to spit out the too-big piece onto the grass. I felt immense relief and guilt when I did, and the ever-present Fear magnified because I had stolen and lied to my parents. My mother always said God was punishing us. For what, I can't imagine.

Another of my earliest memories involves being in the dining room and watching my parents, standing on either side of the table, argue. We were trapped in that house. Our mom struggled, staying at home all day to care for three small children. She was often depressed, and often complained on the phone about her marriage to her parents. Once, we had plans to go out together at night. She raged because our dad was working late, even though he knew what was planned. She called him repeatedly and when he stopped answering, she sent me to tell him to stop working and take us out. We couldn't have gone alone because it seemed almost necessary to have a man take you to the bustling markets. At home, I listened as she ranted bitterly about her bad luck in the marriage she'd been forced into and her daily struggles. I felt guilt, shame, and a strong need to make things right. Dad was busy and he worked for us all day, and that was good, but I also needed Mom to not be miserable. When she got angry, I felt almost sick with the rising tide of panic. I'm still sorry for being so bad. It doesn't matter how many times I hear or tell myself that I was just a kid.

We couldn't express negative emotions or thoughts. It meant that we were being ungrateful for the good things we did have. Being uncomfortable about something like social interactions with other adults was forbidden. A good parent's job apparently included raising pleasant, acquiescent children who never expressed any even mildly offensive feelings or thoughts. I think that's one reason for the prevalence of various forms of child abuse in certain Pakistani families. It's part of the culture to treat your kids like extensions of yourselves, like you can make everything alright if you just control them well enough. Being too happy was also bad, because it meant you were overcome with emotion and vulnerable to making an ass of yourself before others. Even now, looking back (in the imperfect way that we humans do), I feel the chaos transcending time and place. I can't think about visiting my grandparents and running wild through their house, playing with my relatives, without feeling a deep, dark sense of nostalgia tinged with sadness and a fierce need to protect that child from the destructive forces at play. I wish I'd had someone like me back then. It would have been completely inappropriate for someone to intervene on my behalf, but still.

I don't remember many instances of physical abuse when we lived in Pakistan. I remember the emotional torrents and the abuse that happened around me. My parents argued constantly. They assaulted each other on many occasions. They have always argued about two things in particular: money (and my dad's unwillingness to pass it on to my mother), and our family, both immediate and extended. My mom believed that her mother-in-law was evil incarnate, praying ceaselessly for misery to befall her through things that directly or indirectly impacted my mom and her family. It's crazy, considering that my parents are first cousins. My mom argued that my dad wanted to marry a second wife, preferably one with money, and so I learned a lot about words like "bitch" and "whore" without knowing exactly what they meant. My dad would often laugh and, often while smirking, tell my mother that he wasn't getting married, he wasn't going to leave us, and his mother had no intention of marrying him to anyone else.

I used to think I had an inferiority complex because of how I expected everyone to be inherently better than I was. Over time, I have begun to separate my mom's insecurities from my self-concept. She's had a hard road too. She always felt like her mother deliberately favoured her older sisters over her. When she was out with her family as a child, her mother often suggested that the older sisters should have something or other bought for them, but she would say my mom had no use for it. Throughout my childhood and even now, she buys things impulsively and compares her ability to buy certain types of products, such as handbags, with that of her peers. Christ, how many fucking times to I have to say I'm sorry?

Screaming at home. A family always on the brink of collapse, but I was apparently the only one who felt that way. My mom worked as a teacher for a couple of years before she was married to my dad. She didn't want to marry, especially not my dad, and we knew it. We also knew that he wished his parents had found someone better for him. Regardless, I do have many fond memories of childhood too. I loved to play with my friends and my siblings, when we weren't bitter enemies fighting over toys and games. I remember sitting in class in the private school we attended for a while, a music teacher strumming his guitar and encouraging us to play with xylophones.

I was bullied for a while at school. My sister and I rode in the backs of separate trucks to go to school each day, since she was a couple of years older and had a different schedule. In the enclosed bed of my truck, I sat and rode to school with friends. Everyone knew my family belonged to a persecuted religious group. One boy was determined to remind me every day that I was unwelcome. He would call me names and hit me. I didn't understand what he was saying or why he targeted me until years later. At the time I felt ashamed that this boy, sturdy and fat and a bit taller than me, could get away with such meanness. None of my friends stopped him. They looked on, slightly ashamed to be in such an awkward situation, and then I would be hit on the arm while climbing out of the truck to return home. He made my life miserable. I loved learning but I hated the gnawing feeling in my gut that I got when I had to go to school.

I told my mom what he did to me. She may have hidden it for a while, but who knows. In the end, my parents talked to his parents, but they just said they were against our kind and their son's behaviour wasn't a problem. Even then, they were all letting you down. I wish I could ask my mom about incidents like these that caused confusion for me, but she doesn't like being reminded of that sort of thing. She'll start to say that she failed us as children and something inside me twists and hurts. You failed too.

After school, we would play in the park across from our house. Sometimes, a funeral prayer would be held for someone who was due to be buried in the cemetery nearby. We would hear the call to gather and make our way to the graveyard to join in prayer, holding up our hands to our faces in a centuries-old ritual. I would get distracted and look at the enshrouded body, covered in unstitched white cloth and ready for burial. That would be my sister, 20 years later. I would stare up at the sky through the tapered leaves of the jamun trees creating a high canopy overhead. When the prayer ended, we would disperse and I would run off, wondering what the dead body looked like and what being dead was like. I thought it mainly involved holding very still and being quiet.

At home, we often watched dramas broadcast on television either with our mother or without her knowledge. Stories of love, sorrow, loss, and redemption enchanted me. I especially enjoyed the abundance of wedding scenes which showed the bride waiting alone to be joined by the groom after the wedding celebration. At the time, I didn't understand what the bride's subdued demeanour meant. However, I still enacted such scenes by sitting on my parents' bed and carefully draping one of my mother's large scarves over my head and spreading it out over the mattress, as if to showcase a marvelous design. It was crucial to stay silent and not laugh, which I did with great effort. My mom once saw me and asked what I was doing. I replied, "Hush, the bride is supposed to sit quietly," which made her laugh for a long time. Now, at 26, I treasure that childhood wonder and curiosity, but I was right about the bride's duty. She is supposed to meekly acquiesce to marriage, which is a Very Big Step in a girl's life and is apparently so mysterious that children aren't told what happens because they won't understand. But I understood, even if I had not yet come to fear and hate the idea of an arranged marriage the way that my family did them.