(1/11) “There is a moment I’ll never forget. My mother was teaching a class at our home, and my fath
(1/11) “There is a moment I’ll never forget. My mother was teaching a class at our home, and my father hit her in front of the students. It was humiliating. She was an esteemed teacher in our town. After it happened, I asked her: ‘How could you possibly stay with him?’ She replied: ‘Boys will be boys. It’s a woman’s job to hold the home together.’ It’s the same story taught to every Pakistani girl. We are raised from a young age to believe that our purpose in life is to find and keep a husband. We are taught to cook, and clean, and never complain. It’s different for boys. They are allowed to grow, and work, and find their own way. But a daughter has just one path: to marry as quickly as possible. I always wanted more from life, even as a child. I wanted to create something. I wanted to be somebody. But there was nowhere to look for inspiration. The internet didn’t exist back then. And even on our television shows, women who wanted more than a family were depicted as villains. Maybe if a girl had perfect grades, then she could become a doctor or lawyer. But that wasn’t me. My grades were only average. I remember when I was sixteen years old, I secretly recorded my voice and mailed the tape to a local radio station. I thought maybe I could host my own program. But my mother found the package and removed it from the post. Then a few months later I had my first meeting with a matchmaker. My mother coached me to keep my head down. She warned me not to be clever, and to answer every question with a single sentence. But none of the questions were about my personality. All of them were about my cooking, and cleaning, and sewing. At one point I got aggressive. I told the matchmaker that I had no interest in marriage. But she only laughed at this. ‘I hear that from every girl,’ she answered. ‘But they always fall in love with their husbands. Because marriage is a beautiful thing.’ For the next several months I rejected every suitor who came to our home. I kept hoping that my parents would change their mind. They were liberal people. Both of them were educators. But during my 12th grade year they took a pilgrimage to Mecca. And when they returned, things got even worse.” -- source link