My Mother’s Life in a Conservative Nation Turned Her Into a Tigress
How she defied Pakistani society and abandoned her child for her own happiness.
Our Life
My mother had a normal Islamic life. Normal life in Pakistan meant that most women were confined to the four walls of the home. They always said yes to their husbands for sex, and they did it without protection.
My mother had four children, one born after the other. In our part of the world, it is considered normal for women to have kids unplanned. People are of the opinion that a woman’s body is made for this purpose.
Compared to my friends in the west, we as women were not supposed to step out of the house for anything other than the family’s needs. Our family was posher than most others. When women of the house stepped out to get themselves ready for their husbands, it was not frowned upon.
My mother was not like other women.
She was not a rebel, but she was also not one to take things lying down. She had her own fetishes she fulfilled in secret. She went to the salon to get dressed, not for her husband, but for her lover.
And why should she not? My father could legally have more wives and also have a timetable to sleep with each.
In Islam, polygamy is a practice that is accepted. A man may have up to four wives at a time, in order to support orphans of widows who lost their husbands during a war. How many men wanted to marry another woman to support her offspring?
The guy my mother was infatuated with was not rich or educated like my dad, but he allowed her to be herself. While she felt more special around her lover, my dad granted her financial security. Her lover’s financial incompetence deterred her from leaving my father for him.
So she continued using excuses of shopping or errands concerning the kids to meet him safely. My dad had a perfume business and was constantly on tour. He had another wife in Karachi, another part of Pakistan.
In Pakistan, polygamy is legal with the wife’s consent. My mother had agreed to my father’s need to have a second wife as her life after marriage was more luxurious than what it was beforehand.
She enjoyed having the house to herself amid all the servants. She enjoyed her freedom when my father was not around. She fulfilled all her needs by looking lovely and being loved by her lover. My father could never think about his wife being unfaithful to him, and she took advantage of this fact.
This continued for six long years until three of her daughters got married and left home. One was still left. At around the same time, her lover got a better job offer from Dubai. As the four of us grew up and got ready to leave our cocoons, my mother got ready to leave hers.
The Sacrificial Lamb
Three of us were married into rich, but still conservative Pakistani families. When you live in a Muslim-dominant nation, this mentality feels normal.
Here, women are supposed to dress up modestly in public. This did not mean that everyone was required to wear a burqa — a black robe that covered a woman from top to bottom in a veil. That practise is mandated by law in Afghanistan. A few Muslim women choose to wear the burqa by choice in Pakistan.
In our home, women must cover their bodies exposing only hands and face in public. Some may even choose to wear a veil. An unmarried woman is excluded from these practices. She still has to cover her privates and dress up modestly, but is not obliged to wear Pakistani attire or a veil.
My youngest sister was only 18. She would have liked to have had more time before being called home-maker — a dignified word for unpaid maidservant here. But my mother was impatient and withering away. And so, both my mother and her lover hurriedly found a match for my sister in the USA.
Without knowing the family or the man, they fixed her wedding. He was a second-generation Pakistani US citizen, 9 years older. The timing was perfect. My sister, beautiful with the complexion of milk and honey. The man was in love with her at first sight.
The wedding had to be rushed in order to apply quickly for a spouse visa. This meant that the to-be married couple had to make up their minds online and just met to get things done. My mother and her lover found out that the quickest registered destination wedding could be carried out in Colombo, Srilanka in about 14 days.
My poor sister who knew about her mother’s desperation to leave the house had no choice but to agree. The man and his false promises had put her in seventh heaven. My mother and her lover travelled to Srilanka with my sister for this random trip. They did not tell my father.
Even though my sister would have liked to have her dad at the wedding, she succumbed to their requests.
The Doom
The hurried marriage in Colombo turned out to be the worst decision ever. The family of the second-generation American husband was more shitty than Pakistanis in Lahore. The mother-in-law is a drama queen who falls purposely to remain sick always.
The family considers it blasphemous to listen to music. In five years, my sister, who was a natural singer and dancer, has not moved a bone. Her soul needed this to keep her going. Her to-be husband knew about this passion of hers, and said that he would support her.
He turned out to be spineless and spent more time in his mother’s room, emerging only to have sex in the night. My sister’s fertility gifted him two kids one after the other, even with protection.
The second pregnancy came unannounced at a time when she was contemplating leaving him and running away with one kid. She thinks that her husband purposely made a hole in the condom.
When this girl was born, my sister hid this fact from us thinking she would be judged and abused in light of her agonising marriage.
She could have been a US citizen 3 years back, but the man does not want to give her any certainty. He keeps threatening her to go back to Pakistan while he kept the kids. Once he even packed her bags and made her stand outside in the middle of the night.
With no money and nowhere to go, she was left crying in the front yard. My mother has since asked her to make up her mind and leave. She is adamant not to leave without the kids. Unlike her, she feels a responsibility toward them.
The guy is psychotic. At times he is madly in love and carries her to the bed. While they are at it, something gets inside of him. He becomes aggressive, deliberately hurting her just when she is about to orgasm. From kissing her passionately, he starts biting her like an animal.
She has spoken to the women's cell and the police. The women's cell has since offered her a room to stay if she had support for her kids. The police won’t take her case with no citizenship and no evidence of him actually raising a hand.
As my sister waits for that day when she may be killed at the hands of her husband or mother-in-law, my mother lives the life of her dreams.
One man’s sorrow is another man’s joy
My mother’s new lover is earning Dirhams and doting only on one woman. The two travel the world on vacation and dance the night away in the most luxurious lounges.
My mother is visiting places she has never been to. She is pursuing her passion for embroidery and even making money selling her craft for the first time.
She is living a miracle, as she said in her own words, while my sister cannot get out of this dreadful nightmare.
When I try to blame her for her callous attitude toward my sister’s suffering, she says that she had inherited her sorrowful fate. That Allah will bless her too, like she was blessed, later in life.
I hope it is not too late.
The fate of women in the third world
“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”
― Euripides, Medea
The reason why my mother was forced to follow an adulterous path was because of unfair rules for women in Pakistan. It is because of this patriarchal society that even my sister had to give in to the wishes of her elders.
It took my mother 35 years to step out of that rut. Even though she had domestic help, she had managed us four children alone in a male-dominant society. Even without higher studies, she was confident and smart to impress another.
She was bold to take a stance for her happiness in this conservative nation. My sister was not.
Could I blame my mother for looking after her own self before it was too late? Had she not given us daughters, enough of her life? Would I have been content if she gradually slid into oblivion, or my sister was happier?
If we as her daughters blame her for putting herself first, the world was bound to pass judgements.
I try to remind myself about this fact, but my sister’s deteriorating condition makes me ignore it. If society dictated terms to men, just as they did to women, at least in the third world, there would be lesser women in misery, and happier children on earth.
