Shame on you! You are a girl!
Ms.Wazhma Frogh
This story is about a woman who is
a successful
mother but to be super mom she had
to pay
a bitter price… I met her during my
struggles
for advocating on gender rights.
“Pari! Shame on you! You are still playing
outside! I will finally complain to your
father tonight, you are such an idiot girl.
Why don’t you understand that you are a girl
and girls don’t play outside the house, its
very shameful to a girl to play with boys
outside the house! |
This was my only mother
who had become so tired of my boyish behavior
and playing with other boys of my age outside
the house. According to my mom, I never looked
and behaved like a girl since I was two years
old. Therefore, you could only see cars,
guns and spider man statues in our house,
all brought by my father who had a very different
mentality about girls from my mom. He thought
that girls should be confident enough to
face all the ugly faces of life.
Since childhood I had
the desire to be a pilot and fly high in
the sky. But I could see gulps of fear in
her eyes and I started to feel that fear
while playing with a neighbor’s son, Atif.
That fine afternoon I was playing “catch me if you can” around our silent neighborhood that suddenly
I felt tied with the steel ropes of a man’s
hands. That was Atif’s father who was trying
hard to touch and cuddle me wildly, I felt
uncomfortable and resisted. He seemed like
a wild animal that just got its prey and
is restless to tear it off into pieces. I
finally got relieved from his trap when Atif
got there after hearing my voice shouting
for help. But then his father looked at me
and said, ”Thank God! My daughter! That I caught you
if you had fallen down this pitch; you would
have harshly hurt yourself.” That was when I felt a very bitter hatred
against that man or maybe at men. How mean
can a human being be in hands of his wild
inhumane desires?
I ran home without talking a word to Atif
and looked for my mom; she was cleaning the
dishes in the kitchen when I shouted! Mom where are you? I needed a shelter, a place where I could
hide myself that no one look at me, the silent
fear of that incident was growing inside
me, although till today I never knew what
did that old man wanted to do when he held
me strongly in his arms? My mom gave me a
warm and confident hug and looked at me worried.
What happened to you dear? I was speechless but my mom knew what happened
to me. She knew that after that day I will
never go out and play with our neighbor’s
son, she felt the pain and fear that I had
in my breath and eyes. This incident happened
to me when I was around 10 year’s old girl,
who never thought that I am a girl and should
stay home because that way I can keep my
honor and dignity. This means I should sacrifice
myself because of the society’s devils who
are then the gate keepers of honor and dignity.
That single incident massacred
my courage
until today that I am 40 years old.
But I
never got the answer to my question
that
why I have to change myself because
there
are thousands of devil’s like Atif’s
father
around. Is it because I am seen to
be weak?
Is it because I can not fight back
the way
a man can? If I am that weak then why
am
I sent to be compared with a stronger
one?
Can a weaker half be an equal to another
half? Let’s compare nature around us,
we
have the moon lightening around the
night
and we have the sun warming the whole
day.
Can we say the moon is better than
the sun
because it lightens our dark nights?
Or can
we say sun is better because we would
have
frozen and paralyzed if there wasn’t
a sun?
None of them can replace another and
both
of them have their own errands assigned.
They are signs of diversity without
being
superior to one another. That same
theory
applies to men and women, they are
different
but none is superior or inferior because
they are not the same.
Getting back to that incident that
changed my personality and my worldview about
life, it made me one of the typical Asian
women, got married to my parent’s choice
and behaved like an upright wife for more
than 15 years now. But I wish that if my
mom had given me the courage to face the
devil and the world with confidence, I may
have not been another weaker woman of this
era. The lesson that I learnt during the
past thirty years of my life was that why
should I devote my being and identity because
society can not control their evil intentions.
I shared this incident with my daughter when
she was 8 and as of then have taught her
to fight back and stand against brutalities
that happen to a girl and changes her motions
and ambitions in life, without hiding herself
from the society and devoting her self being.
As a 40 year old mother, I want to tell all
mothers that lets not our daughters be another
set of weak women.
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