THE FLAME WITHIN
I wrote this after hearing about the act of self-immolation which is practiced by many oppressed women especially in countries like Afghanistan and Iran.
I have a memory of light, dancing through the window and bouncing off the side of a rusted, steel saucepan. I remember the warmth of it on my skin and the smell of flowers. What were they? I can’t remember. But that sharp, sweet scent still fills my lungs and my head, as sure and as strong as only a memory can. In my dreams the light continues to burn bright then it morphs into a blaze which charges at me, lapping my skin and turning the smooth into a charred, molten mess. I try to open my eyes and escape the pure light that consumes my mind, but there is no way out. Just a sporadic light then the ever present blackness, the curtain that covers my world and defines me now. The pain crawls over me in waves and I feel my stomach churn as I inhale the stench from my weeping wounds through the remains of the nose my mother had many a time called regal.
’Don’t look down that regal nose at me,’ she’d say as she leaned hard onto the bottle she used as a makeshift rolling pin and flattened out the bread dough.
I remember feeling as helpless as that dough, crushed under the weight of my mother’s many unspoken disappointments and forced into the shape of her desires. I know that now, as she changes my bandages, she sees me as I am and her longing to say those words again to the old me is released in the silent streams of her tears. I also know that there is no reverse option, a secret way to rewind time and let me see through eyes which aren’t encased in the leather of the fused, molten skin which had once been eyelids. She turns me over every hour, speaks softly to me deep into the night, and lifts the cup to my shapeless mouth when I am thirsty. The guilt forces her into action; it feeds her days and haunts her nights.
She was the one who wanted me to marry him. His prospects are bright, she’d said. In the eyes of many, happiness without a man to ferry it remains a distant dream and a fourteen year old hasn’t yet learned the words of protest and certainly doesn’t have the means to cheat her fate. He looked older than his thirty-five years and mother said his potbelly was a sign of wealth. I cried that night in my marriage bed and the tears brought out the beast in him. That beast would stalk me night and day, and none of me could appease it. Its fists were large and its heart cold. My bruises were hidden and so was the aching pain of my soul which daily sent up prayers for freedom. What is desire when fate decides otherwise? Where was I to go and what was I to do? Endless questions with only emptiness for answers.
There are things worse than death. When the daily beating of the heart becomes a burden and the breathing in and out of air becomes a constant remainder of the brutal endlessness of it all. I remember hearing the rumble of running feet. The villagers rushing to our neighbour’s house and the whispers wafting on the wind as they ran past. ‘It’s happened!’ They said. ‘She’s finally gone mad!’ As I approached, the sickening smell of roasted flesh arrested me. A wide circle had formed and in the centre of it was what had been a living body only minutes ago but now was a skeletal mass of charred black and oozing red. To the left of it were the wailing parents and to the right was the husband, yelling at his audience about how he’d been deceived into marrying a coward of a woman. ‘I was right all along,’ he said. ‘Good for nothing female.’ The men nodded their heads in agreement and the women huddled in one corner. Some of the boys had gone to call the police while the smaller children started playing with a straw ball away from the crowd.
The day turned into night. My neighbour was given pride of place in the men’s conversation as they ate dinner but the women were still silent. Lying on my bed of reeds on the floor in the middle of the night, I wanted to scream but I choked, to cry but I was dry inside. The hole in the side of the hut was my window to the sky and at that moment a shooting star went past. My heart beat at a faster rhythm and my soul knew it had found a friend. There she was, my neighbour, up in the sky, so high, shining brighter than she had ever been allowed to shine in her short life here. She could fly, claim ownership of the night and sleep all through the day as only a free person could. I knew what I had to do. I stood up and walked barefoot to the small kitchen. The bottle of kerosene and the matches were where I always left them. Outside, the moon was high and the breeze soft. I lifted the bottle over my head and soaked my hair and clothes. The liquid was cool on my skin and the smell so strong I felt dizzy. Suddenly the light was so bright it seared my sight. An agony so deep forced me to my knees as if in prayer. There, in the burning blaze of my broken self, I asked God to take me into His brightest star and hide me within its secret light forever.
THIS is an insightful article about this practice.
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