Death over Disgrace

What changed?

Sitting by my father on the old Persian couch, facing my heavily bearded uncle and fully covered aunt, whom I was meeting for the first time, I had felt extremely thirsty but not knowing whom to ask for water I had whispered into my father’s ear that I wanted water. That day was the only day I had whispered, after that it was all about talking out loud. If I were sitting in a family room having tea and the men were discussing about the current political scenario, I had always ended up on the men’s side of the room taking part in their debates and opposing almost everyone’s views. I had heard them whispering to my father that a women must stay in the limits defined for her and should avoid becoming a part of things she had nothing to do with. But my father had dismissed whatever they said, telling them that I was an educated woman and I knew things more than the ordinary women here. That had not stopped them though, they had kept on telling him that so much liberty was not good for a girl and that I shouldn’t be involved in things that were not my concern. My aunts were supportive and understanding, they told me that it was a good thing that I knew about all of this and had knowledge that the women in Afghanistan lacked. They used to tell me that their husbands were even against the way I walked and talked, they disliked the confidence in my personality.
It was almost a week that we had been there and my grandma passed away, I had held my father during his break downs, telling him that I was with him and understood what he was going through. Not much time had passed that my uncles started telling my father without any hesitation and right in front of me that I was more European in my ways and that I was a disgrace to their family. Now my father stopped defending me, he kept quiet to whatever they said, bowed his head down and listened. They used to tell him that his parents would have been ashamed that he had failed to raise a daughter with “haya” and limits. He started to tell me to do this and do that; he would argue with me and started to talk to me less and less day by day. He would say that his brothers were right and he had indeed failed. He said that he was wrong to leave his country and go to a place so foreign to him, that he had been punished because of leaving his country in the time of need and now he was sowing what he had bowed. I had been speechless throughout, overwhelmed as to how much I had failed to understand the father that I had loved. All along it was guilt that had forced him to not get completely settled in the life he had chosen for himself, to not live completely.
To be continued...